Problem definition and agenda setting

Question 1

What does defining a problem do?

Answer 1

Identifies harm and assigns blame to those causing them

Question 2

What policy area is an example of media framing?

Answer 2

Immigration

Question 3

Are problems socially constructed?

Answer 3

Yes

Question 4

Why would politicians respond to problems that are socially constructed?

Answer 4

To get re-elected and even socially constructed problems can cause a public loss (socially or economically)

Question 5

Which issues do some politicians refuse to see as problems?

Answer 5

Climate change and poverty

Question 6

What does framing involve?

Answer 6

‘the selective use of knowledge and information about a problem and the causal relationships surrounding it’

Question 7

Who are the ‘expanders’?

Answer 7

People who seek to publicise an issue

Question 8

Who are the ‘containers’?

Answer 8

People who may be adversely affected if the issue enters the state agenda

Question 9

What does causality mean in this context?

Answer 9

Which factors or actors have caused the problem

Question 10

What does severity mean in this context?

Answer 10

How serious an issue and its consequences are perceived to be

Question 11

What is a crises in this context?

Answer 11

Labelling a problem as a crisis

Question 12

What does proximity mean in this context?

Answer 12

The issue is directly or indirectly affecting the interests of a broad public

Question 13

What does incidence mean in this context?

Answer 13

Prevalence of the problem

Question 14

What is novelty in problem definition?

Answer 14

Labelling an issue as new or unprecedented.

Question 15

What is a problem population?

Answer 15

How the image of the target group is manipulated by contending actors

Question 16

What is an agenda?

Answer 16

‘the list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention to at any given time’

Question 17

What is a systemic (public) agenda?

Answer 17

public is aware and may be discussing

Question 18

What is an institutional or government agenda?

Answer 18

Where the policymakers are giving active and serious consideration to a policy problem

Question 19

What is the outside-initiative model?

Answer 19

actors outside the government initiate an issue for reform and seek to expand it into the public domain via media coverage, public lobbying of politicians or other actions

Question 20

What is the mobilisation model?

Answer 20

institutions or political leaders seek to move an issue from public to the govt agenda.

Question 21

What is the issue-attention cycle?

Answer 21

public perception reflects an increasing interest and then gradually boredom with issues

Question 22

What is the garbage can model?

Answer 22

policy problems and solutions exist independently of each other