Week 4

This week we learned about framing and cascading. Both are substantive and procedural. The substantive part is the event itself and the procedural part is "how did we get to this point?" We also learned about salience as that which is most prominent or of the most importance. We then talked about cascading, the process of in which information flows and filters its way from the administration to the public via the elites, opinion leaders, and the media. Then, we took three seemingly unrelated news stories in order to emphasize the danger of defining issues too narrowly, thus isolating individual "necessaries" in an effort to turn them into "sufficients". Too immediately categorize and pigeonhole any story and say its not related to another is dangerous. We also talked about Entman's argument that lots of factors , not just press coverage, weigh in on the minds of decision makers and the public , affecting the outcomes of events.

1. what happens when one story is immediately deemed as irrelevant to another?
2. Is it possible to deem to many stories as being linked or related to each other?

1. When a story is deemed irrelevant immediately, the effects of it on another issue or event are completely and immediately ignored. By pigeonholing stories, decision maker's don't get the chance to consider outcomes that will occur because of the pigeonholed events, leading to an incomplete and ineffective policy or decision.