User:Emilyhholden/PotentialFocusingEvents

A potential focusing event is an occurrence that can draw the attention of the public, the media and policymakers to potential future harms.

According to Thomas Birkland's 1997 book, After disaster: agenda setting, public policy and focusing events, a potential focusing event is:
 * "an event that is sudden, relatively rare, can be reasonably defined as harmful or revealing the possibility of potentially greater future harms, inflicts harms or suggests potential harms that are or could be concentrated on a definable geographical area or community of interest, and that is known to policymakers and the public virtuously simultaneously."

Potential focusing events and the public agenda
Policymaking is defined by the public’s knowledge of policy problems and the competition among political institutions to move issues up and down the political agenda. Potential focusing events can level the field for traditionally less powerful groups to advance issues on the political agenda.

Birkland lists four main criteria for potential focusing events :
 * 1) Potential focusing events occur suddenly, with little or no warning.
 * 2) Potential focusing events are generally rare, and, as a consequence, are unpredictable and unplanned.
 * 3) Potential focusing events affect a large number of people (either in the same geographic area or in a community of interest) and reveal a current harm and/or a potential future harm.
 * 4) The public and policy makers learn of potential focusing events virtually simultaneously.