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= Agenda-Setting in the News Coverage of 9/11 =

The theory of agenda-setting theory was developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw. It is the idea that media doesn't tell people what to think, but what to think about. The media sets the perception to the audience of what issues are most important for public discussion. If terrorism is covered often and is outstanding from other news reports, the audience will think that the issue is of importance. The September 11 terrorist attack (also known as 9/11) was a series of four coordinated attacks on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, held by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda. During this terrorist attack, 2,966 people were killed (including 19 hijackers), along with 6,000 people who were injured. The deaths consisted of 2,606 in the World Trade Center and in the surrounding area, 265 on the four airplanes (including terrorists), and the remaining 125 deaths occurred at The Pentagon.

Media's Role in Reporting the Event
The way in which the media reported the 9/11 event, affected the audience into viewing the attacks and the death of thousands as a consequence of war in which America was attacked by terrorists. The media reported the news related to terrorism in a sensational way. They repeated and made the stories simpler by repeating scenes and stories which could benefit the terrorist themselves because what they caused would reach a wider and wider audience. They are in the media often and for a long time which can help them recruit, can be seen as a way of propaganda. The goals and objectives of terrorists are highly related to agenda setting, as the media can have a key role in how terrorists communicate and gain audiences as a way of publicity.

Effects of Agenda-Setting
The way news portrayed the attack developed from headlines of “attack” to “terrorism act” to “war” to “world terror”. Using these variety of words caused a bigger effect on the fear the population felt during the following days and months of the attack. Agenda-setting made a local US terrorist attack into a worldwide war warning.

By the adoption of such technique (agenda-setting) and through the use of cultivation strategy, news coverage on the 9/11 conditioned people to the point that the memory of the terrorist attack remains to these days and it has become part of the 21st century knowledge due to the importance given by the media and the global repercussion it had.

The way news and the media focused on 9/11 had repercussions on news coverage in general, leading the topic of "Terrorism" to the top of the podium with an increase of 135% from 2002 to 2005.