Blog 10: Agenda Setting
I decided
to take a look at Hilary Clinton’s webpage because Joe Biden is not longer
running for president. I spent quite some time doing an in-depth analysis of
Hilary’s issues page. The page was very well set up and rather easy to
navigate. They did not however lay out the main issues in order of importance.
Actually they had the issues in alphabetical order making it a little harder to
narrow down which issues had been placed as the most important. The issues page
had 24 topics places throughout and each topic had a sentence giving a brief
description of Hilary’s views and opinions of the issue. You are then given the
option to view the topic more in-depth. It was rather had to pick the top few
issues on her page just by simply looking at the amount of content each issues
had, but I was able to determine a few issues this way that had to be a part of
her main agenda. The economy was a large issue on her page because it is
critical in the success and growth of America. She had many sub-categories
under the economy. Climate and energy, health care, immigration, national
security, gun violence, and education were other issues that were at the top of
importance to Hilary. I pegged these issues as the most important based on the
needs of Americans and how each of these issues directly effect the
people.
For my next
candidate I decided to head over to Bernie Sanders web page to see how the
agenda was similar of different from Hilary Clintons. The first difference I
noticed between the websites was the way in which the issues were ordered on
the web page. Bernie Sanders had his issues listed not in alphabetical order,
but rather what I would assume to be order of importance placed on the issues.
The first issues listed for Bernie Sanders was Income and Wealth inequality.
Bernie Sanders’ website made a very direct point of saying that the middle
class needed to be strengthened and that the billionaire class needed to be
“taken on”. Hilary differences not necessarily in the issues, but in the
importance placed on it by the website. Hilary covers these issues in the
economy section, but it is not as obvious nor does it have as much emphasis as
Bernie Sander’s website. In fact, Bernie Sanders paragraph above where the
issues start talks strictly about this issues placing the most importance on
it. Bernie has many of the same issues as Hilary including college education,
getting money out of politics, creating jobs, climate change, immigration
policy, social security, and more.
I think
that Hilary is effectively setting her agenda because her issues are clear and
laid out in a way that you know what side of the issue she is on. I would
however argue that Bernie Sander’s is more effective for a few small but
important reasons. First Bernie Sanders issues are in order of importance so
you can really see what is most important and requires immediate action.
Hilary’s alphabetical order is not as effective in doing this. Perhaps she
wants that so any one issues does not look more important than the others. I
would prefer Sander’s format regardless. I also found Bernie Sanders opening
paragraph very informational and gives an overall view of his positions while
Hilary’s introduction simply says learn more about Hillary’s vision.... While
Hilary’s website is effective I would overall prefer Bernie Sanders.
