An impact strategist and media innovator, Cynthia La Grou is the founder and executive director of the Compathos Foundation, which aims to harness the power of the arts and media to transform communities. Cynthia La Grou believes that the arts and purposeful media not only have the power to spread awareness and encourage positive action, but also to shape people’s perceptions.

The role of the media is to impart reality and disclose underlying facts of situations or things. However, the task of shaping public mentality in a permissible and educative way is challenging. The public forms their opinions and beliefs, whether individually or collectively, in response to messages from the media; however, they do not accept these messages uniformly. This is complicated by how the influences of different media personalities and outfits differ from each other.

The emphasis on shaping public perception relies on the agenda-setting theory, which deals with the ability to influence significance placed on issues of public concern. A simple example is that a news item that is repeatedly broadcast on national networks will be publicly perceived as more important than others.

Studies about agenda-setting have assumed that the press does not present reality but filters it. They also assume that the media tends to concentrate on a few things, which makes the public think that those issues are more important than others. The technical term for this process is “accessibility,” where agenda-setting manipulates the cognitive process.

Accessibility simply means that the more a media outfit covers a particular issue, the more these stories become accessible in the public’s mind. This is how the public’s choices are influenced and why, for instance, parents intervene in their children’s exposure to sports, careers, religion, movies, brands, and other interests.

Accessibility becomes especially sensitive in an era when information is readily available online. The media has a huge influence on how the public will perceive things; they can just as easily hurt as they can help. However, with the use of factual, informative sources, media outlets can help the public develop rational opinions.