Kejriwal's fetish for Topi - really?

I would urge you to read this article first, and then read the rest of this post. What you just read, may be classified as an example under “second level agenda setting”.

What second level agenda setting does is - it tells you “how to think about the object”. You can read more details about second level agenda setting here.

Don’t you also feel that a newspaper like Business Standard had a good opportunity to do a business story? Investigating whether there is indeed misappropriation or collusion between business houses and politicians? And perhaps an investigation about how much percent of rise have these private companies made, and on what basis? But you see a rather needless take on Arvind Kejriwal - one that is far from the niche of the newspaper. And by the way, the word “fetish”, is usually used with a sexual connotation - I am unable to make sense of why it was used here.

Anyway.

Do you remember the issue of Vir Sanghvi? His case is an apt example of second level agenda setting and framing.

Let's take an excerpt found in Open Magazine to better understand this.

VIR: What kind of story do you want? Because this will go as Counterpoint, so it will be like most-most read, but it can’t seem too slanted, yet it is an ideal opportunity to get all the points across.

RADIA: But basically, the point is what has happened as far as the High Court is concerned is a very painful thing for the country because what is done is against national interest.

VIR: Okay.

RADIA: I think that’s the underlying message.

VIR: Okay. That message we will do. That allocation of resources which are scarce national resources of a poor country cannot be done in this arbitrary fashion to benefit a few rich people.

RADIA: That’s right.

Did you notice what Vir Sanghvi did? He offered to do something very subtle - “That allocation of resources which are scarce national resources of a poor country cannot be done in this arbitrary fashion to benefit a few rich people.” Simply put, he “framed” the issue in a manner that it becomes an issue of the "country". In short, through his columns, he wanted the common man to think about this issue in a certain way.

There’s another interesting thing I found.

It was reported that Ambani’s lost Rs 20,000 crores in 'market value'. The timing about this story is questionable, and I would urge people not to believe it unless hard core evidence is also provided with the story - is this also confirmed by SEBI? Please check all the news reports for the quotes used, and write to the editor to put online the facts on which this story is based. I am anticipating that such a story will be used by “experts” and columnists by tommo or in coming weeks, to suggest that Ambani’s are going into loses, and Kejriwal’s protest harms the Indian economy.