Primeras referencias a la hora de escoger universidad

Agenda setting in the 21st century has taken a drastic change due to the inceptions or use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Blogs and Twitter to set the agenda. Social media have become very important. Edegoh (2013) and Robin and Shawnika (2013) specify that social media have become affective tools that most people started recognising. Flew (2008) describes how these platforms can be used in agenda setting in alliance with other media to create awareness and educate people on the issues surrounding HIV/AIDS (Skuse and Butler, 2004). Nowadays people are expressing their views, opinions, and feelings through social media platforms.

Not only health professionals are recognising this importance of social media for agenda setting, but even politicians are taking into consideration these media and have started communicating with their followers or citizens through such platforms. For instance, in 2008, during the United States of America’s presidential elections between the Republican John Maccain and the Democrats’ Barack Obama, Barack Obama used social media including Facebook and MySpace effectively. The Facebook page was termed the “Facebook Election”; whereby they managed to attract a lot of followers, especially youth, to participate in presidential election processes (Dutta and Fraser, 2008). Obama was the first president to win the elections on the web. This shows the effect that media can have on the public or influence behaviour.

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Recently, HIV/AIDS issues have also started to be posted on different social media platforms (e.g. Facebook pages) and listeners or viewers participate and share their concerns and opinions regarding the virus. In countries such as Lesotho, one may argue that social media access for community radio target audiences may be an expensive exercise. However, media convergence has played a major role in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS and creating awareness. Media platforms such as radio and television nowadays incorporate social media to allow for community participation in programmes that are meant to create awareness and educating people about HIV/AIDS (Livingstone and Lunt, 1994).

These social media platforms allow listeners to participate during live broadcasting and express their views and opinions regarding issues discussed on air, including HIV/AIDS. Feedback from listeners is important to allow producers to assess whether they have communicated relevant information to their listeners. To be successful in health messages is not just about communicating, but how the relevant information is communicated to the listeners. As stated earlier, research can play major role in designing relevant messages (Centre for Disease Control, 1999).

Different media houses across the globe have acknowledged the importance of social media platforms. According to Zoellner and Lax (2015:12), “due to their interactive nature and great popularity, social media could offer the opportunity to open up the relationship between radio producers and listeners and enable audience participation and interaction”. Thus, if community radio can utilise these social media platforms effectively to create awareness about HIV/AIDS issues, this is more important as it allows for two-way communication, not only one-way communicating between presenter and listeners (Zoellner and Lax, 2015). This is regarded as bottom-up communication; where listeners can also be the initiator or express

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their social concerns, for instance on issues pertaining to HIV/AIDS and how HIV awareness messages can be transmitted to them most effectively.

Nowadays, in most African countries, some of the community radios serve urban and rural areas where community members have access to the internet, due to the advancement of technology for example the use of cell-phones (UNAIDS, 2015). For instance, MCRS as the focus of the study serves both the urban and rural areas of the Mafeteng district (Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and National AIDS Commission, 2008-2013). The most susceptible target audience for this communication channel is the youth, who are also mostly affected by the virus (UNAIDS, 2004). The research findings indicate that the youth aged between 25-35 and adults aged between 35 and 45 are the groups mostly affected by HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS, 2015; Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and National AIDS Commission, 2008-2013). Social media are convenient to set the agenda on HIV/AIDS awareness for these listeners. Social media encourage listeners to listen to the radio and, on the other hand, to share their opinions regarding HIV/AIDS messages through these platforms (Creeber and Martin, 2009). Therefore, MCRS presenters can then incorporate their opinions.

The agenda setting theory, therefore, allowed the researcher to investigate how MCRS might contribute to creating awareness and educating people about HIV/AIDS. In addition, it assisted the researcher to clearly see how powerfully the MCRS as communicating medium could be in setting the agenda for the community within its area of coverage. It is believed that media played a vital role during the USA 1968 presidential election in sensitising or influencing voters. The theory of media agenda setting is useful in determining how the MCRS has managed to help the Mafeteng community to understand HIV/AIDS as a chronic illness and which measures that the community can take to stop the spread of the epidemic.

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3.3 RATIONALIZATION OF THE JÜRGEN HABERMAS THEORY OF THE