Agenda-Setting Theory in Spiderman: Far From Home

Spiderman: Far From Home takes place across Europe because it follows Peter Parker and his classmates on a field trip. Their field trip is a two week long trip that traverses across Europe. While in Venice, Italy, a monster appears that Peter Parker defeats as Spiderman in order to keep his classmates safe even though they do not know that he is Spiderman. Peter Parker is confronted by Nick Fury, who is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and he asks Peter to join them in order to fight the monster who they predicted would appear next in Prague. However, Peter declines the invitation and returns to the class trip, which forces Nick Fury to secretly alter the school trip so that they are somehow given a free hotel in Prague so that Peter is able to help without leaving his classmates. Throughout the movie, there are many instances where his classmates and Peter are using their phones to livestream their field trip, and they use the internet for multiple different reasons.

The media dictates what the public thinks about. It acts as a “mediator between ‘the world outside and the pictures in our heads,'” (369). However, we as humans are not passive beings that wait around for the media to tell us what to think about. Not all people are in need of orientation, but the ones that are usually allow it to motivate them. The need for orientation, “…is so important – if we don’t have it, we won’t turn to media in the first place, and none of the three levels of agenda-setting will occur,” (375). Agenda-setting itself is defined as, “the media agenda [shaping] the public agenda,” (368).

During one scene where Peter Parker is riding on the bus through the Alps on the way to Prague with his classmates, he is shown looking at an article about the top ten most romantic places in Prague. He was doing this because he planned on asking a girl in his class named MJ to be his girlfriend while in Prague. He was in need of orientation, so he sought out the information from the media available to him on the internet. However, not only did he seek out the information, but he allowed it to dictate where he took MJ to ask her to be his girlfriend. The media shaped his agenda. Another instance of the media shaping the public agenda in Spiderman: Far From Home is whenever Peter first put his suit on in Venice, Italy. He had to make sure that one of his classmates were not livestreaming near him whenever he suited up into Spiderman. Peter knew that if he was caught on camera, his public image would be changed because the world would have seen him changing into his suit on social media. If a news source would have written an article about him being Spiderman, the public agenda would have shifted into making Peter Parker a celebrity. Peter made sure to take precautions such as creating an alias whenever he left his classmates, and making sure that his friend that did know aided him in covering up where he had been.