ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the policy arena for the three cases of agenda setting, where the three cases are Dutch movie Fitna, banning of minarets in Switzerland, and reform of public healthcare in United States with the movie Sicko. Agenda setting is all about attracting political and public attention, given the fact that the amount of attention that politicians, policy makers, media and the general public are able and willing to pay is rather limited. It describes the arena in terms of different actors, their ideas, positions and resources and focuses on the actual interactions of these actors and the choices they make in terms of technology and the visual. The chapter explains the context in which the cases can be understood and the policy arena in which the topic of the visual events took place. It expresses that the interactions which occur in the policy arena will end up shaping the policy process, which is the agenda setting process.
