Miley Cyrus’s provocative (to say the least) performance at the 2013 VMA’s on August 25th was the cherry-on-top of her whirlwind identity makeover from America’s most loved teeny-bopper to the risqué twerking twenty year old that she has made herself into. Over the past year Miley has captured our attention through her strategic course of actions beginning with physical image changes: buzz haircuts, tattoos, and wardrobe makeovers resulting with more drastic and public attempts to catch our attention. The most surprising and renowned of all being her VMA performance.
With more tweets per-minute during Miley’s performance at the VMA’s than there were during both the Super Bowl blackout in 2013 and the presidential election in 2012.The media had no choice but to give Miley and her foam finger the same mass media attention that they gave to those and other similar news stories.
Miley tweeted:
Miley’s performance and the buzz surrounding it is an example of the PR communication theory of agenda setting in that the media was able to use her proactive performance to get the conversation going surrounding the current trend of young, mostly-child star, celebrities spiraling out of control for the whole world to see. Miley manipulated the media to her advantage by allowing them to set the agenda and give the public something to talk about. She used this tactic to help promote her personal image.
The agenda setting theory relays the idea that mass media gives the public “something to think about” rather that “what to think”. Media can set the “agenda” by picking and choosing what stories and topics to cover. Which, in the mind of consumers, equates to what stories and topics are of the upmost importance. It is believed there is a strong correlation between what the media reports and what the public recognizes as relevant. As a result, this agenda-setting tool can often shape public opinion.
In this example, just about every single major media outlet presented Miley’s performance relaying the message to their audience that this story should be considered important. They used Miley as a talking point to bring up the current trend of young female celebrities that have caught media attention recently for their bizarre behaviors including Lindsey Lohan and Amanda Bynes. They used her lewd behavior to pose the question: How does stardom from an early age affect young celebrities and why are we seeing this growing trend of our once loved American child-stars ending up going off the deep end?
This example is PR because Miley manipulated the media because she knew that her performance would cause such a stir on social media platforms that they would have no choice but to talk about it. In this case the media told people what to think about, but it was Miley and her tactics that heavily influenced their agenda. Miley’s stunt at the VMA’s was a quintessential example of “any press is good press” in that regardless of what agenda the media used to talk about it Miley got what she wanted out of it; everyone talking about her. Miley exerted her power as a famous celebrity to get the communication process between her and the public rolling so that she could establish her relationships and new bad-girl image with the public.
Written by Lindy Holts
