Keywords as an Agenda Setting Tool in the Digital era of News Media

Progression of human society from the industrial age to the information age has changed the essence of human interaction and engagement. Advancing information and communication technologies with the emergence of a global network, usher the new dimensions of political and social manipulation. The present generation spends an adequate part of their daily media time on the internet. Widely used internet browsing framework is closely associated with the use of keywords. The algorithms search engines use to show the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) can effortlessly delude the searcher from what they are forsooth looking for. As these algorithms can be employed to set down an agenda and modulate it according to the gains of the media houses, it prompts the question of imposing regulatory apparatus, on the permissible use of this new tool for agenda-setting in this techno-driven sphere. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connection between the most searched keywords on the selected search engine (i.e. Google) and the sort of content it is providing for the searches. The methodology will be a quantitative content analysis of the trending news stories among the top trending keywords on Google in India within the span of a week. Through this, we will be analyzing the principal role an online editor plays in establishing agenda in-sync with the contemporary trends. This study guides us about the relation between the frequency of keywords and trending stories on the selected search engine.