Agenda Setting Theory Notes

Chapter 21: Agenda Setting Theory

The Media (A)

• Course: COM20223 Communication Theory

Chapter Overview

• The Agenda Setting Theory (AST)
  • History of Agenda-Setting Research
  • Expansions & Refinements
  • Assumptions
  • Two Levels of Agenda Setting
  • Three-Part Process of Agenda Setting

Kick-off Questions

• Have you ever questioned how a news story among so many events was selected?
• Do you think mass media shape people’s view of reality? Why or why not?
• In the new media era when I have choices of media consumption, do newspapers still tell me what to think about?

Introduction of Agenda Setting

• Agenda Setting Theory (AST) explains that the media set the agenda for the public.
  • The media tell people what is important by the number of times they report on a story.
  • The public learns how much importance to attach to an issue by the attention given to it by the media.
• However, the public may also influence the media.
  • Hypodermic needle theory à limited effects model.

History of Agenda-Setting Research

• Stage 1: Pre-theoretical conceptualizing
  • Robert E. Park: Media are gatekeepers
    • Sociologist at U of Chicago; first scholar of mass comm
    • Editors have the power to “kill” some stories and to promote others.
  • Walter Lippmann: Mass media connect "the world outside and the pictures in our heads"
    • In his Book, Public Opinion (1922)
    • These events are reported shape how people structure the images of these events in their minds.
• Two primary functions of mass media (Lasswell, 1948)
  1. Surveillance: the process of newspeople scanning the information in the environment and deciding which events deserve attention
     • Echo to the gatekeeping notion
  2. Correlation: the way media direct our attention to certain issues through communicating them to the public and policymakers
     • Media synchronize the various groups to pay attention to the same things at the same time (e.g., Olympic, presidential election)

History of Agenda-Setting Research

• Stage 2: Establishing the theory
  • McCombs & Shaw (1972) hypothesized a causal relationship between the media and public agendas.
  • They measured and compared the public and media agendas in the 1968 presidential elections.
  • McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public opinion quarterly, 36(2), 176-187.
  • Media agenda determined by a content analysis: the pattern of news coverage across major print and broadcast media, as measured by prominence and length of stories
  • Public agenda determined by the most important public issues as measured by public opinion surveys
  • perfectly correlated (r = .967)

History of Agenda-Setting Research

• McCombs and Shaw’s findings were impressive but equivocal.
  • True test of agenda-setting hypothesis must show that public priorities lag behind the media agenda.
• Yale researchers established cause-and-effect chain of influence from media agenda to public agenda.
  • Viewers who saw media agendas that focused on pollution and defense elevated those issues on their own lists of concerns.
  • Confirmed cause-and-effect relationship between media agenda and public agenda.

Expansions and Refinements

• 2nd phase research merged with U&G Theory (ch.23)
  • pictures the audience as a group of active seekers
• Who sets the media agenda?
  • Littlejohn & Foss (2011) suggest four types of power relations that might provide an answer
• Researchers have examined intermedia influence, in which news organizations affect one another’s agendas.
• “Pack journalism”: journalists' agenda is influenced by other journalists; journalists also reply on one another for confirmation and as a source of ideas.

Four Types of Power Relations

• High-power source, high-power media: the two have equal say in setting the agenda
  • Example: A popular president and a well-funded media source with a good reputation
• High-power source, low-power media: source can set the agenda
  • Example: An influential politician and a local paper
• Low-power source, high-power media: media are able to set the agenda as the source has little voice
  • Example: A marginalized group and a national television outlet
• Low-power source, low-power media: events will probably set the public agenda
  • Example: A local official and a small town website

Assumptions

1. The media establish an agenda and in so doing are not simply reflecting reality but shaping and filtering it for the public
   • Flashlight analogy
     • Media coverage may not reflect reality – but filter and shape it
     • Media concentration on issues leads the public to perceive those issues are more important than other issues
2. The media's concentration on the issues that comprise their agenda influence the public's agenda, and these together influence the policymakers' agenda.
   • Media were found to set the political agenda of a variety of policies in the U.S. and Canada (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006; see Figure 1 for more details)
3. The public and policymakers have the possibility to influence the media's agenda as well.
   • Policy-makers and their policies (e.g, Obama Care; US-Mexico border wall) are well-reported by media

Two Levels of Agenda Setting

• 1st Level: broad media agenda; list of important issues that comprises the agenda
• 2nd level: attribute agenda setting; considers which parts (attributes) of the those issues are most important
  1. Media framing— the way media depictions of events influence and constrain consumers’ interpretation (more examples follow)
     • Size of headlines, photographs included with story, story's overall length and placement, visuals accompanying the story (more examples)
  2. Priming– a cognitive process whereby what the media present temporarily influences people processing information afterwards

Three-Part Process of Agenda Setting – simplest formulation

• The media agenda affects the public agenda, which in turn impacts the policy agenda
  1. Setting the media agenda: the priority of issues to be discussed in mediated sources
  2. Setting the public agenda: the result of the media agenda interacting with what the public thinks
  3. Setting the policy agenda: the public agenda interacting with what is considered important by policymakers
• Media Agenda -> Public Agenda -> Policy Agenda

Three-Part Process of Agenda Setting

• Media Agenda -> Public Agenda -> Policy Agenda
• Other Factors (e.g. Individual differences)

Three-Part Process of Agenda Setting

• The formulation is complicated by various factors
  1. Salience: the degree to which an agenda issue is perceived as important relative to the other issues on the agenda; how salient an issue is perceived to be by the audience will affect the degree of influence
  2. Relevance: a motivation to seek guidance from media agenda due to the perception of personal importance the issue holds for the person
     • E.g., people in specific situations (e.g., lost their jobs, towards retirement, need health care, affected by pollution, etc.) will pay more argentation to relevant news and be more affected by the media agenda
  3. Uncertainty: how much information people think they have about an issue
     • If people believe they have a great deal of information about an issue, their uncertainty is low and they won’t need much guidance from the media, and vice versa.
     • If both relevance and uncertainty are high -> Agenda setting will be predictive
  4. Other factors: Credibility, Conflicting evidence, Shared values
     • e.g., ideology consistency between media & media

Evaluating Agenda Setting

• Scope
  • May be too large; media framing should be a separate theory (AST colonized other theories)
• Utility
  • May not apply in new media environment where people have so much more freedom in media choices.
  • Although traditional news media are less able to set the agenda, they still perform the function (e.g., Johnson, 2011)
• Heurism
  • Inspired hundreds of studies; employed in studies on many topics in different countries