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Agenda setting

9/11/2009 3:27:00 PM
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By David H. Weaver

How do journalists’ stories, especially about politics or other issues of public importance, affect public perceptions? Answering this question has led to one of the most popular approaches to studying the effects of media coverage. It is known as the agenda-setting function (or effect) of mass media.

First tested in the 1968 U.S. presidential election by University of North Carolina journalism professors Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, this approach originally focused on the ability of the mass media to tell the public what to think about rather than what to think. This was a sharp break from previous media effects studies that had focused on what people thought — their opinions and attitudes — and on behaviors such as voting.

In their original 1968 study, published in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1972, McCombs and Shaw quoted Bernard Cohen, author of The Press and Foreign Policy. Cohen wrote that the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” (Cohen 1963, p. 13). They also quoted from Kurt and Gladys Lang’s chapter on the mass media and voting in a book about public opinion: The mass media force attention to certain issues. They build up public images of political figures. They are constantly presenting objects suggesting what individuals in the mass should think about, know about, have feelings about. (Lang & Lang 1966, p. 468)

To test this agenda-setting effect of mass media, McCombs and Shaw analyzed the content of four local newspapers, the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and the NBC and CBS evening news broadcasts. They compared the amount and placement of coverage these news media gave to key issues with undecided voters’ answers to a survey question asking what they were most concerned about — that is, the two or three main things that they thought the government should concentrate on doing something about. This study produced very strong correlations between the media coverage that an issue received and people’s ranking of issues that concerned them. McCombs and Shaw concluded that the public learns not only about a given issue but also how much importance to attach to that issue, based on both the amount of information in news reports and the position of that information.

Since this initial study of media agenda setting, several hundred studies have been carried out by scholars in the United States and other countries such as Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Spain and Taiwan. An article by McCombs in 2004 summarizes many of them. Most of these studies have focused on the relationship between news media ranking of issues (by amount and prominence of coverage) and public rankings of the perceived importance of these issues. This is a type of research that Dearing and Rogers (1996) have called public agenda setting to distinguish it from studies that are concerned mainly with the causes of changes in the media agenda (media agenda setting) or the impact of media agendas on public policy agendas (policy agenda setting).

The evidence from scores of such public agenda-setting studies is mixed. But on the whole it tends to support a positive correlation —and often a causal relationship — between media agendas and public agendas at the aggregate (or group) level. This is especially true for relatively unobtrusive issues that do not directly impact the lives of most people, such as foreign policy and government scandal.

  
David H. Weaver is the Roy W. Howard Professor in Journalism and Mass Communication Research at the School of Journalism, Indiana University, where he has taught since 1974.
A second level of agenda setting

In the majority of studies to date, the unit of analysis on each agenda is an object, a public issue or person. But objects have attributes, or characteristics. When the news media report on public issues or political candidates, they describe these objects.

Because of the limited capacity of the news agenda, however, journalists can only present a few aspects of any object in the news. A few attributes are prominent and frequently mentioned, some are given passing notice, and many others are omitted. In short, news reports also present an agenda of attributes that vary considerably in perceived importance (see Weaver, McCombs, & Shaw 2004 for more about this).

Similarly, when people talk about and think about these objects — public issues, political candidates, and so on — the attributes ascribed to the objects also vary considerably in importance. These agendas of attributes have been called "the second level" of agenda setting to distinguish them from the first level, which has traditionally focused on issues.

The perspectives and frames that journalists employ draw attention to certain attributes of the objects of news coverage, as well as to the objects themselves. This approach to understanding opinion formation differs from more traditional studies because it makes explicit the indirect links between media coverage and the formation of opinions, rather than predicting a direct effect of media coverage on people's opinions.

Agenda setting and priming

Several scholars have tried to link agenda-setting research with studies of “priming” that examine the effects of media agendas on public attitudes as well as public concerns (McCombs, Shaw, & Weaver 1997). The focus on the consequences of agenda-setting for public opinion can be traced back at least to Weaver, McCombs, and Spellman (1975), who focused in a 1972-73 panel study on the effects of Watergate news coverage. These scholars proposed that the media may do more than teach which issues are most important. The media may also provide “the issues and topics to use in evaluating certain candidates and parties, not just during political campaigns, but also in the longer periods between campaigns” (p. 471).

The basic idea of priming is that by increasing the perceived importance of some issues or topics (and also their characteristics), media coverage can influence the standards by which certain people or groups are evaluated. A recent article by Son and Weaver (2006) confirms that the media attention to a particular candidate, and selected attributes of that candidate, do influence his or her standing in the polls. The effect is cumulative rather than immediate. And an earlier study by Weaver (1991) found that increased prominence of an issue was associated with public opinion and behavior regarding the issue.

Why is agenda setting research important to editors and reporters?

In my opinion, those who make decisions about news media content should pay attention to the research on agenda setting because this research suggests that which issues and events editors and reporters choose to emphasize (or ignore) may have more important consequences for public opinion than how these issues and events are reported.

Often in journalism classes and news organizations, we emphasize how to report various events and issues rather than which ones to select and emphasize. Agenda-setting research suggests that decisions about what is more or less newsworthy have far-reaching consequences for public opinion and policy concerns.

Thus journalists and other creators of media content should consider carefully their responsibility to emphasize what is truly important to the public and to policy makers in any given society. By doing so, they will come closer to fulfilling their role as watchdogs of the powerful and creators of an informed public.

It has been said that mass communication has three broad social roles: surveillance of the larger environment, achieving consensus among the different groups of a society, and transmission of the culture of a society (Lasswell 1948). Although the process of agenda setting is linked most directly to the surveillance role, it also has implications for social consensus and the transmission of culture.

Societies and governments can deal with only a fixed number of issues and problems at a given time, so agreement is needed about which concerns are most (and least) pressing. The news media have a crucial responsibility to help establish the priorities to be addressed, as well as help preserve elements of a given culture. In other words, they have an important role in helping set the public agenda. ♦

References and suggested readings

Cohen, B. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Gamson, W.A. (1992). Talking politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lang, K. & Lang, G.B. (1966). The mass media and voting. In B. Berelson & M. Janowitz (eds.), Reader in public opinion and communication, 2nd ed. New York: Free Press, pp. 455-472.

Lasswell, H. (1948). The structure and function of communication in society. In L. Bryson (ed.), The communication ofideas. New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies, pp. 37-51. 6

McCombs, M. (2004). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

McCombs, M. E. & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function ofmass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176-187.

McCombs, M., Shaw, D. L., & Weaver, D. (eds.) (1997). Communication and democracy: Exploring the intellectual frontiers in agenda-setting theory. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Son, Y.J. & Weaver, D. H. (2006). Another look at what moves public opinion: Media agenda setting and polls in the 2000 U.S. election. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18 (2),174-197.

Takeshita, T. (2006). Current critical problems in agenda-setting research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18 (3), 275-296.

Weaver, D. (1991). Issue salience and public opinion: Are there consequences of agenda setting? International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 3, 53-68.

Weaver, D.H., McCombs, M.E., & Spellman, C. (1975). Watergate and the media: A case study of agenda-setting. American Politics Quarterly, 3 (4),458-472.

Weaver, D., McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. L. (2004). Agenda-setting research: Issues, attributes, and influences. In L. L. Kaid (ed.), Handbook of political communication research. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 257-282.

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