Agenda‐Setting: History and Research Tradition

Abstract

The agenda‐setting function of the mass media was first established in the 1970s. Since then, research on agenda‐setting has expanded to include six areas of research. The first category is the original hypothesis, which examines the cognitive effects of news on consumers. The second category, sources of the media agenda, concerns how competing actors in public debate affect public opinion and includes agenda‐building research. The third category, the policy agenda, deals with the effect of news media on policy. The fourth category is contingent conditions, which explains circumstances that may affect the agenda‐setting process. The fifth category is the second level, which shows that there is an affective component to the agenda‐setting process. The sixth category investigates the function of the agenda‐setting process in social media and the Internet. More recently, research has examined visual agenda‐setting and the third level of the agenda‐setting effect.

Exploring the dynamics in the environmental discourse: the longitudinal interaction among public opinion, presidential opinion, media coverage, policymaking in 3 decades and an integrated model of media effects

“…In the existing literature, the popular theoretical tools that scholars use to examine the dynamic among the political establishments such as the presidents, the mass media, and the public are agenda setting (McCombs and Reynolds 2009;McCombs and Shaw 1972;Wanta and Foote 1994;Wanta and Alkazemi 2017), priming (Iyengar 1991;Iyengar and Kinder 1987), and framing (Borah 2011;Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Iyengar 2016;Edy and Meirick 2007;Scheufele 1999;Tewksbury & Scheufele 2009). Those three theories distinguish from but also intertwine with each other (McCombs and Shaw 1993;Moy and Bosch 2013;Scheufele 2000;Scheufele & Iyengar 2017;Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007).…”

“…Agenda setting essentially predicts that the media agenda leads the public agenda (McCombs and Reynolds 2009;McCombs and Shaw 1972;Wanta and Alkazemi 2017). The core concept, agenda, is generally conceptualized as salience (Edelstein 1993;McCombs and Shaw 1993), or, "the importance that media and audience accord to an event" (Edelstein 1993, p85;Kosicki 1993).…”

“…The core concept, agenda, is generally conceptualized as salience (Edelstein 1993;McCombs and Shaw 1993), or, "the importance that media and audience accord to an event" (Edelstein 1993, p85;Kosicki 1993). Importance is operationalized as the hierarchy, or rank, of the issues (Sheafer and Weimann 2005;Wanta and Alkazemi 2017), measured by "the amount of space or time devoted to particular issues" by the media and either "the amount of attention people pay to issues" or "their judgments of the issues' importance" (Kosicki 1993, p105;Iyengar and Kinder 1987).…”

“…A group of studies found that the presidents influence the media and the public and that the media influence the public on environmental issues (Gavin 2018;Kim and Cooke 2018). Researchers of agenda-setting (McCombs and Reynolds 2009;McCombs and Shaw 1972;Wanta and Alkazemi 2017), priming (Iyengar 1991;Iyengar and Kinder 1987;Wanta and Tarasevich 2019), and framing (Borah 2011;Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Iyengar 2016;Scheufele 1999;Tewksbury & Scheufele 2009), have also found in separate studies that the president or political establishments influence the media coverage, and that the media influence the public perception. So overall, in the intricate discourses on environmental issues, how have the presidents, the public, and the media interacted with each other to influence environmental policymaking?…”

“…Those three to four decades cover several presidencies and a variety of developmental stages of environmental issues (Kraft 2000). Knowledge of the interaction of the public, the presidents, the media, and policymaking in those decades can lend us deeper understanding of the dynamic discourses among the three parties, which is still a focus of academic discussion of media effects (Wanta and Alkazemi 2017). This inquiry is especially important now as environmental issues become more urgent (Kim and Cooke 2018).…”