Explaining Media and Congressional Attention to Global Climate Change, 1969-2005: An Empirical Test of Agenda-Setting Theory

Abstract

Agenda theories suggest that problem indicator, focusing event, and information feedback enhance issue attention. However, few studies have systematically tested this. This study, using time series data and vector autoregression (VAR), examines how climate problem indicator, high-profile international event, and climate science feedback influence media and congressional attention to global warming and climate change. The findings confirm that these attention-grabbing factors indeed generally promote issue salience, but these factors may work differently across agenda venues. Attention inertia, interagenda interaction, and partisan advantage on agenda setting are also included and analyzed in the VAR modeling. Implications of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed in conclusion.

Media Representations of Climate Change: A Meta-Analysis of the Research Field

“…Clear growth is also visible when we look beyond the years of publication, at the years from which media portrayals of climate change were analyzed. While a small number of studies focus on media coverage from as early as the 1960s (such as DjerfPierre, 2012 or Liu, Lindquist, & Vedlitz, 2011), scholarly interest in the following years and decades was more extensive and rose continuously. A first peak year occurred in 1987, when the so-called "Brundtland Report" was published by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland.…”

Understanding Local Policymaking: Policy Elites' Perceptions of Local Agenda Setting and Alternative Policy Selection

“…Agenda-setting work by Kingdon (1995), as well as Jones and Baumgartner (2005), identify several major system-level factors that can attract the attention of decision makers. These include (i) the intrusion of new (or previously overlooked) information into the policy agenda-setting process, as new information is usually associated with changing social conditions and problem indicators (Jones & Baumgartner, 2005;Kingdon, 1995; see also Soroka, 2002); (ii) focusing events that emphasize the occurrence of natural or man-made crises or disasters (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993;Kingdon, 1995; see also Birkland, 1997Birkland, , 1998Liu, Lindquist, & Vedlitz, forthcoming); (iii) feedback-messages and signals looped back to policymakers from existinggovernmental programs and new public problems (Kingdon, 1995); and (iv) budgetary considerations, including budgetary cycles that can enhance or inhibit a problem's status in the agenda (Kingdon, 1995).…”

Transferring Water While Transforming Landscape: New Societal Implications, Perceptions and Challenges of Management in the Reservoir System Franconian Lake District

“…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" [22]. This process of putting topics on the local agenda is one of the research key points within this study and draws on the growing literature about the concept of agenda setting, to closer understand challenges in management [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. The following section provides a quick and general overview of the study area.…”