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Agenda Setting is
…the process by which problems and alternative solutions gain or lose public and elite attention.
…a fierce competition because we cannot consider every issue at once because the public’s “carrying capacity” is too small
Why is Agenda Setting Important?
E. E. Schattschneider: ‘The definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power”
Control over agenda means control over outcomes
Agenda setting is therefore about getting on the agenda, and about keeping things off of it.
The Foundations of a Paradigm
Rejection of persuasion– Focus on cognitive processes
Rediscovery of powerful effects– Response against the limited effects paradigm
Interest in media--politics interface and conditions under which effects occur
Agenda Setting
Agenda-setting– “telling us what to think about” (Cohen)
– Identified with McCombs & Shaw (1972)
– Emphasis on how the media shapes public opinion concerning the relative importance of issues
– Indicators of media emphasis• Attention (frequency and length of stories)
• Placement (top story, “above the fold”)
• Content cues (headlines, photos, tone)
• Number of sources / Number of outlets
• Others?
Four Phases of Research
Nearly 300 published studies– First phase - publication of McCombs & Sha
w’s original research - coin the term– Second phase - follow-up to confirm the effect
and discover contingencies – Third phase - new domains - agenda of
candidate character and personal concerns– Fourth phase - attention to the sources of the
media agenda - inter-media effects
How Issues Reach the Agenda
Group conflict Leadership activity Protest movements Media coverage or activity Changes in indicators Political changes Crises and Focusing Events
Special Role of Focusing Events
“a rare, sudden, well-known, actually or potentially harmful event.”
– Mass Shooting, Earthquake, Govt Shutdown…
Tend to induce sudden attention to issues
Can trigger intensive group interest/activity
Focusing events can fade fast off agenda
Studying Agenda Setting
Time-order is key– Media shape public agenda?– Media follow public agenda?– Both respond to something else
• Institutional prompting• Objective reality
– Studies show that there is a time-ordered connection between media and public agenda
• Cross-lagged correlations - arbitrary time lag• More sophisticated studies improve early methods
Major Questions
Who sets the public agenda, and under what conditions is this effect likely to occur?
Who sets the media agenda, and which media direct the agenda-setting process?
Who sets the agendas of interest groups, leaders, and policy makers?
Contingent conditions Need for cognition/orientation
– Increases agenda setting through media surveillance Political involvement/interest
– Increases agenda setting through news use Issue abstraction
– More pronounced for abstract issues Personal viewpoints
– Increases when consistent with personal orientation Interpersonal discussion
– Reduces media dependence for agenda development
Setting the media agenda
Intermedia agenda setting - influence that agendas of different media have on each other
Political advertising — and political elites — drive the agenda of all news organization
National news agencies have been found to drive the agenda of local news agencies
National newspaper have been found to drive the agenda of television networks and digital outlets
Setting the elite agenda
Reciprocal causation between journalists and policy makers - both have influence
Media coverage can help shape the agenda of policy-makers– However, these effects do not appear to
ultimately affect policy making itself
Elites pay attention to the public agenda that the media helps to establish
Problems with Agenda Setting
Trouble linking evidence to key theories of society, news work, and human psychology– Often focused on aggregate level effects – shift
in issue priorities across the population – and rely on incomplete psychological explanations
– Failure to fully integrate content and effects in coherent studies of media effects
• Limited experimental evidence
Questions about Digital Media
May lessen the agenda-setting effects
– More content choice
– More control over content
– More outlets and opinions
Blogs, in particular, rely on media agenda
– This may strengthen agenda setting effects
Priming (Iyengar & Kinder)
Drawing attention to an issue can change the criteria used to evaluate political leaders– Issues high on the public agenda serve as basis
for judging the success or failure of elites– Short-term effect or long-term effect?– Priming in politics may have profound effects
• E.g., Media attention to Persian Gulf war primes positive evaluation of Bush Presidency which reversed when focus was shifted back to the economy (Krosnick)
Priming Issues
Increasing attention to effects of priming on other issues through the “spread of activation”
Encountering moral-ethical issues changes how people understand other issues they encounter– Come to understand other issues in ethical terms
Can also prime particular candidate characteristics– Focus on issues can prime judgments of competency or
integrity, depending on the issue
Second Level Agenda-Setting
Revised version of the theory Media tell us how and what to think
– Attention to particular attributes
Sounds like framing– “to frame is to select some aspects of a
perceived reality and make them more salient in a communication text” - Entman
Framing
Two broad traditions– Sociological - Outcome of news work
• The process of news production
– Psychological - Categories of the mind• The process of audience consumption
Framing and Cueing
The power of language to shape thought– Frames - broad organizing principles
• Idea used to structure a news story
• Journalistic decision
– Cues - labels and categories• Word or phrase with rhetorical value
• Contested by elites
Framing and Cueing
Episodic vs. Thematic frames Strategy vs. Policy frames Ethical vs. Material frames Individual vs. Societal frames
Pro-life vs. anti-abortion Estate tax vs. death tax Terrorists vs. insurgents
Episodic vs. Thematic
Iyengar, 1991– Media tend to present social problems in
episodic terms (individual, short-term) instead of thematic terms (collective, long-term)
– This patterns encourages audiences to attribute responsibility for solving the problem to the individual instead of the collective
Strategy vs. Policy
News coverage tends to focus on the game of politics, and the competition between players, instead of the features of policy– Particularly true during elections
Leads to audience cynicism and may contribute to the erosion of efficacy
Ethical vs. Material
News media tend to construct issues in
terms of opposing rights / moral principles,
as opposed to economics or pragmatics
Encourages simplified electoral decision
making and character attributions
Individual vs. Societal
News media tend to frame issues at the individual level, as opposed to the societal level, due to dominant news values
This frame distinction interacts with other coverage elements to influence the complexity of thought, tolerance judgments
News Norms and Frame Effects
These dominant news norm of focusing on specific episodes over broader themes, political strategy over policy, matters of principle over pragmatics, and individuals over groups all reduce citizen competence– What does this say about the work of
journalists? How might they change?
Frames and Cognitive Processing Message frames interact with:
– Audience predispositions and knowledge– Framing effects are not uniform
• Different for different people
Cognitive structures (schemas):– Constellations of knowledge used to organize
processing of new info (e.g., news stories)• Organized into associated networks of information
• Developed through past experiences, information exposure, and social interactions
Associative Networks
Networks of interrelated constructs
– Frames/cues activate mental constructs
Construct activation from interconnected network
– Spread of activation through associated nodes
Complexity of activated thoughts
– Concerned with form, as opposed to content, of memory
– Complexity as an indicator of political sophistication?
Source and Language Cues
Source cues - who is making the comment?– Conservative or Liberal– Black or White– Different leaders
Language cues - what labels are used?– Urban sprawl vs. Suburban development– Pro-Choice vs. Abortion Advocates– Insurgent vs. Terrorists
Powerful Cues Recast Debates
Get in Groups of three to four:– Pick a set of cues that has defined the debate
about a specific policy or product– Pick a policy debate or product category and
discuss how the cues have defined this choice
Ex. Partial Birth Abortion vs. Late Term Abortion
Frames and Cues Interact
Organizing devices and source or language cues work together to influence judgment– Tolerance judgments affected by individual frame
combined with “othering” cues
How might they work together to influence tolerance and the desire to speak out?
Get Back in Groups: Come up with an example of how a news frame and elite cue might work together to sway opinion in particular ways.– Can stick to the cue you had in mind or pick new one
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