Running head: AGENDA SETTING THEORY An Overview of Agenda Setting Theory in Mass Communications Amber M. Freeland University of North Texas November 12, 2012 AGENDA SETTING THEORY 2 An Overview of Agenda Setting Theory in Mass Communications Introduction The Agenda Setting Theory was first introduced in 1972 in Public Opinion Quarterly by Drs. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. This theory was developed as a study on the 1968 presidential election where Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson was ousted by Republican challenger Richard Nixon. Knows as the “Chapel Hill Study,” McCombs and Shaw surveyed 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina on what they thought were the most important issues of the election how that compared to what the local and national media reported were the most important issues (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Their theory, also known as the Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media, suggested that the media sets the public agenda by telling you what to think about, although not exactly what to think. The abstract in their first article about this theory states: In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue by also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues – that is, the media may set the “agenda” of the campaign (McCombs, 2003). Since that time, McCombs and Shaw have expanded on this theory, producing many research articles and even extending the theory to include what they now call Second Level Agenda Setting (Davie, 2011). History of Agenda Setting Theory Agenda Setting Theory originated in Walter Lippmann’s 1922 classic, Public Opinion. In the first chapter, Lippmann establishes the principal connection between world events and the images in the public mind (Lippmann, 1922). In 1963, Bernard Cohen noted that the media “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful AGENDA SETTING THEORY 3 in telling its readers what to think about.” Cohen made the observation that “the world will look different to different people depending on the map that is drawn for them by writers, editors and publishers of the paper they read” (Cohen, 1963). His ideas later led to the formalized theory developed by McCombs and Shaw. During the 1968 election, McCombs and Shaw explored Lippmann’s idea of imagery by examining the media’s agenda and comparing it to the key issues of the undecided voters. What they found was that the voter’s agenda highly correlated to that of the news media (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Another scholar, G. Ray Funkhouser, conducted a similar study at the same time. While all three scholars presented their findings at the same academic conference, Funkhouser did not formally name his theory and did not pursue his research after his article was published so he has been historically denied credit for “discovering” the theory. Basic Assumptions of AST In its most basic sense, agenda setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media (Agenda Setting Theory, 2012). The two most basic assumptions of agenda setting are: (1) the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it; (2) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues (Agenda Setting Theory, 2012). The time frame for this is one of the most critical aspects of the agenda setting role in mass communications. Agenda setting occurs through a cognitive process known as “accessibility,” which implies that the more frequently and prominently the news media covers an issue, the more that issue becomes accessible in the audience’s memory (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). Basically, when surveyed about what they feel are the most important problems the country faces, respondents AGENDA SETTING THEORY 4 reply with issues that the media focuses on the most. For example, when FOX News issued a poll regarding President Obama’s birth certificate, 37 percent of Republican respondents said they believe that Obama was not a natural born citizen compared to just 12 percent of Democrats (Blanton, 2011). The agenda setting theory suggests that this is the result of repeated coverage by FOX News of the birth certificate issue, an issue that was not covered as much by other networks. Three Types of Agenda Setting There are three basic types of agenda setting according to Everett Rogers and J.W. Dearing (1988): public, media and policy agenda setting. Public agenda setting focuses on the audience’s agenda while media agenda setting focuses on the influence of the mass media on the audience. Policy agenda setting, which has been mostly ignored by Rogers and Dearing (1988), deals with how media and public agendas might influence the decisions of elite policy makers. This part of the theory has since been explored by other scholars who want to further examine the factors that influence elite policy makers’ agendas (Walgrave & Val Aelst, 2006). Out of these three types, the media agenda setting model has probably taken the most criticism. In the book Approaches to Audiences (2012), David Gauntlett suggests that there a few things wrong with the idea of media effects research. First, he argues that the model tackles social problems, like violence, backwards by blaming the media rather than examining the person committing violence. The argument is also limited in that the blame is only directed towards fictional violence and not the real violence shown in the news or serious factual programs. Another argument Gauntlett (2012) makes is that the very idea of media agenda setting is the result of conservative ideology and paranoia. Anyone who listens to or watches conservative news sources can testify to the constant barrage of complaints about the “liberal media.” AGENDA SETTING THEORY 5 Audience Effects Model When examining agenda setting and the media’s influence on an audience, one has to consider the audience’s predisposition to certain beliefs. According to the audience effects model, the media’s coverage of events and issues interact with the audience’s pre-existing sensitivities to produce changes in issues concerns. This means that an audience that is already highly sensitive to an issue will be most affected by an issue that is given increased news exposure while the same issue may have a limited effect on other groups. Another issue that causes variations in the audience effect is the correlation between the public agenda and the media agenda and whether the issue is obtrusive or unobtrusive (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006). Obtrusive issues are those that affect nearly everyone, such as high gas prices or an increased cost of food at the grocery store. Unobtrusive issues are those that are more distant to the public, like a political scandal or the genocide in Darfur. Research suggests that the obtrusiveness of an issue is based on the audience’s personal experience with the topic. So media coverage about the unemployment rate might not affect those in a stable job as much as those audience members who have recently been unemployed (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006). Criticisms of AST One of the most common criticisms of the agenda setting theory is that is entirely too difficult to measure. Surveys regarding media content and public responses are typically divided into very broad categories and results are usually too inflated to be considered truly relevant or accurate. The theory itself is inherently casual both in its surveying method and in the sheer number of variables that affect the results (Rogers & Dearing, 1988). For example, if you were studying the media’s effect on violence in society, you would have to first consider the difference between factual violence and fictional violence, which may AGENDA SETTING THEORY 6 or may not make a difference to the viewer. Then you would have to track how many times in incident of violence occurs in the media and attempt to calculate how many times a person could/would be exposed to that content. But before you can make any conclusions, you would need to look at general rates of violence and individual instances of violence and determine if there is any correlation. None of this even begins to address the issues surrounding the person who committed the act of violence in the first place. What was their family life like? Were they the victims of abuse or other violence? How has that affected them? How much violence in the media were they exposed to? Are there any other variables that could contribute to a person’s likelihood of committing violence? When you really examine all of the variables, you can quickly see how impossible it is to come to any concrete conclusion or hard data to support the agenda setting theory. Future of AST Thanks to advances in technology, there are now so many more types of media available – and potentially many more ways media can influence the masses. When this theory was first developed, media was a one-way communication model with radio, television, film, and print sources pushing content onto the audience. With that idea in mind, it is easy to see how the agenda setting theory came to flourish. Now we live in an age where media is mostly a two-way communication model and we have near unlimited sources for content. The Internet and the various forms of social media allow the public to engage in public discourse with our media sources, an idea unheard of in the early days of agenda setting theory. So what does this mean? There are several implications. One idea is that the agenda setting theory will eventually die out because the media does not hold as much influence as it AGENDA SETTING THEORY 7 once did. Not only do we have choice in our media content, we can also communicate with the sources and push our own ideas and agendas back at the media, the public and even to the elite policy makers. This also indicates that the public agenda will grow in response now that we can choose our own media sources, access them at any time and help form public opinion and policy. In short, the agenda setting theory may have a shorter shelf-life than McCombs and Shaw originally anticipated. AGENDA SETTING THEORY 8 References (APA Style) Agenda setting theory. (2012). Retrieved November 10, 2012, from http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/AgendaSetting_Theory.doc/ Blanton, D. (2011). Fox news poll: 24 percent believe Obama not born in U.S.. Retrieved November 10, 2012, from http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/07/fox-news-poll-24percent-believe-obama-born/ Davie, G. (2011, ). Agenda setting theory: Quick overview of agenda setting Message posted to http://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/agenda-setting-theory/ Gauntlett, D. Ten things wrong with 'media effects' theory. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. (1987). News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (2010th Ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lippmann, W. (1922). Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. McCombs, M. (2003). The agenda-setting role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion. McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. (1972). The agenda setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2) doi: 10.1086/26799 AGENDA SETTING THEORY 9 Rogers, E. M., & Dearing, J. W. (1988). Agenda-setting research: Where has it been? Where is it going? Communication Yearbook, 11, 555-594. Walgrave, S., & Van Aelst, P. (2006). The contingency of the mass media's political agenda setting power: Toward a preliminary theory. Journal of Communication, 56, 88-109. Weaver, D. H. (2007). Thoughts on agenda setting, framing, and priming. Journal of Communication, doi: 10.1111/j1460-2466.2006.00333.x
