Readings on Media, Public Opinion, and Policymaking
The role of the news media in defining the important issues of the day, also known as the agenda-setting influence of mass communication, has received widespread attention over the past 20 years. Since the publication of McCombs and Shaw's seminal empirical study, more than one hundred journal articles and monographs have appeared. This collection exemplifies the major phases of research on agenda-setting: tests of the basic hypothesis, contingent conditions affecting the strength of this influence, the natural history of public issues, mass media influence on public policy, and the role of external sources from the president to public relations staffs on the news agenda.
This collection exemplifies the major phases of research on agenda-setting: tests of the basic hypothesis, contingent conditions affecting the strength of this influence, the natural history of public issues, mass media influence on public ...
News media strongly influence how we picture public affairs across the world, playing a significant and sometimes controversial role in determining which topics are at the centre of public attention and action. Setting the Agenda, first published in 2004, has become the go-to textbook on this crucial topic. In this timely third edition, Maxwell McCombs – a pioneer of agenda-setting research – and Sebastián Valenzuela – a senior scholar of agenda setting in Latin America – have expanded and updated the book for a new generation of students. In describing the media's influence on what we think about and how we think about it, Setting the Agenda also examines the sources of media agendas, the psychological explanation for their impact on the public agenda, and their consequences for attitudes, opinions and behaviours. New to this edition is a discussion of agenda setting in the widened media landscape, including a full chapter on network agenda setting and a lengthened presentation on agenda melding. The book also contains expanded material on social media and the role of agenda setting beyond the realm of public affairs, as well as a foreword from Donald L. Shaw and David H. Weaver, the co-founders of agenda-setting theory. This exciting new edition is an invaluable source for students of media, communications and politics, as well as those interested in the role of news in shaping and directing public opinion.
New to this edition is a discussion of agenda setting in the widened media landscape, including a full chapter on network agenda setting and a lengthened presentation on agenda melding.
The news media have significant influence on the formation of public opinion. Called the agenda-setting role of the media, this influence occurs at three levels. Focusing public attention on a select few issues or other topics at any moment is level one. Emphasizing specific attributes of those issues or topics is level two. The Power of Information Networks: The Third Level of Agenda Setting introduces the newest perspective on this influence. While levels one and two are concerned with the salience of discrete individual elements, the third level offers a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective to explain media effects in this evolving media landscape: the ability of the news media to determine how the public associates the various elements in these media messages to create an integrated picture of public affairs. This is the first book to detail the theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and international empirical evidence for this new perspective. Cutting-edge communication analytics such as network analysis, Big Data and data visualization techniques are used to examine these third-level effects. Diverse applications of the theory are documented in political communication, public relations, health communication, and social media research. The Power of Information Networks will interest scholars, students and practitioners concerned with the media and their social and cultural effects.
This is the first book to detail the theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and international empirical evidence for this new perspective.
Agenda-Setting asks who sets the agenda that brings social problems into the public arena, on to the policy agenda and, finally, to a change of policy. It provides important practical and theoretical insight into the agenda-setting process.
Agenda-Setting asks who sets the agenda that brings social problems into the public arena, on to the policy agenda and, finally, to a change of policy. It provides important practical and theoretical insight into the agenda-setting process.
We all are having pistures of the world in our minds. We have never seen a lot of places with our eyes but even then we have their pictures in our minds. Of course, these pictures have been created by Media in our minds. Agenda Setting is one of the most important media theories of the present times. The concept of agenda setting took its name from the idea that the mass media have the ability to carry the salience of items on their news agendas and then transfer it to the public agenda. Agenda Setting theory of Media states that with the passage of time, media agennda becomes the public agenda. According to the agenda-setting theory, because of the fact of paying attention to some issues and neglecting and ignoring some others, the mass media will have an effect on public opinion. People will be inclined to know about those issues and things, which are highlighted by the mass media and they adopt the order of priority assigned to different issues. This book is based on the first ever research study coducted in Pakistan regarding the agenda setting role of Media.
Exploring the intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-setting theory
Exciting intellectual frontiers are open for exploration as agenda-setting theory moves beyond its 25th anniversary. This volume offers an intriguing set of maps to guide this exploration over the near future. It is intended for those who are already reasonably well read in the research literature that has accumulated since the publication of McCombs and Shaw's original 1972 Public Opinion Quarterly article. This piece of literature documented the influence of the news media agenda on the public agenda in a wide variety of geographic and social settings, elaborated the characteristics of audiences and media that enhance or diminish those agenda-setting effects, and cataloged those exogenous factors explaining who sets the media's agenda. In the current volume, a provocative set of maps for explicating new levels of agenda-setting theory have been sketched by a new generation of young scholars, launching an enterprise that has significant implications for theoretical research and for the day-to-day role of mass communication in democratic societies. At the first level of agenda setting are agendas of objects--the traditional domain of agenda setting research--represented by an accumulation of hundreds of studies over the past quarter century. At the second level of agenda setting are agendas of attributes--one of the new theoretical frontiers whose aspects are discussed in detail in the opening chapters. Other chapters offer maps of yet other theoretical frontiers, including political advertising agendas and their impact on behavior, the framing of various agendas in the mass media and the differential impact of print and TV, the theoretical role of individual differences in the agenda-setting influence of the news media on the public agenda, methodological advances for determining cause and effect roles in agenda-setting, and the application of agenda-setting theory to historical analysis. This volume is an invitation to others to become active members of the invisible college of agenda-setting scholarship. As such, the goals of this book are threefold: * to introduce a broad set of ideas about agenda-setting; * to enrich the exploration of these ideas by enhancing scholarly dialogue among the members of this invisible college; and * to enhance the discussion of agenda-setting research in seminars and research groups around the world. Agenda-setting has remained a vital and productive area of communication research over a quarter century because it has continued to introduce new research questions into the marketplace of ideas and to integrate this work with other theoretical concepts and perspectives about journalism and mass communication. Understanding the dynamics of agenda- setting is central to understanding the dynamics of contemporary democracy. This book's set of theoretical essays, grounded in the accumulated literature of agenda- setting theory and in the creative insights of young scholars, will help lead the way toward that understanding.
Exciting intellectual frontiers are open for exploration as agenda-setting theory moves beyond its 25th anniversary. This volume offers an intriguing set of maps to guide this exploration over the near future.
News media strongly influence how we picture public affairs across the world, playing a significant and sometimes controversial role in determining which topics are at the centre of public attention and action. Setting the Agenda, first published in 2004, has become the go-to textbook on this crucial topic. In this timely third edition, Maxwell McCombs – a pioneer of agenda-setting research – and Sebastián Valenzuela – a senior scholar of agenda setting in Latin America – have expanded and updated the book for a new generation of students. In describing the media's influence on what we think about and how we think about it, Setting the Agenda also examines the sources of media agendas, the psychological explanation for their impact on the public agenda, and their consequences for attitudes, opinions and behaviours. New to this edition is a discussion of agenda setting in the widened media landscape, including a full chapter on network agenda setting and a lengthened presentation on agenda melding. The book also contains expanded material on social media and the role of agenda setting beyond the realm of public affairs, as well as a foreword from Donald L. Shaw and David H. Weaver, the co-founders of agenda-setting theory. This exciting new edition is an invaluable source for students of media, communications and politics, as well as those interested in the role of news in shaping and directing public opinion.
New to this edition is a discussion of agenda setting in the widened media landscape, including a full chapter on network agenda setting and a lengthened presentation on agenda melding.
This volume explores agenda-setting theory in light of changes in the media environment in the 21st century. In the decades since the original Chapel Hill study that launched agenda-setting research, the theory has attracted the interest of scholars worldwide. Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World features the work of a new generation of scholars. The research provided by these young scholars reflects two broad contemporary trends in agenda-setting: A centrifugal trend of research in the expanding media landscape and in domains beyond the original focus on public affairs, and a centripetal trend further explicating agenda-setting’s core concepts.
This book will appeal to media and communication and public opinion researchers. It is a corpus-based study of the agenda-setting and framing effects of the print media on public opinion, and examines US and UK newspapers’ use of reporting strategies to shape their readers’ attitude towards the Second Gulf War. These strategies consist of four analytic tools, namely discourse presentation categories, discourse presentation sub-categories, subjectivity markers and reporting signals (mainly verbs). This investigation reveals that the choice of reporting strategies is not only ideologically-driven, but is also highly determined by other parameters such as country, style, and genre.
