Agenda-Setting Function

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Agenda-Setting Function

• Of
• Maxwell McCombs Donald Shaw
• in
• Em Griffin
• A First Look at Communication Theory

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CLICKER

• Prior to a short while ago, how likely would it
  have been for you to discuss something Barak
  Obama said
• A VERY LIKELY
• B VERY UNLIKELY
• C MEDIUM LIKELY

3
CLICKER

• Have you discussed anything that Michelle Obama
  has said or done?
• A YES
• B NO

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CLICKER

• In addition to whether or not you found yourself
  talking about Barak or Michelle Obama, did you
  find yourself discussing in terms of various
  attributes, such as racism, hypocracy, corporate
  greed, or politics?
• A TRUE
• B FALSE

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CLICKER

• The Agenda-Setting theory is saying that
  journalists are attempting to influence the
  audience
• TRUE A
• FALSE B

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CLICKER

• Lots of research on the power of the media shows
  that the media can have a direct effect on what
  people think
• TRUE A
• FALSE B

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CLICKER

• Framing is when someone is set up to look like
  they committed a crime
• A TRUE
• B FALSE

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Online Newspapers
ABC
MSNBC
Associated Press
WHO OWNS WHAT?
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The Agenda

• Not what to think, but what to think about
• McCombs Shaw believe that the mass media have
  the ability to transfer the salience of items on
  their news agenda to the public agenda

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The Process of Agenda-Setting

• The theory is not suggesting that journalists are
  attempting to influence the audience
• Instead, the theory is claiming that we look to
  news for cues on where to focus our attention
• We judge as important what the media judge as
  important

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Similar Ideas

• Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter Lippmann had
  said years earlier that the media act as a
  mediator between the world outside and the
  pictures in our heads
• Political scientist Bernard Cohen observed 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

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Theodore White Wrote The Making of the
President, 1972

• The power of the press in America is a
  primordial one. It sets the agenda of public
  discussion and this sweeping political power is
  unrestrained by any law. It determines what
  people will talk and think about--an authority
  that in other nations is reserved for tyrants,
  priests, parties and mandarins.
  
  

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Research on Effects of Media

• Roughly speaking, social science research on the
  effects of media on the audience has been done
  from around the 1930s
• Initially, there was lots of talk about how
  powerful the media are in influencing people,
  ideas and behavior--The Hypodermic Effect
• But the research just did not support that view

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Effects of the Media

• So, gradually, new theories came along to try and
  explain how the effects worked and how the media
  alone were not powerful enough to influence
  people
• The Two-Step-Flow Hypothesis was developed to
  suggest that the media influence certain
  people--leaders-- and then these people
  influenced others

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Media Effects

• Eventually, even the Two-Step-Flow Hypothesis was
  played down and the influence of newspapers,
  radio, television, magazines was seen as limited
• Even research into the influence of television
  and films on violent behavior did not result in
  clear cut findings of effects

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Agenda-Setting Idea Comes Along

• The Agenda-Setting Function theory came along in
  this atmosphere of limited effects thinking
• The Agenda-Setting Function gave back the idea
  that the media have power to influence
• But, instead of changing opinions and attitudes
  and behaviors about what to do, the media were
  seen as changing ideas about what to think about

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Agenda-Setting Idea

• The Agenda-Setting Function reaffirmed the power
  of the media while still maintaining that
  individuals were free to choose
• The Agenda-Setting Function was consistent with
  the theory that uses and gratifications
  accounted for media use peoples motives for
  attending to the media

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Research on the Agenda-Setting Function

• The theory of Agenda-Setting depends on survey
  research showing a connection between the medias
  agenda and the publics subsequent rank-order of
  concerns

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Media Agenda Public Agenda

• McCombs and Shaw determined the major political
  news sources for Chapel Hill, North Carolina
  residents, a mix of print and broadcast
• They used position and length of story as the
  criteria of prominence
• The publics priorities were measured by asking
  voters what they thought were the key issues of
  the campaign

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Media Agenda Public Agenda

• The specific answers of undecided voters were
  assigned to the same categories as the media
  items and compared
• The rank of the five issues on both lists were
  nearly identical

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What Causes What?

• McCombs Shaws Agenda-Setting Function
  suggests

Media agenda
Voters agenda
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Correlation is not Causation

• Perhaps media coverage reflects public concerns
  that already exist

Media agenda
Voters agenda
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The test of the Agenda-Setting Hypothesis will
need to show

• That the public agenda lags behind the medias
  presentation of priorities
• Studies were done that measured the publics
  opinion on salience of the issues 2 or 3 times
  during the campaign
• The results are promising, with voter opinion
  lagging behind in some studies

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The Results are not Conclusive

• Only about half the studies demonstrated the lag
  between public opinion and media coverage
• And one concern raised was whether or not the
  correlation itself reflected true concern or only
  a knowledge of what was being talked about

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Fine-Tuning the Theory

• The theory postulates a index of curiosity, or
  a combination of relevance and ambivalence
• In other words, a person will be attuned to media
  emphasis if they carry two traits
• 1. They are interested in a particular story--it
  is relevant to them
• 2. They are not certain about how they feel about
  the topic
• Under these conditions, if the media think the
  story is important, they think it is important
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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Fine-tuning the Theory

• Given enough motivation to read the article, a
  newspaper story has greater agenda-setting power
  than a piece on the television news

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Who Sets the Agenda for the Agenda Setters?

• 75 of the stories that come across a news desk
  are never reported
• Who sets the agenda for the agenda setters?
• One view claims it is 8 men--the operation chiefs
  media elite of Associated Press, New York
  Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, ABC, NBC,
  CBS

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Who Sets the Agenda?

• An alternative view is that the candidates
  themselves are the source of issue salience
• Yet another view is that interest aggregations
  focus the attention of the news on their causes,
  anti-abortion, anticommunism, antiwar,
  antipollution, etc.

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Are the Issues the Real Campaign Issue?

• A considerable amount of campaign news is not
  devoted to major political issues, but rather to
  an analysis of the campaign itself
• The media assign the highest priority to
  questions of campaign strategy

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CRITIQUE

• The research support for the theory is
  spotty--inconclusive
• A variety of procedures have been used to
  ascertain the public agenda, resulting in
  uncertainty in how to interpret findings
• A weakness is in the limited number of categories
  used to compare media and public agendas

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CRITIQUE

• Nagging questions remain about the direction of
  the effect limitations on the effect
• Media priorities may simply reflect public
  opinion
• The original theory spoke only of issue salience
  during political campaigns, but later discussion
  extends the theory to candidate image and some
  nonpolitical topics
• The agenda-setting hypothesis is limited to
  members of the public who wish political
  guidance

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CRITIQUE

• Those already committed to candidates and those
  who use the media just for entertainment are not
  expected to be affected by the agenda-setting
  function
• The media have less effect on local issues or
  matters with which the reader/viewer has hands-on
  experience

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Framing

• The concept of framing has been added to the
  theory
• Framing is concerned with the context in which
  something is understood
• Framing is a concept associated with the process
  of interpretation--making meaning

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FRAMING

• There are 2 levels of agenda setting
• 1. The transfer of salience of an idea in the
  mass media to the publics mind--emphasizing
  certain aspects of an issue and not others
• 2. The transfer of a dominant set of attributes
  that the media associate with an idea to the
  publics mind

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News Stories

• News stories are stories
• Stories always require interpretation
• The process of interpreting uses framing to
  arrive at meaning