wes34285 ch21 371-386 - McGraw Hill Educationmhhe.com/success/spg/West_Sample_Chapter_21.pdf ·...

ARGUABLY, VERY FEW INSTITUTIONS IN OUR LIVES affect us more than media. Mediated messages and imagessurround us, and provide us with information and entertain-ment, as well as ways to connect with others. Television, film,Netflix, cell phones, the Internet, and social media are morethan a small part of our lives, and its apparent well never be ableto reverse this fact, even if we would want to. Imagine trying tospend a week (or even a day) without your computer, yourphone, or your TV. For most of us, that would be impossible!

It is in this spirit that we offer the six theories in this sectioncalled The Media. Each theory places media, in some format,as central to our lives, and the media theorists representedhere believe that we respond in different ways to the barrageof electronic technology. Agenda Setting suggests that mediasources, like television and radio, act as gatekeepers in puttingan agenda out to the public. Then members of the public de-termine what they think about that agenda on their ownso,

media dont tell us what to think, they just tell us what to think about. The central fea-ture of the Spiral of Silence Theory pertains to the influence of media on whether ornot people will speak out about an issue. Uses and Gratifications Theory suggests thatthe viewer/listener is active in their media consumption. The theory concerns itselfwith what people do with particular media. Cultivation Theory focuses on the role oftelevision in our lives. This theory is concerned with the effects of heavy televisionviewing on peoples perceptions of the world, especially with reference to how muchviolence takes place in reality. In exposing the media for their role in maintainingpower relationships in society, Cultural Studies highlights the influence that mediatedstructures have on culture. Cultural theorists aim to unravel the power relationships insociety in order to provide marginalized populations more voice. Examining howtechnology has ruled our lives, Media Ecology Theory argues that the primary media

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The Media

Chapter 21Agenda Setting Theory(McCombs & Shaw) 373

Chapter 22Spiral of Silence Theory(Noelle-Neumann) 387

Chapter 23Uses and Gratifications Theory(Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch)404

Chapter 24Cultivation Theory (Gerbner)420

Chapter 25Cultural Studies (Hall) 437

Chapter 26Media Ecology Theory(McLuhan) 453

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of the age (currently the Internet, for instance) usually take precedence over thecontent of the message.

We will continue to be affected by media throughout our lives. Technologycontinues to develop, and even as we write these words, new ways of bringingmessages to people are being conceptualized. While learning about the theories in thissection, you will encounter a number of timely topics pertaining to the media: domi-nance, patriarchy, personal needs and values, and the ethics associated with mediareporting.

372 The Media


Sally was fixing dinner forher extended family andshe had the TV playing in

the background. She was only half listening, butshe stopped peeling carrots when the news cameon and she heard the story of Manti TeO. Sallycouldnt remember having heard of him before,but she paused in her dinner preparations tolisten. TeO was a star football player at NotreDame who came from Hawaii. The newscasterspoke of how TeO had told people that his grand-mother and girlfriend, both living in Hawaii, haddied on the same day. His grandmother had beenill, and his girlfriend had been in a car accidentand then contracted leukemia. This story wasespecially remarkable because on the day theydied, Notre Dame had a game and TeO went onto play well despite his sorrow. Now it was beingrevealed that the girlfriend had never existed, andall of TeOs interactions with her had taken placeonline. Either TeO had been the victim of a cruelhoax or he, himself, had participated in foolingthe public about this. Sally thought that was avery weird story. All during dinner, she talked toher family about how such a thing could happen.They debated back and forth as to whether TeOhad been a part of the hoax or if hed been fooledalong with others. Sally was pretty sure TeO hadto be in on it.

A few weeks later, Sally was at the nursinghome where she worked as an aide. She was in the

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C H A P T E R 21

break room and the radio was on; she stopped tolisten as she sipped her coffee. The commentatorwas talking about President Obamas inauguralcelebration the other day, and most of the discus-sion was on the question of whether Beyonce hadlip-synched the national anthem. Just then, Sallysfriend and colleague, Nathan, came into the breakroom and Sally asked him what he thought aboutBeyonces performance at the inauguration. Theyspent their break discussing whether she shouldhave sung the anthem live or if lip-synching wasappropriate for the occasion.

The following night, Sally was at her computerat home working on a paper for her class in Con-temporary Problems at the local college. Sally wastrying to finish the BA she had started 15 years agoso she could go on to become a registered nurse.This class satisfied a social-cultural core require-ment, and she was actually enjoying it even thoughit didnt seem to have anything to do with nursing.The professor had asked the class to write aboutwhat they thought had been one of the most com-pelling social problems of the past 10 years. Sallytyped in social problems in the U.S. for a Googlesearch and she was amazed at the results. Shestopped counting the various problems after shegot to 100. Sally realized there were a lot of issuesin the world that she hadnt thought about much,and wondered a bit about why that was the case.She thought back over the past few weeks and con-sidered some of the issues she had been thinking

Agenda Setting TheoryBased on the research of Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw

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374 Chapter 21 Agenda Setting Theory

and talking about. Upon reflection, she had toadmit some of them werent too significant. Sallydoubted that Manti TeOs fake girlfriend orBeyonces lip-synching the national anthem would

even make the list for the top 200 social issues!And yet these things had been given a lot of cover-age in the media. Sally got to work on her paper.She thought she would enjoy writing it.

Sallys interactions with the media and her subsequent conversations withfriends and family about topics she found there can be explained by the the-ory we profile in this chapter: Agenda Setting. Agenda Setting Theory explainsthat media set the agenda for the public; they tell people what is important bythe number of times a story is reported and, by implication, if they do not re-port on a story (or bury it on the back pages of the newspaper), they indicatewhat stories are unimportant. Media sources also tell the public what isimportant by what features of a story they emphasize and which they do not.For example, the story about TeO focused on whether he was in on the hoaxor not, and this question structured the conversations that Sally had with oth-ers about the story. Newscasters could have emphasized other issues such asonline relationships in general, the media spotlight that is on student athletes,or the culture of Hawaii, but because they didnt Sally didnt spend too muchtime talking about those aspects of the story. Agenda Setting Theory argues thatthe media exert an influence over their consumers in these ways. However, thetheory also suggests that the influence isnt all one way, and Sally (and othermembers of the public) also have an impact on the media.

Over time scholars have had various ideas about how influential the mediaare in peoples lives. In the early days of mass media, people were seen as help-less victims of the powerful mass media. This notion was eventually discreditedand replaced by what is called a limited effects model of the mass media. Limitedeffects models acknowledge that media influence people, but also they assert thatmedias influence is minimized or limited by certain aspects of individual audi-ence members personal and social lives. In addition, researchers argue, audiencemembers, themselves, play a role in the mass communication process (see ourmore complete discussion of this history of media effects in our chapter on Usesand Gratifications Theory, Chapter 23). Agenda Setting research began with abelief in the powerful effects of the media, but later refinements put it into thecamp of limited effects (McCombs, 2004; McCombs & Bell, 1996; McCombs &Shaw, 1993). Early conceptualizations of Agenda Setting also located it in thearena of limited effects because it famously suggests that the media tell peoplewhat to think about, not what to think (Cohen, 1963).

History of Agenda Setting Research

The history of agenda setting research can be conceptualized in two stages:(1) pretheoretical conceptualization, and (2) the establishment of the theory.We will discuss each of these two historical stages briefly.


Pretheoretical Conceptualizing

Most researchers (e.g., Dearing & Rogers, 1996) talk about the first stage ofagenda setting research as consisting of the conceptualizations of several schol-ars in different fields beginning to think and write about the relationshipsamong the media, the audience, and the policymakers in the United States. Thefirst person to contribute to this line of thought according to James Dearingand Everett Rogers was Robert E. Park. Park was a sociologist at the Univer-sity of Chicago (19151935), and he is thought to be the first scholar of masscommunication. He devised the notion of media gatekeeping and began to dis-cuss some of the issues that are now incorporated into Agenda Setting Theory.Park noted that editors are gatekeepers because they have the power to killstories and to promote other stories that are submitted to them by correspon-dents, reporters, and news agencies. This statement related to the later devel-opments in Agenda Setting Theory because Park distinguished between issuesthat become public and those that do not come to the publics attention.

After Parks contributions, Walter Lippmann was a pioneer of the prethe-oretical stage. Walter Lippmann was a scholar of propaganda and public opin-ion as well as an influential newspaper columnist and presidential adviser. In1922, he wrote a book called Public Opinion, and he titled the first chapterThe World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads. He made the argumentthat the mass media connect the two. According to Lippmann, the events thathappen in the world are brought to people by the mass media and the waythese events are reported shape how people structure the images of these eventsin their minds. Lippmann did not use the term agenda setting, but his writingwas very influential in later development of the theory.

In 1948, Harold D. Lasswell, a political scientist at the University ofChicago, contributed an important chapter to an anthology about communi-cation that had far-reaching implications for Agenda Setting Theory. In thischapter, Lasswell talked about two important functions of mass media: sur-veillance and correlation. Surveillance is the process of newspeople scanningthe information that is in the environment and deciding which of the manyevents that are occurring deserve attention in their news outlets. In discussingthis function, Lasswell was echoing Parks notion of gatekeeping. Lasswell ar-gued that news reporters, editors, and so forth decide which of the multitudeof possible stories will be the ones to reach the public via their papers or otheroutlets. Obviously in this process the media do exert powerful effectstheyare in charge of what the public gets information about and how that infor-mation is presented. People often complain that the news is all bad and that thegood things that happen dont get reported (the old adage if it bleeds, it leadsrefers to the likelihood that bad news will be featured in the media). Thisspeaks to the surveillance process that is controlled by newspeople.

Lasswell (1948) describes the function of correlation as the way that mediadirect our attention to certain issues through communicating them to the publicand policymakers. In this function, media synchronize the various groups insociety to pay attention to the same things at the same time. Lasswell spoke ofthe correlation of the parts of society in responding to the environment(p. 38). The result of the media orchestration of our attention was a correlation

History of Agenda Setting Research 375

surveillancethe process ofnewspeople scanningthe information thatis in the environmentand deciding which ofthe many events thatare occurring deserveattention in theirnews outlets

correlationthe way that mediadirect our attentionto certain issuesthroughcommunicating themto the public and topolicymakers


of attention on certain issues at the same time by the media, the public, andpolicymakers (Dearing & Rogers, 1996, p. 1112). This function is illustratedwhen there is a national/international event (like a presidential inauguration, theSuper Bowl, or the Olympics) or a national catastrophe (like hurricanes Katrinaand Sandy, or the bombing at the Boston Marathon). The media correlate ourattention to these things in real time, so that we are all hearing about MichelleObamas new hairstyle and inaugural dress or the storm damage that was doneon the East Coast at the same time.

Establishing the Theory of Agenda Setting

All of these ideas by earlier researchers came together in the second stage ofagenda setting research. This stage is marked by the study that MaxwellMcCombs and Donald Shaw (1972) published which took these early conceptsand put them to an empirical test. This landmark study examined the public andthe medias agendas during the 1968 presidential election. Agenda Setting Theorywas focused on issues of political import in its beginnings. McCombs and Shawwere interested to test the hypothesis, derived from the ideas of scholars likeLasswell, Park, and Lippmann, that the mass media create an agenda throughtheir selection of what to include in the news, and this agenda influences publicperception of what is important. In this first study, McCombs and Shaw hypoth-esized a causal relationship between the media and the public agendas, whichstated that the media agenda would, over time, become the agenda for the public.

To test their hypothesis, they interviewed 100 undecided voters during thethree weeks just prior to the presidential election in November of 1968. Al-though elements of their hypotheses changed in subsequent studies, one of theenduring contributions of this early work was the way they measured the twovariables of interest: the public agenda and the media agenda. The publicagenda for these undecided voters was measured by their responses to a surveyquestion: What are you most concerned about these days? That is, regardlessof what politicians say, what are the two or three main things that you think thegovernment should concentrate on doing something about? (McCombs &Shaw, 1972, p. 178). They ranked the issues based on the frequency with whichthey were mentioned and found five main issuesforeign policy, law and order,fiscal policy, public welfare, and civil rights, which were mentioned most fre-quently by the respondents. These five issues formed the public agenda.

They measured the media agenda by counting the number of news articles,editorials, and broadcast stories in the nine main mass-media outlets thatserved the area where the undecided voters lived. These mass-media sourcesincluded television, newspapers, and news magazines. McCombs and Shawfound an almost perfect correlation (.967) between the rank order of the fiveissues on the media agenda as measured by their content analysis of the mediacoverage of the election campaign, and the five issues on the public agenda asdetermined by their survey of the 100 undecided voters.

At this point in the history, the ideas articulated by Lippmann and othersnow had a name: McCombs and Shaw named this transfer of salience fromthe media agenda to the public agenda the agenda setting influence of mass



communication (McCombs & Bell, 1996, p. 96). The theory was launchedand hundreds of articles, books, and monographs have followed. Since itsinception, well over 400 studies have utilized Agenda Setting Theory in someform. In addition, the theory has undergone some expansions and refinements.

Expansions and Refinements to Agenda Setting Theory

The original study that McCombs and Shaw published in 1972, was predicatedon a powerful effects model of the media. McCombs and Shaws hypothesis,that the media agenda impacts the publics agenda, was founded on the imageof a rather passive audience. The second phase of research on the theory mod-erated that stance. This phase merged Agenda Setting with some of the ideas ofUses and Gratifications Theory (see Chapter 23). In the Uses and Gratificationsapproach, the audience is pictured as a group of active seekers, employingmedia for specific uses, and to satisfy particular gratifications. This next phaseof Agenda Setting incorporated that notion and began to ask about why somevoters expose themselves to certain messages more than other voters do.

Further research (Weaver, Graber, McCombs, & Eyal, 1981) expandedAgenda Setting Theory beyond the public issues that McCombs and Shaw hadbegun exploring in 1972. Other key political elements were added to theagenda like candidate image and voter interest in campaigns. More recent re-search added the question: Who sets the media agenda? This is a complicatedquestion and research has suggested a variety of answers. Steven Littlejohn andKaren Foss (2011) suggest that there are four types of power relations betweenthe media and other sources that might provide an answer: (1) high-powersource and high-power media; (2) high-power source and low-power media;(3) lower-power source and high-power media; and (4) both media and sourceare low power.

In the first case, a popular president could be a source to a well-fundedmedia outlet with a good reputation like CNN. In this situation, the two would

Expansions and Refinements to Agenda Setting Theory 377

Theory at a Glance Agenda Setting Theory

In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play animportant part in shaping social and political reality. When readers and viewersconsume news, they not only learn about a given issue, but they also learn howmuch importance to attach to that issue by the amount and position its given bythe press. In thinking about what candidates are saying during a campaign, themass media may well determine the important issuesthat is, the media may setthe agenda of the campaign. How influential the media are in this agendasetting function depends on several factors including media credibility, the extentof conflicting evidence, shared values, and the audiences need for guidance.


be equals in setting the agenda, which will work well for them if they see thingssimilarly; but this will result in struggles if they are not on the same side of theimportant issues of the day. In the second scenario, the source (an influentialpolitician) has more power than the media (a local paper), and so then thesource will be able to set the agenda for the media. In the third relationship, themedia are able to set their own agenda because the source is not considered tohave much of a voice. In this case, the media may marginalize the source and thesource will have trouble getting access to the public to discuss their issues. Awelfare group who wants to have their agenda broadcast on national televisionmay be in this situation. Finally, in the last relationship Littlejohn and Foss sug-gest that events will probably set the public agenda because neither the sourcenor the media have much power (a local official and a small town website).

In addition, researchers have examined what they call intermedia influenceon the agenda setting process and have noted that news organizations affect oneanothers agendas. For example, some research (Lim, 2011) has investigated theinfluence major news websites have on each others agendas. This study, whichwas set in South Korea, found that the major news websites there did influencethe agendas of online newspapers as well as, to a certain extent, each other.Other studies (e.g., Johnson, 2011; Maier, 2010; Meraz, 2011; Ragas &Kiousis, 2010) found some support for the influence that various media haveon one another. In addition, Maxwell McCombs and Tamara Bell (1996) ob-served that the intermedia effect can come from individual newsworkers as wellas news organizations. As they note, journalists live in an ambiguous socialworld so they often rely on one another for confirmation and as a source ofideas. McCombs and Bell mention several studies of cases where journalistsfollowed one another in reporting about specific issues. For instance, they cite a1987 article (Prichard) that illustrates how in 1982, USA Today didnt put astory about a man who tried to blow up the Washington Monument on pageone until Dan Rather led with the story on the CBS Evening News. They referto this agenda influence as pack journalism. More recently, McCombs andcolleagues (e.g., McCombs & Funk, 2011) have suggested that intermediainfluence is the wave of the future for agenda setting research.

Assumptions of Agenda Setting Theory

Agenda Setting Theory rests on three basic assumptions:

The media establish an agenda and in so doing are not simply reflectingreality, but are shaping and filtering reality for the public.

The medias concentration on the issues that comprise their agenda influ-ence the publics agenda, and these together influence the policymakersagenda.

The public and policymakers have the possibility to influence the mediasagenda as well.

These three assumptions are woven into Agenda Setting Theory and suggestthe interaction that the theorists specified among the media, the public, and


pack journalismthe phenomenon ofjournalists having theiragendas influenced byother journalists


policymakers. First, the media are portrayed as relatively powerful becausetheir agenda is where the chain of influence generally begins. Further, massmedia are seen as having the gatekeeping function that allows them to shapethe news, such that the public never receives unfiltered information. Yet, thetheory also assumes that the public and policymakers have some reciprocal in-fluence in the process, and their agendas can affect the media agenda as well.

Two Levels of Agenda Setting

Agenda Setting Theory currently proposes that the agenda setting function hastwo levels. The original conception of the theory identified only the first levelof agenda setting. This level focuses on the list of important issues that com-prises the agenda as decided by some entity such as the media. More recently,a second level, sometimes called attribute agenda setting, was added to thetheory that focuses on which parts (or attributes) of those issues are most im-portant. The first level speaks to the broad media agenda, and the second levelrefers to the process known as media framing or the way media depictions ofevents (that have made it onto the media agenda) influence and constrain howconsumers can interpret them. Framing was first discussed by Todd Gitlin(1980) in his examination of how CBS television coverage of the 1960s studentmovement made it seem less important than it actually was.

Researchers noted that framing could be accomplished in many ways. Innewspapers things like the size of headlines, photographs included with thestory, a storys overall length and placement allow the editors to frame its im-portance and highlight the aspects of it that are deemed most important. Ontelevision, the visuals accompanying the story add to the ability of newspeopleto frame a story. Some research (e.g., Miller & Roberts, 2010) has examinedwhat they call visual agenda setting, which is concerned exclusively with visuals.This study asked 466 Louisiana State University students to respond to im-agery about Hurricane Katrina six weeks after the storm. They found that

Two Levels of Agenda Setting 379

Student VoicesSophia

I agree with this theory. If we didnt have the media telling us about stuff, how wouldwe know about anything? I dont have any friends who go to Notre Dame, so howwould I have heard about Manti TeO if the media didnt tell me about him and hisfake girlfriend? But, I also agree that I can form my own opinions about things I hearabout in the media. They are just telling me what to think aboutI can make up myown mind about the specifics of the topic. For instance, Im sure that guy was in on thehoaxthe media didnt tell me that, but after hearing about the story, Im making upmy own mind. He had to know that there was no real girlwho would keep up anonline relationship like that for so long without ever meeting in person?

agendaa list of the mostimportant issues ofthe day as decided byan entity, such as themedia

media framinghow media depictionsof events influenceand constrain the wayconsumers caninterpret the events


most people chose the compelling, repetitious imagery shown in the dominantmedia. So they concluded that the principles of visual agenda setting were sup-ported. However, they also found that that result was qualified by how closethe respondent was to the news event. Students who were more personallyaffected by Katrina chose more personal images and abandoned the imagesthat the media selected.

Other researchers expanded the notion of framing to include affect, forinstance (e.g., Coleman & Wu, 2010; Entman, 1993), and also talked abouta related process: priming (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987), a cognitive processwhereby what the media present temporarily, at least, influences what peoplethink about afterwards in processing additional information. For example, ifyou watch or hear news reports about the United States lack of protection forthe embassy in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americanembassy workers including the ambassador to Libya, you might be primed tothink more negatively about Hillary Clintons performance as the Secretary ofState than if you had not attended to those news reports.

Three-Part Process of Agenda Setting

The agenda setting process consists of three parts: setting the media agenda,setting the public agenda, and setting the policy agenda. The media agendarefers to the priority of issues to be discussed in mediated sources. The publicagenda is the result of the media agenda interacting with what the publicthinks. And, finally, the public agenda interacts with what is considered im-portant by policymakers to create the policy agenda. In a simple format, thetheory states that the media agenda affects the public agenda, which in turn,impacts the policy agenda. The results of studies examining the impact of thepublic and media agendas on policy agendas, however, has been mixed (Tan &Weaver, 2010). (See Figure 21-1).

In addition, this simple formulation is complicated by a few other factors.First, agenda setting is concerned with salience, or the degree to which an


priminga cognitive processwhereby what themedia presenttemporarily, at least,influences whatpeople think aboutafterwards inprocessing additionalinformation

Personal experience and interpersonal acommunication among elites and other individuals

Real-world indicators of the importanceof an agenda issue or event

Publicagenda

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Figure 21.1The Impact ofPublic and MediaAgenda on PolicyAgenda

media agendathe priority placed onissues discussed inmediated sources

public agendathe result of themedia agendainteracting with whatthe public thinks

policy agendathe result of thepublic agendainteracting with whatpolicymakers think

saliencethe degree to whichan agenda issue isperceived asimportant relative tothe other issues onthe agenda

Source: Rogers, and Dearing (1988).


agenda issue is perceived as important relative to the other issues on theagenda (Kiousis, 2011). Agenda setting researchers are more interested insalience than in the usual concerns of public opinion researchers such as pos-itive and negative attitudes toward an issue. Salience allows agenda settingresearchers to capture what the media agenda is and what the media aretelling the public to think about. Thus, how salient or important an issue isperceived to be by the audience will have an effect on the degree of influencefelt. Further, Agenda Setting became a limited effects model in part becauseof the later recognition that the power of the media agenda is dependent ona variety of factors including: media credibility, the extent of conflictingevidence available to the consumer, the extent to which people share the valuesof the media, and the publics need for guidance or orientation (Walgrave &Van Aelst, 2006).

If an audience member does not believe a media source is credible, he orshe will likely dismiss the agenda promoted on that source. If Mandy is a lib-eral, she would be unlikely to believe much of what she might hear from asource like Glenn Beck on the radio, for example. And, if Samuel is conser-vative, he will probably dismiss most of the agenda promoted on The DailyShow. Thus, the public agenda will be swayed only by the media sourcesthey find credible. Conflicting information also complicates the tenets ofAgenda Setting and provides a contingency that the theory has to incorpo-rate. If Tina listens to several news programs and they all tell her somethingslightly different about the economy, for instance, the Agenda Setting func-tion is complicated. Further, if Randy listens to talk shows that promote thevalue of the sanctity of marriage, he will likely be convinced by their agendabecause he shares that value. However, if Marianne believes that marriage isan oppressive institution, she will probably not accept the agenda on thoseshows.

The contingency condition that Agenda Setting researchers have dis-cussed the most is the need for guidance or orientation (McCombs, 2004).This factor explains why people sometimes do not adopt the media agendaby discussing two key variables: relevance and uncertainty. Relevance is de-fined as a motivation to seek orientation on an issue from the media due tothe perception of personal importance that the issue holds for someone. Ifpeople believe they are not at all involved in an issue such as greenhousegases, for instance, they will not look to the media for guidance on the issueand thus will not be affected by the media agenda. Uncertainty refers to howmuch information people think they have about an issue. If they believe theyhave a great deal of information about the two candidates in a presidentialelection, their uncertainty is low, and thus they will not have a need for guid-ance from the media. If, however, they are unsure if they have enough infor-mation, they need more guidance from the agenda the media present. Thesetwo variables work together to explain deviations from the general principlesof Agenda Setting Theory. If relevance and uncertainty are both high, thenAgenda Setting should be predictive. If relevance and uncertainty are bothlow, then these are contingency conditions that allow the theory to be moreflexible.

Three-Part Process of Agenda Setting 381

relevancea factor explainingwhy people seekguidance from themedia agenda. Itrefers to howpersonally affectedthey feel by an issue

uncertaintya factor explainingwhy people seekguidance from themedia agenda. Itrefers to how muchinformation peoplebelieve they alreadypossess about an issue.


Integration, Critique, and Closing

Agenda Setting Theory is a venerable theory of mass communication; it has ahistory spanning back to the beginning of the twentieth century, and it is stillbeing employed today in studies of media and public communication. Althoughit has its detractors, and some of its central concepts may need adaptation in anera of new media and fragmented publics, it still has many adherents and it fareswell as measured against the traditional criteria for evaluating theories, espe-cially empirical theories.


Theory in Popular Press Combatting the Media Agenda

In the New York Times opinion pages online, Priscilla Gilman writes abouthow the media agenda posed a problem for her in the aftermath of theNewtown, Connecticut, killings in 2012. Gilman, the mother of an autisticchild, notes that the media seemed to be trying to explain the killers horrificbehaviors by labeling him as suffering from autism. She writes, It began asinsinuation, but quickly flowered into outright declaration. Words used todescribe the killer, Adam Lanza, began with odd, aloof, and a loner,shaded into lacked empathy, and finally slipped into on the autism spectrumand suffering from a mental illness like Aspergers. By Sunday, it hadsnowballed into a veritable storm of accusation and stigmatization. Gilman isusing her column to try to counteract the framing that occupied many mediastories about the tragedy in Newtown. She points out that there are factualerrors in this framing: first, she argues that autism is not a mental illness, it is aneurodevelopmental disability or disorder. Further, those who are on the autismspectrum, according to Gilman, do not necessarily lack empathy. They can bevery empathic although they may express their empathy and concern for othersin unconventional ways.

Gilman concludes by stating that countless studies have shown that peoplewith autism are no more likely than those without it to engage in violence, andto the contrary, are more likely to be the victims of violence (i.e., bullyingbehaviors) than the perpetrators. It remains to be seen if the media agenda, thepublic agenda, and the policy agenda will converge in policies that respect thevalue of each child as Gilman urges, or will take up the frame that Gilmandisputes here.

Source: Gilman, P. (2012, December 17). Dont blame autism for Newtown, New York Timesonline, nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/dont-blame-autism-for-newtown.html.


Scope

Some researchers have critiqued the scope of Agenda Setting Theory. Occasion-ally, the complaint is that the scope is too large and sometimes the opposite is dis-cussed. Some of the problems around this issue have to do with the concept offraming. First, some research (e.g., Takeshita, 2006) asserts that framing is aseparate theory from Agenda Setting, and could supersede it altogether. This islabeled an identity problem with Agenda Setting. Toshio Takeshita commentsthat some researchers believe Agenda Setting Theory, in adding the second levelof attribute agenda setting (or framing), is actually colonizing other theories andoverreaching the appropriate scope for the theory. Takeshita concludes that thetwo theories can coexist and more empirical work will determine which oneprovides the better explanation for medias influence on the public. Further,Takeshita notes that Agenda Setting Theory has the advantage over framing the-ory in methodological terms because scholars have developed clear operational

Integration

Integration, Critique, and Closing 383

CommunicationTradition

Rhetorical | Semiotic | Phenomenological | Cybernetic |Socio-Psychological | Socio-Cultural | Critical

CommunicationContext

Intrapersonal | Interpersonal | Small Group | Organizational |Public/Rhetorical | Mass/Media | Cultural

Approach toKnowing

Positivistic/Empirical | Interpretive/Hermeneutic | Critical

EvaluationCriteria

Scope | Logical Consistency | Parsimony | Utility |Testability | Heurism | Test of Time

Critique

Student VoicesChristian

I like parts of this theory. It makes sense to me that what I talk about with my friendsand family is influenced by what I hear and see in media. If that werent the case, Idjust be talking about stuff that actually happens in front of me here at school. So, thatpart of the theory seems right to me. But, I just cant see how there can be a publicagenda anymore. We all read and listen to such different sources, how can there betopics that occupy everyone at the same time? If Im reading a blog about aviation andmy sister is reading Motherlode (because she has a new baby), I cant see us having thesame agenda. I think this theory was right when it was first developed in the 1970s, butit has to be changed to keep up with the times.


definitions of the media and the public agendas which work well in quantitativestudies.

Utility

With regard to utility, some questions have been raised about whether the the-ory remains useful given the new media environment. When people have somuch freedom in their quests for information and the media sources are multi-ple and fragmented, perhaps the tenets of Agenda Setting Theory will not besupported. Some studies have been conducted to test this question and the re-sults have been somewhat mixed, although on the whole, they suggest thatAgenda Setting Theory can still be applied in a media environment that is any-thing but monolithic. In a study exploring age-related differences in agendasetting (Coleman & McCombs, 2007), the researchers found that even thoughmedia use differentiated the generations (the youngest generation used news-papers and television significantly less than the older two generations and usedthe Internet significantly more), the agenda setting effect was still apparent re-gardless of which type of media was used.

Jennifer Brubaker (2008), however, found that television viewers andInternet users ranked a series of issues differently than the general media did.Brubaker concluded that Agenda Setting is not useful as a theoretical frameworkwhen people have so much more freedom in their media choices. Still other re-search (e.g., Ragas & Kiousis, 2010) did find evidence of first- and second-levelagenda setting relationships. This study examined the agenda setting effectsamong explicitly partisan news media coverage, political activist groups, citizenactivists, and official campaign advertisements on YouTube, all in support of thesame candidate, Barack Obama, in 2008. The authors concluded that AgendaSetting Theory is applicable across a variety of new media.

Sharon Meraz (2011) found a slightly more complicated result in that herstudy revealed that traditional media were unable to set the agenda for politicalblogs. Yet, she also found that ideologically diverse political blog networks wereable to have an impact on traditional medias online news agenda, and, to a lesserextent, their newsroom blog agenda. She concluded that there was a reduction oftraditional medias agenda setting influence. But, she also argued that AgendaSetting Theory could work to explain the greater interdependence between tradi-tional media and political blogs, and in fact, noted that some blogs like theHuffington Post were operating like the traditional media and may exert anagenda setting function of their own. Other studies (e.g., Johnson, 2011; Maier,2010) concurred noting that although traditional news media have less of an abil-ity to set the public agenda than in the past, they still perform an agenda settingfunction, and what is found on news websites and in citizen-journalists postingsoften correlates strongly with what appears on mainstream medias agenda.

Finally, a study in 2010 (Weeks & Southwell) used a novel approach to testthe agenda setting effects of the traditional media (television and newspapers)on the use of newer media (Google searches). This study examined the rela-tionship of television and newspaper coverage of the rumor circulating duringthe 2008 presidential campaign that Barack Obama was actually a Muslim.



The results showed, as Agenda Setting Theory would predict, that the morethis rumor was covered in traditional media the more Google searches therewere on the topic.

Heurism

With respect to heurism, Agenda Setting Theory certainly has been successful.It has supported hundreds of studies since 1972, and these studies have beensituated in a wide variety of fields and topics. Although many Agenda Settingstudies focus on politics, they are not confined to that topic, and they are notconfined to political issues in the United States as evidenced by recent studiesset in Sweden (e.g., Strmbck & Kiousis, 2010) and Chile (e.g., Valenzuela &Arriagada, 2011). As we have discussed throughout the chapter, Agenda Set-ting research examining new media, traditional media, political issues, andresponses to visual stimuli among other issues, attest to the robust, heuristicquality of this theory.

Discussion Starters

TT EE CC HH QQ UU EE SS TT :: Agenda Setting Theory was created in a time whenthere were only three television channels, relatively few radio stations,

and a limited number of big city newspapers. Now, of course, the medialandscape is totally different. The chapter presents some studies that havetested how effective Agenda Setting Theory is in this new media environment.The results are somewhat mixed in terms of their support for the theory.How could you design a study that you think would contribute to answeringwhether online news media operate in the manner that Agenda SettingTheory predicts?

1. Does Sallys situation ring true for you? Are the topics that she hearsabout through media actually charting an agenda for her to think about?Have you ever had the experience that Sally has of realizing that there are alot of issues in the world that you havent thought about before? Do youthink that is the case because the media havent directed you to these issues oris it due to some other reasons? If there are other reasons, what are they?

2. (Why) do you think its important to know the history of AgendaSetting Theory? (How) does it help you to understand and/or apply thetheory to know about its evolution over time?

3. Pick a recent news event and discuss how the second level of agendasetting might have been at work during the reporting of it. For instance, howdid the media cover the 2012 Presidential election? What were the issues thatemerged as important and what elements of media framing were used toestablish their importance?

4. Do you agree that framing is a part of Agenda Setting Theory or doyou think that it is a competing theory that suggests Agenda Setting is nolonger useful?

Discussion Starters 385


5. Discuss a news event that has gone through the three-stage processsuggested by Agenda Setting Theory: first it is placed on the media agenda,then the publics agenda, and finally it reaches the policymakers agendawhere actual policy is made that relates to the news event.

6. Do you agree that Agenda Setting is a limited effects model? As thechapter notes the theorys originator, Maxwell McCombs has alternated inhow he has framed the type of effects claimed by Agenda Setting. What doyou think? Explain your answer.

7. Who do you think sets the agenda for the media? Do you agree withthe material in the chapter about how the media agenda gets established?Explain your answer.

Online Learning Center

Visit the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/west5e for chapter-specific resources, such as story-into-theory and multiple-choice quizzes, aswell as theory summaries and theory-connection questions.

www. mhhe.com/west5e



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