Agenda Setting

Agenda setting is a theory of mass communication effects which holds that news media, through the editorial selection process, transmit to the public the salience of political objects, which affects the relative importance of these objects to the public. According to agenda-setting theory, the news media may not tell the public what to think (for example, what position to take on a political issue or what candidate to support in an election), but they tell the public what to think about (for example, what issues are important or what candidates are viable).

One of the primary services the news media provide to their audiences is their surveillance of the environment to determine what events are occurring in the world that the press believes their audiences should ...