Agenda-Setting Theory

Early Days of Agenda-Setting Research

Although McCombs and Shaw were the first scholars to speak of an agenda-setting function of the mass media, the idea that media contribute to audience perceptions, values, and priorities predates their study. Indeed, McCombs and Shaw used a famous quotation by political scientist Bernard Cohen as a way of encapsulating their own early conception of agenda setting. As Cohen had observed in 1963, 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.” In other words, the idea behind McCombs and Shaw's original notion of agenda-setting theory is that while the media do not tell us what attitudes or opinions we should have (what to think) and do not set out to deliberately or purposely engineer public opinion, they do tell us which issues we should be focusing on (what to think about)—that is, which issues are most important and therefore most worthy of inclusion on our mental agendas.

What was groundbreaking about their 1972 article, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” was that McCombs and Shaw provided empirical support for the claim that the news media priorities become public priorities. Their article detailed the results of a study they conducted during the 1968 presidential campaign in which they asked 100 registered yet uncommitted voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a set of fairly simple questions: “What are you most concerned about these days? That is, regardless of what politicians say, what are the two or three main things which you think the government should concentrate on doing something about?” At the same time, McCombs and Shaw analyzed the political news contents of the mass media used by Chapel Hill voters during the campaign (four local newspapers, The New York Times, the newsmagazines Time and Newsweek, and the NBC and CBS evening news broadcasts). McCombs and Shaw found an almost perfect correlation between the issues listed by the voters as most important and the topics that were given the most space, time, and prominence in the news media. Additionally, the priority order given by voters to the issues almost perfectly matched the relative amounts of time or space given by the media to coverage of those issues.

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