Agenda Setting

Agenda setting is a concept that explores effects of exposure to news media. The logic behind agenda setting is that the news media do not necessarily tell people what to think but instead influence what people think about—they are an influence on the public's perception of which issues are important. The agenda-setting effect involves social learning—individuals learn the relative importance of a menu of issues based on how much coverage those issues receive in the news media. Since the initial study conducted during the 1968 U.S. presidential election (McCombs and Shaw, 1972), several hundred research studies have examined this process, making it one of the most thoroughly researched theories in the journalism and mass communication field.

Agenda setting has been a remarkably flexible theoretical approach. Researchers have applied the agenda-setting theoretical framework to studies involving such topics as content analyses of news coverage on a single issue and experiments examining information processing of news content.

The process of agenda setting begins with coverage of a particular issue. For example, a local newspaper could decide to run a series of stories dealing with why we need strict gun control laws. The paper's readers would be exposed to the stories. The stories would not necessarily lead readers to believe that the United States needs strict gun control laws. Rather, the effect of the stories would be to raise the salience of gun control as an issue in readers' minds. The coverage would lead readers to raise gun control on their own agenda of issues with which they are concerned.

Because agenda-setting research concerns the transferal of issue salience from news media to the public, analyses often combine two research methodologies: a content analysis of media coverage and responses to a public opinion survey. Many studies employ a survey item commonly used in Gallup polls. This “most important problem” question asks respondents: “What is the number one problem facing our country today?” Responses to this open-ended question are then used to form the public agenda.

Agenda-setting research can be grouped into five categories: original tests of the hypothesis, contingent conditions affecting the magnitude of agenda-setting effects, influences on the media agenda, consequences of agenda setting, and second-level agenda setting.