Setting The Agenda

Setting the Agenda describes the mass media’s significant and sometimes controversial role in determining which topics are at the centre of public attention and action. Although Walter Lippman captured the essence of the media’s powerful influence early in the last century with his phrase, “the world outside and the pictures in our heads,” a detailed, empirical elaboration of this agenda-setting role of the mass media did not begin until the final quarter of the 20th century. In this comprehensive book, Maxwell McCombs, one of the founding fathers of agenda-setting tradition of research, synthesizes the hundreds of scientific studies carried out on this central role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion. Across the world, the mass media strongly influences what the pictures of public affairs "in our heads" are about. The mass media also influences the very details of those pictures. In addition to describing this media influence on what we think about and how we think about it, Setting the Agenda also discusses the sources of these media agendas, the psychological explanation for their impact on the public agenda, and the subsequent consequences for attitudes, opinions and behaviour.

Agenda-Setting asks who sets the agenda that brings social problems into the public arena, on to the policy agenda and, finally, to a change of policy. It provides important practical and theoretical insight into the agenda-setting process.

Why do public issues like the environment rise and fall in importance over time? To what extent can the trends in salience be explained by real-world factors? To what degree are they the product of interactions between media content, public opinion, and policymaking? This book surveys the development of eight issues in Canada over a decade -- AIDS, crime, the debt/deficit, the environment, inflation, national unity, taxes, and unemployment -- to explore how the salience of issues changes over time, and to examine why these changes are important to our understanding of everyday politics. Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada offers one of the first empirical analyses of the interaction of the media, the public, and policymakers in Canada and, more generally, makes an important contribution to the study of political communications and policymaking well beyond the Canadian context.

This volume explores agenda-setting theory in light of changes in the media environment in the 21st century. In the decades since the original Chapel Hill study that launched agenda-setting research, the theory has attracted the interest of scholars worldwide. Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World features the work of a new generation of scholars. The research provided by these young scholars reflects two broad contemporary trends in agenda-setting: A centrifugal trend of research in the expanding media landscape and in domains beyond the original focus on public affairs, and a centripetal trend further explicating agenda-setting’s core concepts.

The role of the news media in defining the important issues of the day, also known as the agenda-setting influence of mass communication, has received widespread attention over the past 20 years. Since the publication of McCombs and Shaw's seminal empirical study, more than one hundred journal articles and monographs have appeared. This collection exemplifies the major phases of research on agenda-setting: tests of the basic hypothesis, contingent conditions affecting the strength of this influence, the natural history of public issues, mass media influence on public policy, and the role of external sources from the president to public relations staffs on the news agenda.

Demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process.

Setting the agenda on agenda setting, this Handbook explores how and why private matters become public issues and occasionally government priorities. It provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the perspectives, individuals, and institutions involved in setting the government’s agenda at subnational, national, and international levels. Drawing on contributions from leading academics across the world, this Handbook is split into five distinct parts. Part one sets public policy agenda setting in its historical context, devoting chapters to more in-depth studies of the main individual scholars and their works. Part two offers an extensive examination of the theoretical development, whilst part three provides a comprehensive look at the various institutional dimensions. Part four reviews the literature on sub-national, national and international governance levels. Finally, part five offers innovative coverage on agenda setting during crises.

First in a trilogy on Communication and Democracy. Also fits with Gonzenbach, Semetko, and Protess/MccOmbs. For grads and beyond in journalism, poli comm, and mass comm.