Kiousis COMMUNICATION et al.

Candidate RESEARCH Image August Attributes 1999

SPIRO KIOUSIS1 PHILEMON BANTIMAROUDIS HYUN BAN

Candidate Image Attributes

Experiments on the Substantive Dimension of Second Level Agenda Setting
This study examined the role of attribute salience in the agenda setting process. Two experiments were conducted to investigate how media emphasis on certain political candidate attributes would influence public perceptions of those politicians. Specifically, media portrayals of candidate personality and qualification traits were explored. Findings suggest that peoples impressions of candidate personality traits mirror media portrayals of those traits. However, media portrayals of personality traits do not affect a candidates overall salience. The data also indicate that candidate qualifications do influence affective perceptions of politicians. Finally, the authors consider the ramifications of these results on future scholarship.

Agenda setting represents perhaps the most prolific theoretical paradigm for research in media effects over the past three decades. From the seminal studies of McCombs and Shaw (1972) and Funkhouser (1973), the primary focus of agenda setting literature has been to examine the transfer of issue salience from the press to the public. In its classical sense, agenda setting theory posits that media coverage of topics corresponds with public concern for those same topics. Of course, many mediating factors have emerged, such as the audiences need for orientation (Weaver, 1977), their education level (Wanta, 1997), and their degree of media exposure (Dearing & Rogers, 1996). Furthermore, the movement of salience is no longer conceptualized in terms of a simple one-way relay, but as a dynamic, interdependent exchange among media, policy makers, and the public (Rogers & Dearing, 1988). The vast majority of traditional agenda setting studies have tracked issues, but candidate images have also been occasionally monitored (Weaver,
COMMUNICATION RESEARCH, Vol. 26 No. 4, August 1999 414-428 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.

414

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

Graber, McCombs, & Eyal, 1981). In recent years, however, scholars have begun to converge on the attributes of issues and images as a new frontier in agenda setting analyses (Takeshita & Mikami, 1995). A notable omission in this contemporary research stream has been the lack of experimental work pursuing how media coverage of attributes affects the agenda setting process. Thus, the purpose of this study is to fill this lacuna in research by experimentally testing how media emphasis on political candidate attributes affects public impressions of politicians.

Background
Attributes and Framing
In contrast to objects (i.e., issues, political candidates, etc.), attributes shift attention to the set of perspectives or frames that journalists and the public employ to think about each object (Ghanem, 1997, p. 5). McCombs and Estrada (1997) explain that these perspectives and framescalled semantic devicesdraw attention to certain attributes and away from others (p. 246). By accentuating certain elements over others, the press is assumed to influence the salience of attributes as well as the salience of issues. As a result, McCombs and Shaw (1993) propose that media may not only tell us what to think about, but also how to think about it, and consequently, what to think (p. 65). The concept of framing is also inextricably linked to attribute agenda setting. Tankard, Hendrickson, Silberman, Bliss, and Ghanem (1991) maintain that framing encompasses the central organizing idea for news content that supplies context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration (p. 3). Iyengar (1991) distinguishes between episodic (when media portray stories in concrete terms) and thematic (when media portray stories in general terms) frames that are reasoned to sway individuals perceptions of news. The natural bridge between the two intellectual perspectives has clearly been acknowledged in the literature (for discussion, see Ghanem, 1997; Weaver, 1998). Some might even contend that the terms frames and attributes could be used interchangeably. In fact, McCombs (1997) claims that conceptualizing a frame as a type of attribute is advantageous because it brings some order and parsimony to the vast literature on framing whose popularity led to highly diverseeven incompatibleapplications and definitions. This order is achieved with agenda setting theory by limiting and restricting the application of framing (p. 6). It is therefore essential to synthesize aspects of framing into any theoretical discussion of attribute agenda setting.

415

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999

Consequently, an agenda of attributes complements each object (issue, candidate, etc.) in a media, policy, or public agenda. There has been some empirical support for this second level of agenda setting (Bryan, 1997; Lopez-Escobar, Llamas, & McCombs, 1997; Lopez-Escobar, Llamas, McCombs, & Lennon, 1998; McCombs & Evatt, 1995), but the method for inquiry in such studies has been the conventional combination of content analyses coupled with public opinion surveys. Although this is useful for implying a causal relationship between the medias concentration on certain attributes and the publics concern with those same attributes, it cannot demonstrate it with the same conviction as an experiment. Hence, we hope to build on this previous literature by examining the affect of attributes in a controlled laboratory environment.

Agenda Setting and Experiments

Agenda setting experiments predominantly have been performed by Shanto Iyengar and his associates (Ansolabehere, Behr, & Iyengar, 1993; Behr & Iyengar, 1985; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder, 1982). During these investigations, Iyengar and his colleagues typically recruit subjects to watch television news in a laboratory, although the setting is designed to feel as natural as possible. By modifying news videotapes, they have been able to shift peoples impressions of issue salience. For example, subjects who watch television news highlighting the economy consistently rank this issue to be one of the most important problems facing the nation with greater frequency than individuals who do not view the same television news segments. Similarly, the current project attempts to shape audience perceptions by altering news content, but print articles (instead of television news) serve as stimulus materials. Wanta (1988) shows that newspaper articles are suitable stimulus materials in agenda setting experiments through his analysis of picture size and issue salience. This project aims to establish a causal linkage for attributes as such preceding studies accomplished for issues.

Attribute Dimensions
According to earlier scholarship, attributes have several dimensions that might be explored. For example, Ghanem (1997) asserts that subtopics, framing mechanisms, affective elements, and cognitive elements are all substantial attributes. McCombs (1995) articulates that affective and substantive elements may be among the most instrumental agenda attributes. Affective attributes refer to those facets of news coverage that elicit emotional

416

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

reactions from audience members. The tone of a story, for instance, is believed to be a vital thread in the overall composition of news, partially organizing how people will process new information. Thus, a positively reported story may lead to a positive evaluation of the topic in that story. Some researchers are obtaining compelling evidence correlating affective attributes stressed by the media to affective attributes stressed by the public (Lopez-Escobar et al., 1997). In these studies, political candidates have been the units of analysis as opposed to an issue or a set of issues that is ubiquitous in traditional agenda setting work. The current examination will take this one step further by probing candidate images in an experimental context. The substantive dimension of attributes pertains to those characteristics of news that help us cognitively structure news and discern among various topics. For example, McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, and Rey (1997) enumerate three types of substantive attributes for candidate images: their ideology, qualifications, and personality. In addition to affective attributes, scholars have also found a strong congruence between the medias coverage of substantive attributes and the level of importance placed on those attributes by the public. Whereas affective attributes have engendered robust empirical findings, substantive attributes will be employed for this experiment because they seem to be more clearly defined in the literature. Thus, we conjecture that substantive attributes of candidates can be manipulated in an experiment to affect audience attitudes toward those same candidates. In addition, we also intend to investigate how substantive attributes influence affective (e.g., how appealing a candidate is) and overall candidate salience in a second experiment.

Attribute Selection
Although we speculate that substantive attributes can be experimentally controlled as suggested by prior empirical work, the next integral task involves determining what particular candidate attributes to incorporate into the planned experiments. The literature on candidate images outlines a myriad of attributes to choose from, but candidate qualifications and personality traits may be among the most paramount in public consciousness (Graber, 1972; McCombs et al., 1997; Nimmo & Savage, 1976; Sigel, 1964). As a result, this project seeks to make such candidate attributes salient in peoples minds. Hypothesis 1: Media attention toward candidate attributes (education and corruption) will influence the perceived salience of those candidate attributes.

417

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999 Object Salience

Although the effects of attribute salience remain a chief concern in this project, perhaps the most meaningful rationale for carrying out this study is to ascertain whether affecting attribute salience will also spur changes in object salience. For instance, if the media elect to publish a series of stories about the presidents stance on economic issues, agenda setting theory submits that he or she should become more prominent in public opinion. Ghanem (1997) further notes that an increase in press coverage of certain object attributes can provide compelling arguments to elevate the importance of objects themselves in the minds of audiences. This impact of attributes on object salience, then, is a pivotal factor in attribute agenda setting that needs to be further explored. Hence, a second experiment will also be conducted to test whether a rise in attribute salience will prompt an upswing in overall candidate salience (i.e., testing a compelling arguments hypothesis). Moreover, the ability of substantive attributes to shape affective attitudes is another question that demands further investigation. Accordingly, we will pursue how substantive attributes influence peoples liking or disliking of a candidate. In a sense, these affective opinions are perhaps the most critical components of object salience because actual voting behavior is often more contingent on how positively or negatively people evaluate a candidate, as opposed to how prominent they believe him or her to be. Due to the exploratory nature of this second experiment, we feel broad research questions are more appropriate than formal hypotheses. Research Question 1: Will media attention toward candidate attributes influence the perceived overall salience of the candidate? Research Question 2: Will media attention toward candidate attributes influence the perceived affective salience of the candidate?

Method
First Experiment
Research design. In a 2 2 factorial design, subjects were asked to read news articles about fictitious candidates competing in a congressional campaign. Subjects read one news article each. The two attributes manipulated were candidate qualifications and personality traits. The operational definition of candidate qualifications was their educational background (high and low) whereas their personality was operationalized as their corruption level

418

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

(high and low). In the first condition, the candidate was depicted as a highly educated and moral politician. In the second condition, the candidate was not well educated but moral. In the third condition, the candidate was highly educated and corrupt. Finally, in the fourth condition, the candidate was corrupt and uneducated. In preparing the stimulus materials, equal space was devoted to every attribute. Specifically, half of every article was dedicated to corruption and half to education. Articles were created from content available on the Lexis/Nexis database. Subjects. At the University of Texas, 44 undergraduate students enrolled in three different journalism copyediting courses finished the first experiment during the Spring 1998 semester. The cover story conveyed to students was that the project scrutinized political writing techniques and their consequences on newspaper readers. Upon the studys conclusion, students earned extra credit in the course. The students were randomly assigned to the four conditions. Each participant read one news article about a candidate. Dependent variables and measures. A combination of open- and closedended items was implemented to afford subjects enough freedom to answer questions comprehensively, yet provide the researchers with multiple forms of data. To ensure that subjects would not skim through the articles, the first question asked participants to identify certain misspelled words that were intentionally inserted into each story. Although not expected, this question appeared to steer attention away from the true nature of the experiment because some subjects later indicated that they thought the study was examining the ability of students to pinpoint misspelled words, thereby strengthening the validity of our results. The second question asked subjects to write their own headlines for the articles. Patterned after a question in the McCombs et al. (1997) study of attributes, the third item stated, Suppose that your friend came to see you from another state and he doesnt know about the candidate. How would you describe the candidate to your friend? In the second half of the questionnaire, six semantic differential scales were incorporated to measure whether the two candidate attributes became salient in subjects minds. Three items measured the perceived qualifications of candidates. Those items asked whether the candidate was informed, knowledgeable, and intelligent. The other three items gauged subject impressions of the candidates personality. Those three items asked whether the candidate was honest, sincere, and trustworthy. Three demographic questions, situated at the end of the questionnaire, were used as control variables: gender, race, and age.

419

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999 Second Experiment

Compelling arguments and affective measures. For measuring the effects of various substantive attribute combinations on overall salience and affective salience, another group of subjects was exposed to the same four conditions (N = 60). Again, a fictitious political candidate (in a different context) was created out of real news articles drawn from the Lexis/Nexis database. The same attributes (education and corruption) were emphasized for the four conditions. The attributes were again defined on two levels: high and low. Subjects. At the University of Texas, 60 undergraduate students enrolled in a communication theory course completed the second experiment during the Spring 1998 semester. The procedures followed in the first experiment were employed in the second experiment as well. Dependent variables and measures. In the first part of the questionnaire, overall salience was measured through a set of open-ended items. The same open-ended questions used in the first experiment were used in the second experiment. Affective salience was not measured by the open-ended items, however, because pretests revealed it was too subjective for independent coders to evaluate reliably. In the second half of the questionnaire, seven semantic differential scales were employed to measure overall and affective salience. Of the seven questions, four were applied to measure the candidates overall salience: whether the candidate was prominent, significant, important, and well known. The other three questions were used to calibrate the candidates affective salience: whether the candidate was boring, appealing, and exciting. The same three demographic questions were also used as control variables in the second experiment. Data analysis. For the first experiment, a perceived education index and a perceived corruption index were formulated to gauge attribute to attribute salience. In particular, the three questions measuring candidate qualifications formed the perceived education index, and the three personality trait questions comprised the perceived corruption index. To assess the reliability of the scales, Cronbachs alpha was computed. The figures were .70 for the education index and .89 for the corruption index. For the second experiment, two indices were created: one for overall salience and one for affective salience. Again, the four salience questions constituted the overall perceived salience index and the three affective items formed the perceived affective salience index. To determine the reliability of

420

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

Table 1 Perceived Corruption by Candidate Education and Corruption Source of Variation Main effects Corruption Education Interaction Sum of Squares 26.403 0.461 1.634 df 1 1 1 F Test 44.732 0.781 2.768 Significance .000 .382 .104

Low Education M Low corruption High corruption 2.13 4.12 n 10 11

High Education M 2.78 3.97 n 9 12

Note. N = 42. Mean scores are from closed-ended responses. Higher numbers indicate higher levels of perceived candidate corruption.

the scales, Cronbachs alpha was calculated once again. The corresponding figures were .81 for the salience index and .66 for the affective index. Finally, cross-tabs were employed to measure the impact of demographics (e.g., gender, age, race).

Results
First Experiment
There were no significant results for the perceived education index. That is, manipulating a candidates corruption and educational characteristics in news stories did not affect peoples perceptions of that candidates qualifications. However, Table 1 reports significant findings for opinions about a candidates personality (i.e., whether the candidate was corrupt). In this case, a main effect for corruption was observed. The F test showed significant effects of a candidates corruptness on subjects perceived salience of this attribute, significant beyond the .001 level. So the attribute of corruption became prominent in respondents minds. In particular, subject opinions about a candidates corruption level matched the medias portrayal of that politician. For example, when news articles described a corrupt candidate, subjects believed that person was corrupt. Conversely, when news articles described an ethical candidate, participants thought he was ethical. There were no main effects for education and no interaction existed between education and corruption. Controlling for age, education, and race did not produce different results.

421

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999

Table 2 Perceived Corruption by Candidate Education and Corruption Source of Variation Main effects Corruption Education Interaction Sum of Squares 17.281 0.015 0.000 df 1 1 1 F Test 71.179 0.059 0.000 Significance .000 .810 .990

Low Education M Low corruption High corruption 1.29 2.86 n 7 6

High Education M 1.33 2.90 n 7 10

Note. N = 30 (N is smaller because responses that did not discuss the attribute were not counted). Mean scores are from open-ended responses. Higher numbers indicate higher levels of perceived corruption.

The open-ended questions that were integrated into the statistical analysis requested a written account of the candidate and a headline for a story about the candidate. In the initial experiment, the attribute of education was present in 25% of subject descriptions and the attribute of corruption was present in 68% of subject descriptions. Holstis intercoder reliability figures for these attributes were 100% and 91%, respectively. On the coder semantic differential scales, Holstis intercoder reliability figures for those two items were 83% (education measure) and 100% (corruption measure). An ANOVA test was performed to scrutinize those open-ended scales. Table 2 displays those data. Similar to the closed-ended scales, no significant findings were discovered for perceived education. Specifically, participants typically felt candidates were equally qualified, regardless of how they were portrayed in news stories with respect to education and corruption. In contrast, significant results for perceived corruption were evident. Comparable to the closed-ended scales, these findings confirm a main effect for corruption. In relation to attribute salience, corruption seems to make a difference. The F test was significant beyond the .001 level.

Second Experiment
The second experiment addressed the issue of compelling arguments: Will media attention toward candidate attributes influence the perceived overall salience of the candidate? Moreover, a second research question asked whether these attributes influence affective opinions of candidates. In this

422

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

Table 3 Perceived Salience by Candidate Education and Corruption Source of Variation Main effects Corruption Education Interaction Sum of Squares 2.235 1.460 0.325 df 1 1 1 F Test 3.349 2.187 0.325 Significance .073 .145 .488

Low Education M Low corruption High corruption 3.29 3.05 n 14 16

High Education M 3.75 3.22 n 15 15

Note. N = 60. Mean scores are from closed-ended responses. Higher numbers indicate higher levels of perceived salience.

experiment, the objective was to assess the effect of attribute salience on object salience. The results for the overall salience index are presented in Table 3. No strong main effects were detected. Education did not yield any effects and corruption only had a slight impact. The F test for corruption approached 2 significance (p = .07). Furthermore, no interaction between education and corruption was found. Controlling for age, education, and race did not generate different results. For the affective index, another ANOVA was performed to assess main effects and a possible interaction. The results for the affective index are exhibited in Table 4. Education produced a significant main effect (p = .005), whereas corruption approached significance (p = .07) for the affective index. Thus, respondents tended to find educated candidates more appealing than uneducated candidates. No interaction between attributes was noticed.

Discussion
Interpretation and Recommendations
The data analyses uncovered some interesting findings that command further discussion. First, the data appear to show that a second level of agenda setting does exist because manipulation of candidate attributes influenced subject perceptions of politicians in many instances. However, this was not an unqualified media effect. Future research is needed to clarify the role of different attributes, both in the realm of attribute salience and in the domain

423

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999

Table 4 Perceived Affective Salience by Candidate Education and Corruption Source of Variation Main effects Corruption Education Interaction Sum of Squares 2.265 5.766 0.046 df 1 1 1 F Test 3.361 8.557 0.069 Significance .072 .005 .794

Low Education M Low corruption High corruption 3.17 2.83 n 14 16

High Education M 3.84 3.40 n 15 15

Note. N = 60. Mean scores are from closed-ended responses. Higher numbers indicate higher levels of perceived affective salience. In other words, higher values indicate which combination of candidate attributes made the candidate more appealing to participants.

of compelling arguments. Indeed, the findings suggest that media attention toward certain attributes appears to shift public opinion of political candidates, whereas attention toward other attributes does not. Both experiments demonstrated that the attribute of corruptness shaped perceptions of public salience. In terms of attribute to attribute salience, subjects were highly focused on the characteristic of corruptness or honesty in the fictitious candidate. In fact, the complementary evidence granted by the ANOVA tests run on the open-ended and closed-ended items in the first experiment reflect how robust this finding was. If this is a generalizable finding, members of the public may be more inclined to identify this personality trait in media coverage of politicians. This substantiates previous work that has found personality traits to be critical candidate attributes (McCombs et al., 1997; Weaver et al., 1981). As far as object salience is concerned, corruption had a slight impact on affective and overall salience by approaching statistical significance in both cases. This can probably be explained because participants were only given one article to read about the fictitious candidate, possibly not enough to stimulate a strong overall opinion of him. The fact that corruption even had a minimal impact on overall and affective salience lends credence to the compelling arguments hypothesis. Future empirical investigations should explore whether multiple exposures to candidate personality traits would translate into statistically significant increases in salience. The limited influence of the education attribute in the first experiment indicates that other dimensions of candidate qualifications are probably more visible in the public consciousness. However, this does not mean that

424

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

qualifications were not central to overall public attitudes toward candidates. Indeed, findings in the second experiment suggest that a candidates education level induced changes in the appeal of that candidate. Therefore, education appears to be altering affective candidate salience without public recognition of its presence. Of course, its lack of power on overall candidate salience implies that influencing affective salience does not necessarily provoke fluctuations in general object salience. Specifically, people do not always think the most appealing candidate is the most prominent. Future research should ascertain what other properties of candidate qualifications promote interest in political figures. In the second experiment, the attribute of corruptness did not engender as strong of an effect as in the first experiment. In the first experiment, a main effect for corruptness is significant at the .001 level. In the second experiment, corruptness only approaches significance both in the overall and the affective salience indices (at the .07 level). Thus, in the context of attribute to attribute salience, corruptness seems to be a very meaningful attribute. In contrast to education, it appears that people are aware of candidate personality traits (e.g., corruption) yet they are not as crucial in their overall impressions of politicians. Subjects realized that candidates were corrupt or honest, but other forces also seem to guide peoples evaluations of candidates because the effect on general candidate salience was not as large. On the other hand, the influence of corruption nearly attained statistical significance in both the overall and affective salience indices, hinting that more exposures might have evoked a significant effect.

Implications
In conclusion, scholars need to examine the role of other attributes both at the substantive and affective levels. Some of the principal findings in the current project were that perceptions of candidate personality traits (their corruption level) mirror media portrayals of those traits. Meanwhile, perceptions of candidate qualifications (candidate education level) do not appear to conform to media depictions of those qualifications. Alternatively, media emphasis on candidate qualifications seems to make candidates more appealing, whereas media convergence on personality traits does not. Therefore, candidate personality traits have a stronger impact on attribute to attribute salience, but candidate qualifications seem to wield greater influence on overall judgments of politicians. As a result, other candidate attributes, such as speaking ability, external appearance, race, gender, and issue positionalong with the traits of the current experiments, education and corruptnessneed to be investigated to

425

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999

help us better understand how people form opinions about public figures. It additionally behooves us to consider attributes in the context of multiple candidates because most elections have many people fighting for the same political office, especially in the early stages when mass media coverage is vital to candidate survival. Although the current study centered on political candidates, it is imperative that we broaden this research to include issue attributes in experimental settings. In this spirit, it is hoped that the current study can function as a springboard for future intellectual discourse by contributing to the ongoing elaboration of second level agenda setting.

Notes
1. The authors would like to thank Dr. Jim Tankard, Dr. Maxwell McCombs, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. 2. Affective salience was not measured in the open-ended items because reliable figures could not be reached in pretests due to low intercoder reliability. Respondents were asked questions regarding the affective salience of candidates (e.g., whether they found candidates appealing or unappealing). Intercoder reliability for the two openended items that dealt with overall salience was below the standard 80%: 70% and 60%, respectively. Consequently, open-ended items were not included in this stage of the data analysis.

References
Ansolabehere, S., Behr, R., & Iyengar, S. (1993). The media game, American politics in the television age. Toronto, Canada: Maxwell Macmillian. Behr, R., & Iyengar, S. (1985). Television news, real-world cues and changes in the public agenda. Public Opinion Quarterly, 58(4), 479-508. Bryan, K. (1997). Political communication and agenda setting in lowinvolvement races. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Dearing, J. W., & Rogers, D. M. (1996). Communication concept 6: Agenda setting. London: Sage. Funkhouser, G. R. (1973). The issues of the sixties: An exploratory study of the dynamics of public opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37, 72-75. Ghanem, S. (1997). Filling in the tapestry. In M. E. McCombs, D. L. Shaw, & D. Weaver (Eds.), Communication & democracy (pp. 3-14). London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Graber, D. (1972). Personal qualities in presidential images: The contribution of the press. Midwest Journal of Political Science, 16, 46-76. Iyengar, S. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

426

Kiousis et al. Candidate Image Attributes

Iyengar, S., Peters, M. D., & Kinder, D. R. (1982). Experimental demonstrations of the not-so-minimal consequences of television news programs. American Political Science Review, 76(4), 848-858. Lopez-Escobar, E., Llamas, J. P., & McCombs, M. E. (1997, September). Media and intermedia effects on candidate image building: Second level agenda setting effects in 1996 Spanish general elections. Paper presented for WAPOR conference, Edinburgh, Scotland. Lopez-Escobar, E., Llamas, J. P., McCombs, M. E., & Lennon, F. R. (1998). Two levels of agenda setting among advertising and news in the 1995 Spanish elections. Political Communication, 15, 225-238. McCombs, M. E. (1995, September). The media outside and the pictures in our heads: Surveying the second dimension of agenda setting. Paper presented at New Trends in Communication, a conference of the Universita Degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Roma, Italy. McCombs, M. E. (1997, August). New frontiers in agenda setting: Agendas of attributes and frames. Paper presented to the Association for Education and Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago. McCombs, M. E., & Estrada, G. (1997). The news media and the pictures in our heads. In S. Iyengar & R. Reeves (Eds.), Do the media govern? Politicians, voters, and reporters in America (pp. 237-247). London: Sage. McCombs, M. E., & Evatt, D. (1995). Issues and attributes: Exploring a new dimension in agenda setting. Communicacion y Sociedad, 8(1), 7-32. McCombs, M. E., Llamas, J. P., Lopez-Escobar, E., & Rey, F. (1997). Candidate images in Spanish elections: Second level agenda setting effects. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 4, 703-717. McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176-187. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1993). The evolution of agenda setting research: Twenty-five years in the marketplace of ideas. Journal of Communication, 43, 58-67. Nimmo, D., & Savage, R. L. (1976). Candidates and their images: Concepts, methods, and findings. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear. Rogers, E. M., & Dearing, J. W. (1988). Agenda-setting research: Where has it been? Where is it going? In J. A. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 11 (pp. 555-594). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sigel, R. S. (1964). Effects of partisanship on the perception of political candidates. Public Opinion Quarterly, 28, 483-496. Takeshita, T., & Mikami, S. (1995). How did mass media influence the voters choice in the 1993 general election in Japan? A study in agenda-setting. Keio Communication Review, 17, 27-41. Tankard, J., Hendrickson, L., Silberman, J., Bliss, K., & Ghanem, S. (1991, August). Media frames: Approaches to conceptualization and measurement. Paper presented to the Association for Education and Journalism and Mass Communication, Boston. Wanta, W. (1988). The effects of dominant photographs: An agenda setting experiment. Journalism Quarterly, 65, 107-111.

427

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH August 1999

Wanta, W. (1997). The public and national agenda: How people learn about important issues. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Weaver, D. H. (1977). Political issues and voter need for orientation. In D. L. Shaw & M. E. McCombs (Eds.), The emergence of American political issues: The agenda setting function of the press (pp. 107-119). St. Paul, MN: West. Weaver, D. H. (1998). Framing reconsidered. Communication Theory & Methodology Division of AEJMC. Weaver, D. H., Graber, D. A., McCombs, M. E., & Eyal, C. H. (1981). Media agenda-setting in a presidential election: Issues, images, and interest. New York: Praeger.

428