Mass Media and Society

Agenda Setting

Nicoleta Corbu, PhD

Bucharest, December 18, 2017

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 A paradigm shift
Media effects start being conceived as indirect and on long-time
periods
Initial presuppositions:
1. Media bring into the public’s attention a subject/issue/
topic
2. Media offer a volume of information about the subject
3. Information in the media leads to forming and/or
changing attitudes
4. Attitudes thus formed influence behavior

Agenda-setting proposes a focus on the first two stages.

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Elaboration of the theory
The ’50s, Kurt and Gladys Lang:
Mass media focus attention toward some things
They build the public image of politicians
They constantly transmit messages to people, suggesting what
they should think about, know about, have feelings,
emotions about

In 1963, Bernard Cohen (The Press and Foreign Policy) says: “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.”

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Hypothesis testing – Chapel Hill Study

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw study the

presidential campaign in 1968
The research hypotheses referred to:

a) media capacity to set the agenda of priorities of the

moment
b) a causal relationship between the attention media pay to
events and their perceived importance

The study showed a very strong correlation between the

importance media attach to some (major) topics and
voters’ opinions regarding those topics.

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Charlotte Study

Objectives:

To determine the source people take their information from

To find the criteria that lead to a hierarchy of information
To determine the persistence (in time) of people’s perceptions of the
importance of events
To determine the importance of the agenda-setting effect for the
American political life

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Media create the public agenda
1. Data showed a strong correlation between media agenda and voters
agenda. The strongest correlation concerned people who watched TV
the most. Television constitutes the main source of information.

2. There are insignificant correlations between voters agenda and the

content of election advertising. This kind of advertising has the effect of
orienting feelings, creating positive or negative feelings toward a
candidate (the sentimental orientation of the voters)

3. There is a strong correlation between the agenda of people who talked

to each other a lot, but that was not true for television. Interpersonal
communication has a less important role than the power of media in
setting the hierarchy of the importance of events.

4. The causal relationship goes from the media to the voters.

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Agenda building
Gladys & Kurt Lang – the mechanism through which the public agenda is set:

1. The press highlights a certain topic/subject

2. Different problems need different treatments from the media, in terms
of quantity, frequency, and news style
3. Events are framed in a familiar scheme, so that they can be understood,
recognized, and interpreted
4. The press imposes a language, a vocabulary according to the framing of
events
5. Media relate the events they highlighted with symbols, secondary
images, that can be immediately recognized and have a special weight
6. The agenda building process accelerates when credible personalities
start talking about the event/topic

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 How to measure the importance
on a topic on the media agenda?
Kiousis (2004)

• Attention – number of mentions – the higher the number, the higher the
importance (visibility);

• Proeminence – the positioning of a piece of news – the more privileged, the

more important (i.e. headlines, promo news, etc.)

• Valence – the type of emotional value attached to the news story (positive
or negative) – negative emotional load => more attention + conflict

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Agenda setting moderators
Who moderates the agenda setting effects? (the intensity of the effect)
• Contextual moderator – type of subject – obtrusive (people could have direct
access to the issue)/unobtrusive (people could not have direct access to the
issue). Media influence is higher for unobtrusive topics

• Individual moderator – need for orientation: relevance (personal intrest for a

topic) and uncertainty (level of knowledge about a topic) – the higher the
level of interest, and the lower the level of knowledge about the topic, the
higher the need for orientation => the highe rthe media influence

• Other moderators: emotional involvement, source credibility, etc.

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Ramifications of the theory

• First level agenda setting

• Second level agenda setting (framing)
• Priming effect
• Third level agenda setting (network agenda setting)
• Agenda melding

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Priming effect
Shanto Iyengar (Yale University) and collaborators (Peters, Kinder),
develop the agenda setting model through two new concepts:
framing and priming

Priming effect - By calling attention to some matters while

ignoring others, television news influences the standards by
which governments, presidents, policies, and candidates for
public office are judged. Priming refers to changes in the
standards that people use to make political evaluations.
Explanation: Attention is highly selective => people notice
only particular features of special consequence => the
impressions we form of presidents tend to be organized
around a few central themes
NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations
MA in Communication and Advertising
 Framing effect

Framing effect - how an issue is characterized in news reports

can have an influence on how it is understood by
audiences. The sociological foundations of framing were
laid by Goffman (1974) and others who assumed that
individuals cannot understand the world fully and
constantly struggle to interpret their life experiences and
to make sense of the world around them. In order to
efficiently process new information, Goffman argues,
individuals therefore apply interpretive schemas or
‘‘primary frameworks’’.

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Frames
Generic frames
responsibility frame
conflict frame
morality frame
human interest frame
economic consequences frame

Specific frames – specific for a specific topic

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Third level agenda setting

“The news not only tells us what to think and how to think, but
also determines how we associate different messages to
conceptualize social reality” (Guo, 2016, p.3).

An associative network model of memory > The way media

associate the objects and attributes in presenting various
topics will influence the public’s cognitive network

The information bundles are transferred to the public agenda

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Agenda melding

“the personal agendas of individuals vis-à-vis their

community and group affiliations.“

People join groups => they adopt the agenda of the

group

No space limitations (in some cases – no time

limitations)

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Papers
Presentation of the problem
Literature review
Methodology section (research questions, group target, method etc.)
Findings (quotations)
Discussion
Conclusions
Reflections (individual)
References
Interview guide
Transcripts of interviews (individual)

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising
 Presentation
15-20 minutes each team
Each member should talk
Individual grading for the oral presentation (25% of the project grade)
Team grading for the written project (except for Interview transcripts and
Reflections) (75% of the project grade)
Could use ppt / prezi / handouts
Do not read from the ppt / prezi / handouts

Projects: January 15th, 17.00 – 20.00 (final grades: January 17th)

Exam: January 22nd, 18.00 – 19.30

NUPSPA, College of Communication and Public Relations

MA in Communication and Advertising