1. The Dynamics of Political Communication Chapter 6 Setting and Building the Agenda
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2. What is Agenda-Setting?
Bernard Cohen on the press (1963): “It 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." An agenda is an issue or event that is perceived at a particular point in time as high in social or political importance. Agenda-setting is “a process through which the mass media communicate the relative importance of various issues and events to the public” (Rogers & Dearing, 1988, p. 555).
What are some important issues that you haven’t heard discussed much on the news?
How might that lack of coverage affect the political attention they get?
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3. What do we know about Agenda-Setting?
Salience is perceived importance; by allocating space or time to certain issues, the media increases their salience
To support agenda-setting theory, data must show:
A relationship or correlation between the media agenda and public agenda
That it works across different issues and contexts
That media cause changes in citizens’ agendas
More than 425 studies of agenda-setting have been conducted, and the bulk of the data supports the theory
Influential study: Iyengar & Kinder (1987, 2010) demonstrated the impact of television news on perceptions of the most important problems facing the nation
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4. How Does Agenda-Setting Work?
“Agenda setting does not operate everywhere, on everyone, and always” (Rogers & Dearing, 1988, p. 569)
Two ways it can work:
Media coverage cues a heuristic decision-making rule (short-circuited processing)
Personal concern for issue leads individual to read more news stories on the topic and judge importance (systematic processing)
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5. a mOdEL OF Agenda-Setting
Personal Experience and Interpersonal Communication
Gatekeepers & Major Events
Media Agenda
Public Agenda
Policy Agenda
In interpreting this model, what constraints do you see that the media agenda may be limited by?
Real World Indicators of Issue Importance
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6. Wrinkles in Agenda-Setting: The Power of Context
When media effects depend on other factors, those factors moderate or help determine when media are influential and when they are less important.
Key conditions that moderate agenda-setting effects:
News play – lead stories have stronger influence
Nature of issue – rapid onset issues (e.g., terrorist attack) differ from slow-onset
Partisan media
Can be good if it allows a variety of agendas to take hold, reducing the ability of a handful of media to set one agenda
Problematic when it merely reinforces existing beliefs
© 2018 Taylor & Francis

7. Consequences of Agenda-Setting
5-step process for agenda-setting’s influence on voting:
Individuals can’t pay close attention to everything that happens in politics
Rather than trying to analyze everything, people rely on the most accessible information
The media powerfully determine which issues come to mind via agenda-setting
Once the media set the agenda, they can prime voters
Priming can influence the way people vote
Priming is a psychological concept describing how a prior stimulus influences reactions to a subsequent message.
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8. Priming
Priming describes the impact of the media agenda on the criteria voters use to evaluate candidates
Example: If the most recent lead stories on the news pertain to the economy, news-viewing voters are primed to evaluate candidates on economic issues more than other issues and with more importance ascribed to those economic evaluations
What specifically do you recall about news coverage of Hillary Clinton prior to the election?
Did that coverage prime voters to evaluate her on any particular criterion or draw attention from other criteria?
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9. Agenda-Setting and Priming in Recent Elections
1992: Clinton campaign slogan “The economy, stupid” primed voters to focus on economic issues.
2008: Obama primed voters to focus on economic issues because:
The economy was in bad shape
Polls showed the public blamed the party in power (Republicans)
2016: News of terrorism exerted agenda- setting and priming effects on the eve of Republican primaries
2016: During the general election, Clinton and Trump tried to prime issues that would work to their advantage
Clinton: her temperament and foreign policy leadership
Trump: immigration and terrorism
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10. The Big Picture
Having now heard multiple perspectives, is the media’s ability to set the agenda ultimately a good thing or a bad thing for democracy?
Issues compete for attention, and their proponents – lobbyists, activists, and ideologues – must persuade policymakers to devote time and money
If an issue isn’t defined as a problem by the media or political elites, it can’t move through the stages necessary for a problem to be contemplated, considered, discussed, and solved
When media direct their focus on an issue, a policy agenda can diffuse throughout society, leading to policy change
Agenda-building plays an important role in democracy by providing a path by which media and political institutions can sow the seeds for social change
© 2018 Taylor & Francis

11. Agendas in the Digital Age
When have you seen social media content directly impact the mainstream media agenda?
Mainstream media are one among a variety of influence agents in the digital age
Conventional journalists no longer dictate the media agenda
Intermedia agenda-setting refers to the ways that particular media outlets set the agenda for other media and the news in general
E.g., influential news outlets like the New York Times affect the choices of other media outlets
Social media plays different roles in agenda-setting:
Provides pathways to construct partisan agendas as online messages reinforce salient beliefs and diffuse among like-minded others
Influences via opinion leaders in a networked two-step flow
Exerts a direct role in agenda-building (e.g., deluge of Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook posts protesting a breast cancer advocacy organization that ended their financing toward Planned Parenthood in 2012)
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12. Conclusions The media set the agenda
Agenda-setting has consequences, such as priming
Media agenda-setting operates in the context of a larger culture, society, and political environment
An issue does not remain on the agenda forever
In a digital age, conventional media have less impact on agenda building
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