media agenda setting

1
Introduction
Arnold (2009) articulated that Agenda setting means the ability of the mass media to bring issues
to the attention of the public and, related, of politicians. The basic claim is that as the media
devote more attention to an issue, the public perceives the issue as important. When the media
take up a specific topic - such as climate change, or manager bonuses- they make us think about
it Arnold (2009) further claim that since the mass media are a major source of political
information for voters, the media can shape public opinion by bringing particular issues to the
forefront of their reporting
Balmas Sheafer (2010:204) postulated that agenda setting describes the ability of the news media
to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda. That is, if a news item is covered
frequently and prominently the audience will regard the issue as more important. Agenda-setting
theory was formally developed by Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw in a study on the
1968 American presidential election.
When mass media emphasize a topic, the audience public receiving the message will consider
this topic to be important Cohen( 2009); McCombs & Shaw, 2013). Numerous studies all over
the world established firm correlations between media and public priorities Dearing & Rogers,
(2006). Within political science, too, agenda setting is a frequently used model. Political
scientists draw on it to describe and explain how political actors determine their priorities, give
attention to or ignore issues, and do, or do not, take decisions or a stance concerning these topics
Political scientists’ agenda setting research focuses mainly on endogenous political factors: The
presence of issues on the agenda of a certain political actor is attributed to the influence of
another political actor e.g., the president or to issues on the same agenda in a preceding period
Both agenda setting traditions, in communications and in political science, developed separately.
Timidly starting in the mid-1980s, scholars began to concentrate on the media and the political
agenda. They scrutinized whether and how (public and) media agendas, previously the focus
only of communications researchers, interact with political agendas, formerly the exclusive
playground of political scientists. During the past decade, students embarked, with increasing
incidence, upon solving the media and political agenda setting puzzle.

2
Definition of concepts
Media
Business dictionary .com (online) define media as a Communication channels through which
news, entertainment, education, data, or promotional messages are disseminated. Media includes
every broadcasting and narrowcasting medium such as newspapers, magazines, TV, radio,
billboards, direct mail, telephone, fax, and internet. Media is the plural of medium and can take a
plural or singular verb, depending on the sense intended
Agenda
The set of goals of an ideological group In this context it is often used in a negative sense. It is
also used as above, the topics under discussion by a government or a list, plan, outline, or the
like, of things to be done, matters to be acted or voted upon. Dictionary .com (online)
Agenda-setting theory
Describes the ability of the news media to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda
That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently the audience will regard the issue
as more important Princen, Sebastiaan. (2007)
Mass media
Mass media is the primary means of communication used to reach the vast majority of the
general public. The most common platforms for mass media are newspapers, magazines, radio,
television, and the internet. The general public typically relies on the mass media to provide
information regarding political issues, social issues, entertainment, and news in pop
culturestudy.com (online)
Mass media theory

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is the study of how individuals and entities relay information through mass media to large
segments of the population at the same time. It is usually understood to relate to newspaper,
magazine, and book publishing, these mediums are used for disseminating information and news
Historical background of media agenda setting
The theory of agenda-setting can be traced to the first chapter of Walter Lippmann's 1922 book,
Public Opinion. In that chapter, The World outside the Pictures in Our Heads, Lippmann (1922)
argues that the mass media are the principal connection between events in the world and the
images in the minds of the public. Without using the term agenda-setting, Lippmann was writing
about what we today would call agenda-setting. Following Lippmann, in 1963, Cohen (1963)
observed that 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. The world will look
different to different people, Cohen continues, depending on the map that is drawn for them by
writers, editors, and publishers of the paper they read. As early as the 1960s, Cohen had
expressed the idea that later led to formalization of agenda-setting theory by McCombs and
Shaw (1993).
Though McCombs (1993) already had some interest in the field he was exposed to Cohen
(1963)'s work while serving as a faculty member at UCLA, and it was Cohen’s work that heavily
influenced him, and later Donald Shaw. The concept of agenda setting was launched by
McCombs and Shaw during the 1968 presidential election in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They
examined Lippmann’s idea of construction of the pictures in our heads by comparing the issues
on the media agenda with key issues on the undecided voters’ agenda. They found evidence of
agenda setting by identifying that salience of the news agenda is highly correlated to that of the
voter’s agenda.
A relatively unknown scholar named Funkhouser (1973) performed a study highly similar to
McCombs and Shaw’s around exactly the same time the authors were formalizing the theory. All
three scholars- McCombs, Shaw, and Funkhouser even presented their findings at the same

4
academic conference. Funkhouser’s article was published later than McCombs and Shaw’s, and
Funkhouser doesn’t receive as much credit as McCombs and Shaw for discovering agenda
setting. According to Everett Rogers, there are two main reasons for this.[6] First, Funkhouser
didn’t formally name the theory. Second, Funkhouser didn’t pursue his research much past the
initial article. Rogers (1993) also suggests that Funkhouser was geographically isolated at
Stanford, cut off from interested researchers, whereas McCombs and Shaw had got other people
interested in agenda setting research
Three types of agenda-setting
Rogers and Dearing (1988) identify three types of agenda setting
1. Public agenda setting, in which the public's agenda is the dependent variable ,the traditional
hypothesis
2. Media agenda setting, in which the media's agenda is treated as the dependent variable agenda
building
3. Policy agenda setting, in which elite policy makers' agendas are treated as the dependent
variable political agenda setting
Agenda setting occurs through a cognitive process known as accessibility. Iyengar, (2010).
Indicated that Accessibility implies that the more frequently and prominently the news media
cover an issue, the more instances of that issue become accessible in audience's memories. When
respondents are asked what the most important problem facing the country is, they answer with
the most accessible news issue in memory, which is typically the issue the news media focused
on the most. Seelye (2005:63). The agenda-setting effect is not the result of receiving one or a
few messages but is due to the aggregate impact of a very large number of messages, each of
which a different content has but all of which deal with the same general issue.
Erbring, Goldenberg, Miller, Mass(2008:23) stipulated that media coverage in general and
agenda-setting in particular also has a powerful impact on what individuals think that other

5
people are thinking,] and hence they tend to allocate more importance to issues that have been
extensively covered by mass media. This is also called schemata theory an example of media
agenda setting the ignorance of international media when Nigeria was under attack by boko
haram, the mass media chose to focus on France terrorist attack
The role of media agenda setting and their influences
The agenda-setting influence of the news media is not limited to this initial step of focusing
public attention on a particular topic. McCombs (2007) stated that the media also influence the
next step in the communication process, our understanding and perspective on the topics in the
news. If you think about the agenda in abstract terms, the potential for a broader view of media
influence on public opinion becomes very clear.
In the abstract, the items that define the agenda are objects. For all the agendas we have
discussed, the objects are public issues, but they could be other items or topics, such as the
agenda of political candidates during an election. The objects are the things on which the
attention of the media and the public are focused.
In turn, each of these objects has numerous attributes, those characteristics and traits that
describe the object. For each object there also is an agenda of attributes because when the media
and the public think and talk about an object, some attributes are emphasized, others are given
less attention, and many receive no attention at all. This agenda of attributes is another aspect of
the agenda-setting role of the news media.
To borrow Walter Lippmann’s phrase, “the pictures in our heads,” the agenda of issues or other
objects presented by the news media influence what the pictures in our heads are about. The
agenda of attributes presented for each of these issues, public figures, or other objects literally
influences the pictures themselves that we hold in mind. Images held by the public of political
candidates and other public figures are the most obvious examples of attribute agenda-setting by
the news media
Agenda-setting is one of the most influential theories on the media’s political influence Graber,
2005:490) While often focusing on the media’s impact on public opinion, another equally
important facet of agenda-setting theory has the media’s influence over the agendas of political

6
actors and policy makers as its central object of investigation. Scholars use the term ‘political
agenda-setting’ and in some instances ‘agenda building’ to refer to the transfer of media
priorities to political priorities Graber (2005:479). Despite the growing popularity and
importance of political agenda-setting research, it has seldom been conceptualized as part of or
related to the mediatization of politics
Political agenda setting and its effect to ordinary citizens
Political agenda-setting studies share a strong empirical focus. They deal mainly with testing the
effect of the media agenda on the political agenda in different contexts and circumstances Van
Noije, Oegema, & Kleinnijenhuis, (2008:38). Strömbäck and Nord (2006) articulated that
journalists retain the most power over the content and framing of news while other studies
document how mediatization of news content is stronger in the US compared to Europe
Each political actor has its own semi-independent agenda that is composed according to its own
logic and dynamic. Furthermore, most agendas can be operationalized in different ways. For
instance, the agenda of a political party can be measured by coding its manifesto, an extensive
document that can be considered as a list of issue priorities Walgrave &Lefevere, (2010).
Johnson(2013:3) argued that agenda setting has entered a sixth stage of development ,he further
stated that agenda setting is nan online world , in this stage research have adapted agenda
research to the new media landscape as well as addressed new areas created by this changing
landscape. This model of political agenda melding was tested in the 2008 presidential election
between democratic Barack Obama and republican john macCain. Fortner and flacker stipulated
that the first level agenda setting effects on the public’s focus attention and its perception of what
the most important issues of the day are , there is second level of agenda setting effect attributr
agenda setting ,if we think of the items on the agenda at the first level as a set of objective then it
is clear that these objects have a certain attributr that are emphasized to varying degree on the
media’s and the public’s agendas . when news stories report on an object an issue a public figure
or whatever ,some aspects of the object are emphasized , some are mentioned less frequently .
Agenda setting changed the attention from what to “how” media effects work at institutional and
macro-social level. Although, individual autonomy is important, like uses and gratifications
theory suggests, we often pick and choose what issues to explore and evaluate from the pool of

7
“important” issues determined by the media. Of these, the more salient are more likely to be
processed and accepted as important. Specifically, people find most important those issues
covered by the media most often. The more media coverage a topic receives, the more salient it
becomes, and the more audience attention is funnelled toward it.
Agenda setting has evolved over time from a “issue salience” theory to a more complex
proposition with overlaps with priming/framing theory. In the later elaborations, agenda setting
emerged as multifaceted explanatory mechanism, which takes into account the representation
and content of the media coverage as well as the corresponding audience attitudes about these
issues
New statement of agenda setting
Media may not only tell us what to think about, they may also tell us how and what to think
about it, and perhaps even what to do about it Media may also affect behavior, for example,
influencing sentiment about the economy, about travel Expanding on what the original scholarly
articles explicate on the Agenda Setting Theory, Griffin states “the mass media have the ability
to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda Griffin,( 2012). This
quote by Griffin points out the power of mass media on its ability to influence the public agenda.
It is clear the Griffin gathered information from many scholarly sources in order to synthesize a
thorough textbook chapter that brings different articles together into a cohesive and
knowledgeable textbook chapter. In this textbook chapter, Griffin thoroughly highlighted the
past, present, and future of the Agenda Setting Theory, as well as the two different levels of the
Agenda Setting Theory. These comprehensible sections are dedicated to exploring the theory in
detail and obtaining knowledge that goes far beneath the surface of this theory. In regards to the
past of the Agenda Setting Theory, Griffin states “McCombs and Shaw’s agenda-setting theory
represents a back-tothe-basics approach to mass communication research” Griffin (2012).
Griffin further explains from this quote how this theory was simple to understand, very able to
be tested, and could be very practical and useful in research on mass media and society. He then

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talks about the present use of the Agenda Setting Theory and how the theory has developed two
distinct levels that work to explain the theory.
Agenda setting in the 21st century
Agenda setting in the 21st century has an impact to larger population looking at the current use of
social medias such as twitter facebook to set an agenda Politicians can communicate with
citizens in two ways. They can take the indirect route by funneling their thoughts to citizens
through the news media, which may alter them in unanticipated ways. Alternatively, politicians
are increasingly turning to digital media to communicate directly with citizens, cutting the news
media out of the equation entirely. The rise in popularity of such disintermediated or “one-step
flow” communication pathways Bennett & Iyengar, (2008:54) introduces intriguing new
possibilities for well-known political communication theories
Agenda-setting is one of the best-substantiated theories in communication research
(McCombs,2005). Its original formulation assumed the existence of a more or less monolithic
news media whose decisions about story salience would be reflected in perceptions of issue
importance among audience members. Recent work on agenda-setting in the digital age has
continued to treat news media as central
Green-Pedersen and Stubager (2010), Vliegenthart and Walgrave (2011) found party
characteristics in multi-party systems to be a third set of contingency factors. They showed that
the political influence of the media depends on parties institutional position opposition versus
government and the own issue agendas of the parties. Opposition parties react more on media
cues than government parties and parties in general tend to embrace mediatized issues to a larger
extent when they ‘own’ these issues. In a recent study
We don’t claim that these three factors have been completely ignored by mediatization scholars
so far. We rather argue that they should be placed more center stage in a way that mediatization
becomes a more nuanced and empirically testable theory. More in general, the idea of
contingency that gradually has become an integrated part of agenda-setting research has too

9
often been downplayed in mediatization studies. There are accounts that develop the notion of
contingent mediatization, such as Esser and Matthes’ (2013: 177) distinction between the
“power- and publicity-gaining” and the “policy- and decision-based” aspects of politics, where
the former induces stronger mediatization. This way of reasoning is in line with the distinction
made in political agenda setting between ‘symbolic’ and ‘substantial’ agenda’s. In our view,
such perspectives deserve more research attention, both because they nuance the mediatization
thesis and because they represent interesting opportunities for integration with similar
conceptualizations in political agenda-setting
Lexicon-based approaches have a long history in the agenda-setting literature Neuman et al.,
(2014);Tedesco, ( 2005). It is a fitting approach to examine one-step agenda-setting in social
media because of the ready availability of an extensive textual record of communication between
citizens and politicians. While previous studies have inferred agenda-setting processes on the
basis of time-lagged correlations between source and target texts . Neuman et al., (2014;
Tedesco, 2001, 2005), social media offer key affordances that render such inferences
unnecessary.
When sources politicians in this case post to their social media accounts, followers can append
comments directly to the original messages. Therefore, any correspondence in subject matter
between original messages and replies is assumed to be the result of a top-down agenda-setting
process. Of course, citizens who follow politicians on social media may also attempt to steer the
agenda toward their own concerns, especially because they know that attaching their comments
to messages posted by well-known individuals is an effective means of attracting attention
Social media have had a dynamic effect on the very nature of communication (Sutton,
2012:720). One social media platform that has played a significant role in the new frontier of
communication is Twitter. As a microblogging platform (Java, Song, Finin, & Tseng, 2007:38),
Twitter’s primary purpose is the quick dissemination of news, innovative ideas, and personal
opinion (Clavio & Kian, 2010:485), through the use of 140- character messages known as
tweets. In just over 6 years of existence, Twitter has become the second most used social media
site (Barrow, 2012)

10
Conclusion
Media agenda setting play the most important role in making sure that the public is informed of
what is happening around them; Agenda-setting studies typically show variability in the
correlation between media and public agenda. To explain differences in the correlation,
McCombs and colleagues created the concept of need for orientation, which describes individual
differences in the desire for orienting cues and background information.
Two concepts: relevance and uncertainty, define an individual's need for orientation. Relevance
suggests that an individual will not seek news media information if an issue is not personally
relevant. Hence, if relevance is low, people will feel the need for less orientation. There are many
issues in our country that are just not relevant to people, because they do not affect us. Many
news organizations attempt to frame issues in a way that attempts to make them relevant to its
audiences.
This is their way of keeping their viewership/readership high. Level of uncertainty is the second
defining condition of need for orientation. Frequently, individuals already have all the
information that they desire about a topic. Their degree of uncertainty is low. When issues are of
high personal relevance and uncertainty low, the need to monitor any changes in those issues will
be present and there will be a moderate the need for orientation. If at any point in time
viewers/readers have high relevance and high uncertainty about any type of issue/event/election
campaign there was a high need for orientation.

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