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Agenda Setting Theory
Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw

MASS COMMUNICATION: MEDIA EFFECTS

Chapter 30
 Cultivation Theory
Intercultural Communication 
Chapter 30
 Cultivation Theory
Intercultural Communication 

Chapter Outline 9th Edition

  1. The original agenda: not what to think, but what to think about.
    1. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw regard Watergate as a perfect example of the agenda-setting function of the mass media.
    2. They believe that the mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to the public agenda.
    3. The basic theoretical issue had been addressed earlier by Walter Lippman, Bernard Cohen, and Theodore White.
  2. A theory whose time had come.
    1. Agenda-setting theory contrasted with the prevailing selective exposure hypothesis, reaffirming the power of the press while maintaining individual freedom.
    2. It represented a back-to-the-basics approach to mass communication research, with a focus on election campaigns.
    3. The hypothesis predicts a cause-and-effect relationship between media content and voter perception, particularly a match between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda later on.
  3. Media agenda and public agenda: a close match.
    1. In their groundbreaking study, McCombs and Shaw first measured the media agenda.
    2. They established the position and length of story as the primary criteria of prominence.
    3. They disregarded articles about matters extrinsic to the issues.
    4. The remaining stories were divided into five major issues and ranked in order of importance.
    5. Rankings provided by uncommitted voters aligned closely with the media’s agenda.
  4. What causes what?
    1. McCombs and Shaw believe that the hypothesized agenda-setting function of the media causes the correlation between the media and public ordering of priorities.
    2. However, correlation does not prove causation.
    3. To examine whether the media agenda and the public agenda might just reflect current events, Ray Funkhouser documented a situation in which there was a strong relationship between media and public agendas.  The twin agendas did not merely mirror reality, but Funkhouser failed to establish a chain of influence from the media to the public.
    4. Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder’s experimental study confirmed a cause-and-effect relationship between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda.
  5. Who is most affected by the media agenda?
    1. Those susceptible have a high need for orientation or index of curiosity.
    2. Need for orientation arises from high relevance and uncertainty. 
  6. Framing: transferring the salience of attributes.
    1. Throughout the last decade, McCombs has emphasized that the media influence the way we think.
    2. This process is called framing.
      1. A media frame is the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration.
      2. This definition suggests that media not only set an agenda, but also transfer the salience of specific attributes to issues, events, or candidates.
    3. There are two levels of agenda setting.
      1. The transfer of salience of an attitude object in the mass media’s pictures of the world to a prominent place among the pictures in our heads.
      2. The transfer of salience of a bundle of attributes the media associate with an attitude object to the specific features of the image in our minds.
  7. Not just what to think about, but how to think about it.
    1. Two national election studies suggest that framing works by altering pictures in the minds of people, and through the construction of an agenda with a cluster of related attributes, creating a coherent image.
    2. Salma Ghanem’s study of Texans tracked the second level of agenda setting and suggested that attribute frames have a compelling effect on the public.
    3. Framing is inevitable.
    4. McCombs and Shaw now contend that the media may not only tell us what to think about, they also may tell us who and what to think about it, and perhaps even what to do about it.
  8. Beyond opinion: the behavioral effect of the media’s agenda.
    1. Some findings suggest that media priorities affect people’s behavior.
    2. Nowhere is the behavioral effect of the media agenda more apparent than in the business of professional sports.
    3. McCombs claims that “Agenda setting the theory can also be agenda setting the business plan.”
  9. Who sets the agenda for the agenda setters?
    1. Some scholars target major news editors or “gatekeepers.”
    2. Others point to politicians and their spin doctors.
    3. Current thinking focuses on public relations professionals.
    4. “Interest aggregations” are becoming extremely important.
    5. The news in any one newspaper is partially influenced by the stories being covered by other news media, called intermedia agenda-setting.
  10. Will new media still shape the agenda, opinions, and behaviors?
    1. The power of agenda setting that McCombs and Shaw describe may be on the wane.
    2. The media may not have as much power to transfer the salience of issues or attributes as it does now as a result of users’ expanded content choices and control over exposure.
    3. Renita Coleman found that while the younger generation relies on the Internet, baby boomers favor TV, and the civic generation preferred newspapers.
    4. While these researchers discovered that the size of the agenda-setting effect is shrinking as people rely more on a variety of on-line news outlets, it certainly hasn’t vanished.
  11. Ethical reflections: Christians’ communitarian ethics.
    1. Christians believes that discovering the truth is still possible if we are willing to examine the nature of our humanity.
    2. Mutuality is the essence of humanness.
    3. His communitarian ethics establish civic transformation rather than objective information as the primary goal of the press.
    4. He insists that media criticism must be willing to reestablish the idea of moral right and wrong.
    5. Journalists have a social responsibility to promote the sacredness of life.
  12. Critique: are the effects too limited, the scope too wide?
    1. McCombs has considered agenda setting a theory of limited media effects.
    2. Framing reopens the possibility of a powerful effects model.
    3. Gerald Kosicki questions whether framing is relevant to agenda-setting research.
    4. Although it has a straightforward definition within agenda-setting theory, the popularity of framing as a construct in media studies has led to diverse and perhaps contradictory uses of the term.
    5. Agenda setting fares well according to the evaluation criteria for empirical research.

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resources. Read more













TEXT COMPARE

Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions
are available in
Resources by Type.
See list

New to Theory
Resources?
Find out more in this short
video overview (3:01).


Agenda Setting Theory
Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw

MASS COMMUNICATION: MEDIA EFFECTS

Chapter 30
 Cultivation Theory
Intercultural Communication 
Chapter 30
 Cultivation Theory
Intercultural Communication 

Chapter Outline 9th Edition

  1. The original agenda: not what to think, but what to think about.
    1. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw regard Watergate as a perfect example of the agenda-setting function of the mass media.
    2. They believe that the mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to the public agenda.
    3. The basic theoretical issue had been addressed earlier by Walter Lippman, Bernard Cohen, and Theodore White.
  2. A theory whose time had come.
    1. Agenda-setting theory contrasted with the prevailing selective exposure hypothesis, reaffirming the power of the press while maintaining individual freedom.
    2. It represented a back-to-the-basics approach to mass communication research, with a focus on election campaigns.
    3. The hypothesis predicts a cause-and-effect relationship between media content and voter perception, particularly a match between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda later on.
  3. Media agenda and public agenda: a close match.
    1. In their groundbreaking study, McCombs and Shaw first measured the media agenda.
    2. They established the position and length of story as the primary criteria of prominence.
    3. They disregarded articles about matters extrinsic to the issues.
    4. The remaining stories were divided into five major issues and ranked in order of importance.
    5. Rankings provided by uncommitted voters aligned closely with the media’s agenda.
  4. What causes what?
    1. McCombs and Shaw believe that the hypothesized agenda-setting function of the media causes the correlation between the media and public ordering of priorities.
    2. However, correlation does not prove causation.
    3. To examine whether the media agenda and the public agenda might just reflect current events, Ray Funkhouser documented a situation in which there was a strong relationship between media and public agendas.  The twin agendas did not merely mirror reality, but Funkhouser failed to establish a chain of influence from the media to the public.
    4. Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder’s experimental study confirmed a cause-and-effect relationship between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda.
  5. Who is most affected by the media agenda?
    1. Those susceptible have a high need for orientation or index of curiosity.
    2. Need for orientation arises from high relevance and uncertainty. 
  6. Framing: transferring the salience of attributes.
    1. Throughout the last decade, McCombs has emphasized that the media influence the way we think.
    2. This process is called framing.
      1. A media frame is the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration.
      2. This definition suggests that media not only set an agenda, but also transfer the salience of specific attributes to issues, events, or candidates.
    3. There are two levels of agenda setting.
      1. The transfer of salience of an attitude object in the mass media’s pictures of the world to a prominent place among the pictures in our heads.
      2. The transfer of salience of a bundle of attributes the media associate with an attitude object to the specific features of the image in our minds.
  7. Not just what to think about, but how to think about it.
    1. Two national election studies suggest that framing works by altering pictures in the minds of people, and through the construction of an agenda with a cluster of related attributes, creating a coherent image.
    2. Salma Ghanem’s study of Texans tracked the second level of agenda setting and suggested that attribute frames have a compelling effect on the public.
    3. Framing is inevitable.
    4. McCombs and Shaw now contend that the media may not only tell us what to think about, they also may tell us who and what to think about it, and perhaps even what to do about it.
  8. Beyond opinion: the behavioral effect of the media’s agenda.
    1. Some findings suggest that media priorities affect people’s behavior.
    2. Nowhere is the behavioral effect of the media agenda more apparent than in the business of professional sports.
    3. McCombs claims that “Agenda setting the theory can also be agenda setting the business plan.”
  9. Who sets the agenda for the agenda setters?
    1. Some scholars target major news editors or “gatekeepers.”
    2. Others point to politicians and their spin doctors.
    3. Current thinking focuses on public relations professionals.
    4. “Interest aggregations” are becoming extremely important.
    5. The news in any one newspaper is partially influenced by the stories being covered by other news media, called intermedia agenda-setting.
  10. Will new media still shape the agenda, opinions, and behaviors?
    1. The power of agenda setting that McCombs and Shaw describe may be on the wane.
    2. The media may not have as much power to transfer the salience of issues or attributes as it does now as a result of users’ expanded content choices and control over exposure.
    3. Renita Coleman found that while the younger generation relies on the Internet, baby boomers favor TV, and the civic generation preferred newspapers.
    4. While these researchers discovered that the size of the agenda-setting effect is shrinking as people rely more on a variety of on-line news outlets, it certainly hasn’t vanished.
  11. Ethical reflections: Christians’ communitarian ethics.
    1. Christians believes that discovering the truth is still possible if we are willing to examine the nature of our humanity.
    2. Mutuality is the essence of humanness.
    3. His communitarian ethics establish civic transformation rather than objective information as the primary goal of the press.
    4. He insists that media criticism must be willing to reestablish the idea of moral right and wrong.
    5. Journalists have a social responsibility to promote the sacredness of life.
  12. Critique: are the effects too limited, the scope too wide?
    1. McCombs has considered agenda setting a theory of limited media effects.
    2. Framing reopens the possibility of a powerful effects model.
    3. Gerald Kosicki questions whether framing is relevant to agenda-setting research.
    4. Although it has a straightforward definition within agenda-setting theory, the popularity of framing as a construct in media studies has led to diverse and perhaps contradictory uses of the term.
    5. Agenda setting fares well according to the evaluation criteria for empirical research.

 
 
 
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