The present study tests the agendamelding theory, which posits that public agenda is the result of a process whereby audiences “meld” agendas from various media along with their personal agenda to form a coherent picture of society. To that end, the contributions of the traditional media agenda, the social media agenda, and the personal agenda of Iranian audiences to their public agenda are independently measured and compared against values predicted by theory. The findings indicate a strong social media agenda-setting effect in Iran ( ρ = .83, p < .05) and a weak, non-significant traditional media agenda-setting effect ( ρ = .28, p = .48). On average, actual contributions closely mirror values predicted by theory, suggesting that agendamelding is a viable theory for studying the audience-media relationship.
This article studies the efficiency of different samples for content analysis of news in media effects studies by comparing the agenda-setting effect of a classic sample with the effect of a sample drawn based on audiences’ self-reported media habits. Contrary to the belief that exposure to sampled media content is necessary for observation of media effects, samples drawn based on overall readership/viewership of the media are more efficient than samples based on audiences’ actual consumption habits. A traditional media sample yields a stronger agenda-setting effect compared to a sample drawn based on self-reported media habits. But correlations between the two media samples are also strong. The findings suggest that a broad intermedia agenda-setting process makes it possible for researchers to draw a traditional sample that is representative of the issues salient to audiences regardless of their level of exposure to the sampled media. In other words, even in a demassified media environment, traditional samples are still the best option for media effects researchers.
Abstract In an effort to understand the legislative agenda setting impacts of social media content, the present study analyzes political discourse on Twitter regarding the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to dissect the Twitter conversation aimed at Representative Karen Bass, the sponsor of the H.R.7120, in the weeks leading up to the bill’s filing, our analysis of nearly 68,000 tweets posted in the days before the bill’s filing reveals that constituents strongly urged the Representative to work on legislation targeted on police reform – offering evidence of how constituents demanded, and drove, legislative action. Considering our findings, we argue that there is considerable potential for social media to serve as an amplifier of social issues and concerns among constituents. Through this process, we posit that social media can prove to be a vital catalyst in social justice reform.
This study investigates the effects of the two leading prime ministerial candidates’ personal Facebook and Twitter accounts and the effects of exposure to the general social media and web discourse in Hebrew on voters’ agendas during Israel’s April 2019 election. All the posts that appeared on the contenders’ accounts at a point in time in each of the four pre-election campaign weeks were analyzed to identify prominent issues. Social media and web content in Hebrew were also analysed over the same period. The data was compared with 2,217 responses to questionnaires completed on the four dates. The questionnaires also surveyed voters’ political orientations and the likelihood of their following the candidates’ accounts. The results revealed a significant correlation between contenders’ and voters’ agendas. However, significant differences were identified in agendas between those respondents who followed both leading candidates, those who followed a single candidate, and those who followed neither.
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Abstract Despite an abundance of research dedicated to the first level agenda setting process in political elections, there is a considerable gap within the literature regarding how the amount of media coverage granted to minority candidates – people of color and women – influence their salience in public opinion. The current study seeks to address this gap by analyzing the effects of online coverage of minority candidates and their subsequent performance in national polling data from June 1, 2019 to November 20, 2019. The present study utilizes a time-series analysis to compare three information formats: Twitter accounts of major media organizations, online web mentions of candidates from these organizations, and the candidates’ own Twitter presence. The presented findings illustrate important relationships – specifically, where candidates of color were able to set their own agenda through their Twitter accounts as opposed to coverage that they received from the media.
Abstract This study systematically reviewed empirical intermedia agenda setting (IAS) research published between 1997 and 2019, in terms of the level of agenda-setting, the methodologies – including the coding strategies and time-series analytical techniques – the types of media, and the flow of IAS effects. According to our results, previous IAS studies exhibited the following trends: (1) an overwhelming majority of the IAS studies was anchored by the first agenda-setting level, whilst examinations of the NAS model and multiple levels have increased in recent years; (2) excessive IAS studies performed content analyses, (3) applied manual coding strategies, (4) conducted cross-lagged correlation analyses to examine time-series effects, (5) and focused on newspapers and Twitter; (6) most IAS research confirmed the flow from one traditional media to another traditional media, whereas more recent studies also revealed the flow from traditional to emerging media, and their reciprocal relationship; (7) the majority of IAS studies confirmed the elite-to-non-elite flow of IAS effects. Based on these findings, this study encourages futures IAS researchers to attach more importance to (1) contextual diversity, (2) balanced examinations of each agenda-setting level, (3) methodological innovations, (4) technological pluralism, and (5) providing more evidence for the flow of IAS effects across different types of media.
The QAnon conspiracy blends ancient and malleable anti-Semitic bigotry with modern social media. Attribute intermedia agenda setting has rarely considered conspiracy theories. Conspiracies like QAnon are not fact-based and challenge conventional agenda setting methodologies. This study explores attribute IAS among national, regional, and local media coverage of QAnon-supporting congressional candidates in Georgia and Colorado in 2020. It introduces notions of rational and irrational agenda setting domains to fully analyze the transfer of irrational attributes across diverse media agendas.
This essay examines the notion of personal salience, introducing individual online media users as ‘objects’ in the context of agenda setting theory. The salience of the self has been investigated by scholars in various interdisciplinary explorations. In this project, the notion of personal salience is revisited from an agendamelding perspective. Along with political and civic agendas of individuals that meld in online community environments, individuals promote themselves as agendas that deserve public attention. Examining personal agendas raises new questions about perceptional and behavioral influences as ordinary individuals strive to establish their mediated presence.
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Using the network analysis method, the third level of the agenda-setting proposes that the associations between the elements on the media agenda are transferred to the public agenda. Focusing on five health issues in Turkey, this paper proposes a new perspective to third level researches. A media agenda content analysis was conducted on 13 nationwide and five local newspapers for six months and at the end of it, a public agenda survey on 400 people was conducted in Aydın, a city in Turkey. Findings show that there is a significant similarity between all the diseases chosen as a sample and taken from the newspapers and the public agenda network. The high correlation has been ranked in descending areas as: AIDS, cancer, obesity, diabetes and blood pressure. The concepts of “need for orientation” and “obtrusive and unobtrusive issues” may serve as explanations for these findings.
Abstract This paper analyzes the role of social media in electoral processes and contemporary political life. We analyze Costa Rica’s 2018 presidential election from an agenda-setting perspective, studying the media, the political and the public agendas, and their relationships. We explore whether social media, Facebook specifically, can convey an agenda-setting effect; if social media public agenda differs from the traditional MIP public agenda; and what agenda-setting methodologies can benefit from new approaches in the social media context. The study revealed that social media agendas are complex and dynamic and, in this case, did not present an agenda-setting effect. We not only found that the social media public agenda does not correlate with the conventional MIP public agenda, but that neither does the media online agenda and the media’s agenda on Facebook. Our exploration of more contemporary methods like big data, social network analysis (SNA), and social media mining point to them as necessary complements to the traditional methodological proposal of agenda-setting theory which have become insufficient to explain the current media environment.
AbstractThis study examines the effects of both the substantive and affective dimensions of issue attributes in the news coverage of climate change on the public’s perception of the importance of this environmental issue. Results from our analysis show that the four affective dimensions (e.g., positive and negative emotions, anger, and sadness) of the three attributes (e.g., existence, effects, and solutions) exerted strong influence on public issue priority. This study extends the concept of compelling arguments in agenda setting research by suggesting that compelling arguments effects are not solely dependent on substantive attributes. Their affective dimensions are influential, as well.
Abstract This paper analyzes the mutual influence between media and political agendas in the Netherlands and Switzerland. While these two countries share a number of similarities, they also exhibit some important differences (e.g. the frequency of parliamentary meetings) that are likely to affect the patterns of influence. Time-series cross-section analyses of monthly data about issue attention in parliamentary questions and in media coverage for the period 1995–2003 (Switzerland) and 1995–2011 (Netherlands) provide partial support for our hypotheses. Agenda-setting and -building effects are overall stronger in Switzerland, which may be due to differences in the workings of national parliaments and varying degrees of mediatization. Moreover, our analyses reveal more pronounced differences between the coalition and opposition parties in Switzerland. Overall, this study demonstrates that it is important to consider smaller institutional differences when studying political agenda-setting and -building in a cross-national perspective.
Abstract While intermedia agenda-setting scholars have examined the process from a global perspective, trans-regional intermedia agenda setting, especially in non-western context, remains understudied. By analyzing the time-series data of news coverage on air pollution, a non-political topic, from online news media in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan from 2015 to 2018, this study revealed a triangular first-level agenda-setting relationship among the three regions and identified the changing agenda setters across years, which disproves the imperialistic stereotype that there is a one-way control from mainland China media. The study also revealed the significant yet unconventional moderating effect of the political stance of news organizations in the trans-regional information flow. This study contributes to the intermedia agenda-setting literature by introducing the method of controlling the real-life situation in the Granger Causality test and by showing that non-political issues can also be politicalized in the salience transferring process.
Abstract Why do parties pay more attention to some policy issues than to others? To what extent does policy attention conveyed by the media, public opinion, and parliament explain party agenda-setting? And, more specifically, to what extent does the media agenda influence other agenda effects? This paper addresses these questions in an original manner by analyzing the influence of these three agendas – media, public opinion, and parliament – in party manifesto elaboration. The analysis relies on an extensive database of the Portuguese Policy Agendas Project that includes media attention, voter preferences, parliamentary questions and pledges in manifestos, between 1995 and 2015. Our findings show that the media agenda is the most influential in party manifesto elaboration, and that the other agendas have a stronger effect when the media also give attention to the issue. This depends, however, on the political party being in cabinet or in opposition, as well as on the economic context. These findings have important implications for party competition literature.
Abstract This article reports a comparative analysis of the media’s political agenda setting capacity in 27 European media systems, aimed at testing the hypothesis that the magnitude of this phenomenon is moderated by factors such as development of the press markets, journalist professionalization, strength of public television or political pluralism. The empirical analysis relies on data collected by the expert survey European Media Systems Survey, the World Association of Newspapers, the European Audiovisual Observatory, and the research project Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union (PIREDEU). Results show that political agenda setting is perceived as more common in press markets in which newspapers work as means of horizontal communication (and are, as subsystem, politically imbalanced), but that journalist professionalization and strength of public broadcasting systems foster political agenda setting effects.
