CHAPTER 30
AGENDA-SETTING THEORY
Outline
I. Most of us can’t pay equal attention to more than a dozen issues. Time and mental energy
are scarce resources.
A. The typical person can only focus on about five issues at any one time.
B. The small set of issues that’s most important to you at the moment is your personal
agenda.
C. Taking the average of those concerns across an entire community, state, or nation is
the public agenda—the set of issues most salient (in other words, that capture
attention) across a group of people at a given time.
II. Level 1: The media tells us what to think about.
A. McCombs wondered if, over time, the public agenda came to reflect the media
agenda, such that “we judge as important what the media judge as important.”
B. In opposition to then-current wisdom that mass communication had limited effects
upon its audience, Theodore White came to the conclusion that the media shaped
election campaigns
C. Walter Lippmann claimed that the media act as a mediator between “the world
outside and the pictures in our heads.”
D. What set McCombs and Shaw apart is that they put these hunches to empirical test.
E. McCombs and Shaw first tested their theory with undecided voters in Chapel Hill, NC.
1. McCombs and Shaw’s first task was to measure the media agenda.
3. With the media agenda measured, their next task was to assess the public
4. The initial Chapel Hill study only demonstrated that the media and public
agendas are correlated.
6. It took a tightly controlled experiment run by Yale researchers to establish a
7. Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder’s study was the first of many studies to offer strong
evidence that the media agenda causes which stories are salient in the public
agenda—the first level of agenda-setting.
III. Level 2: The media tells us which attributes of issues are most important.
A. The first level of agenda-setting demonstrates that media tells us what to think about,
but do they also tell us how to think about it?
1. For a long time, almost every article about the theory included this mantra: the
2. But then scholars realized that, by emphasizing certain attributes of issues over
other attributes, the media do more than just make topics salient.
IV. The second level of agenda setting is the transfer of salience of a dominant set of
attributes that the media associate with an attitude object to the specific features of
the image projected on the walls of our minds.
1. Some scholars call this selection process framing.
2. James Tankard, one of the leading writers on mass communication theory, defines a
media frame as “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.”
V. The press frame people, too, especially political figures.
VI. It’s impossible to report stories without emphasizing certain attributes over others.
2. In most studies, the voters’ agenda mirrors the media’s agenda in substance (the
first level) and in tone (the second level).
VII. But object salience and attribute framing aren’t the end of the story.
VIII. Level 3: The media tell us which issues go together
A. The media communicates issues as though they are an interconnected web, with
some connections stronger than others.
B. Like framing, these kinds of connections aren’t optional.
IX. Beyond opinion: The behavioral effect of the media’s agenda
A. Most of the research studies on agenda-setting have measured the effect of media
agendas on public opinion.
B. McCombs now presents several intriguing findings showing that media priorities
also influence people’s behavior.
X. Who sets the agenda for the agenda setters?
A. Agenda-setting research has gathered strong evidence that the media agenda
influences the public agenda. This begs the question: What, then, shapes the media
agenda?
B. So far, research has identified several sources journalists rely on to decide what
counts as news.
1. Other new organizations. When one news source influences the agenda of
another one, that’s intermedia agenda-setting.
3. Partisan media such as political talk radio and websites hold influence.
5. Press releases from public relations professionals repackage the news.
7. Gatekeepers can be editors who ultimately determine what gets published.
C. Disturbingly, fake news appeared to exert at least some influence on the agenda of
more credible news organizations.
XI. Need for orientation influences agenda-setting effects
A. McCombs and Shaw suspected that some viewers might be more resistant to the
media’s priorities than others.
B. The key factor they’ve discovered is our need for orientation.
C. It represents a drive to make sense of the world around us, to orient our
understanding of it.
XII. Melding agendas into communities
A. McCombs and Shaw’s agenda-setting theory has found an appreciative audience
B. More than ever before, there isn’t one dominant media agenda that descends from
the boardrooms of East Coast media establishments.
C. Multiple media agendas exist and we can choose from among them.
D. McCombs and Shaw suggest that we can make sense of the media landscape if we
sort outlets into two types.
1. One type is vertical media.
a. They try to appeal to a broad, diverse audience.
2. In contrast, horizontal media “usually connect us via valued special interest and
personal interest communities.”
E. Agenda-setting theorists believe that we assemble our view of current events from
these media and our own experiences.
F. They call this agendamelding, or “the social process by which we meld agendas
from various sources, including other people, to create pictures of the world that fit
our experiences and preferences.”
G. It’s a social process because agendamelding creates communities. People like to
spend time with people who think like they do.
XIII. Ethical reflections: Christians’ communitarian ethics.
A. Christians believes that discovering the truth is still possible if we are willing to
examine the nature of our humanity.
B. Mutuality is the essence of humanness.
C. His communitarian ethics establish civic transformation rather than objective
information as the primary goal of the press.
D. He insists that media criticism must be willing to reestablish the idea of moral right
and wrong.
E. Journalists have a social responsibility to promote the sacredness of life.
XIV. Critique: Who sets the agenda in the digital era?
A. When compared to the standards for evaluating an objective theory, agenda-setting
theory fares well.
2. That’s because carefully-constructed quantitative research on the theory’s
3. The theory remains relatively simple.
5. Agenda-setting theory is a good model for what an objective theory should be.
B. The greatest challenge to the theory’s longevity may be the digital era foreseen by
McLuhan and other scholars.
1. McCombs doesn’t seem to think the digital age changes agenda-setting all that
much.
3. Every time you visit social media or use a search engine, an algorithmic
gatekeeper filters the information and decides what you’ll see.
a. This filtering often occurs on the basis of a number of personal factors.
b. What exactly does the social media agenda mean when it’s tailored so
specifically to the user, precisely because it arises from the user’s own
preferences?
Key Names and Terms
Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw
Theorists from the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, respectively, who have pioneered research on the agenda-setting theory of
the mass media.
Personal agenda
The list of issues most salient to a single person at a given time.
Public agenda
The list of issues most salient to a group of people at a given time.
Media agenda
Theodore White
A political analyst who wrote the definitive account of four presidential elections and
concluded that the media shape election campaigns.
Shanto Iyengar, Marl Peters, and Donald Kinder
Political scientists at Yale University whose experimental study confirmed a cause-and-
effect relationship between the media agenda and the public agenda.
First level of agenda-setting
The media influences which things are salient in the public agenda.
Second level of agenda-setting
The media makes certain attributes of a media object salient; framing
James Tankard
A leading writer on mass communication theory from the University of Texas at Austin
who created the definition of a media frame.
Third level of agenda-setting
The media indicates which issues are connected to each other
Intermedia agenda-setting
One news source influences the agenda of another.
Interest aggregations
Fake news
News articles that are intentionally and verifiably false and could mislead readers.
Need for orientation
A drive to understand what’s going on in the world, often fueled by relevance and
uncertainty
Vertical media
News media that try to reach broad, diverse audiences.
Horizontal media
News media that try to appeal to specific interest communities.
Agendamelding
The social process by which we meld agendas from various sources to create pictures
of the world that fit our experiences and preferences.
Communitarian ethics
A moral responsibility to promote community, mutuality, and persons-in-relation who
live simultaneously for others and for themselves.
Agape love
An unconditional love for others because they were created in the image of God.
Algorithmic gatekpeepers
Computer programs that decide which material appears in search engines, social
media feeds, and elsewhere on the Internet.
Principal Changes
This chapter has been substantially overhauled in the current edition, so much so that it
practically reads like a new chapter. The chapter is now organized around the various levels of
agenda-setting which integrates the discussion of framing rather than treating it as a separate
topic as in previous editions. This revision includes, for the first time, coverage of the third level
Kick-off Questions & Interaction Starters
• What sources of news do you pay attention to? Why those sources and not others?
• What is one issue that you wish the news media would cover but that they
consistently ignore?
• How often do you question how a news story was selected?
• Assuming I already have some investment or care in an issue, does agenda-setting
still affect me?
• In the current media culture, when you can choose your media online or your news
on blogs, website, and social media sources, what’s the relative impact of agenda–
setting? Can they really still tell me what to think about when I can make choices?
• Agenda-setting seems sneaky; how do you respond when it’s overt?
Suggestions for Discussion
The importance of research in McCombs and Shaw’s theory
One of the most interesting features of this chapter is that it is as much about research
methodology as it is about theory building. This fact illustrates to students the
interconnectedness of the two endeavors, implicitly demonstrating that theory cannot be fully
separated from the research that supports it. It also shows students that some concepts such
A second issue related to research methods that you may want to further articulate in
class is the importance of establishing a delayed effect to support McCombs and Shaw’s
claims of agenda-setting. A mantra that cannot be said enough: “Correlation does not equal
causation.” In their theory, McCombs and Shaw are making claims of causation and as such,
must back up the relationship as cause-and-effect. You may want to underscore the point with
students that if media coverage and public opinion converge, but one is not shown to precede
The three levels of agenda-setting
You may wish to feature an example or two to help students understand the three
levels of agenda setting. Major events such as a school shooting or earthquake constitute a
rare example of the media having little choice but to feature a story prominently. Thus, it does
not illustrate the first level of agenda setting. Other examples will better allow you to explore
the three levels. The media coverage about the use of Facebook account data by Russian
operatives in the 2016 election might serve as a useful illustration. At the first level, experts
began sounding the alarm about Cambridge Analytica for some time, but there was no real
important—the greed and negligence of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, the attitude of both
political parties to use this information for their own gain? Level 2 agenda-setting is about
framing the story in specific ways. Last, as the agenda-setters crafted the story, they link this
Clearly, stories of international and national interest work well as examples, but you can
often illustrate all three levels with stories that influence the local community or state.
Depending on how tuned in your students are to the world around them and in their own
backyard, I have found it helpful to walk through news stories and show the levels for some
Framing
It is also productive to focus on how the concept of framing compares with Hall’s
cultural studies (ch. 27) approach. It should be emphasized to students that cultural studies
goes further, suggesting that media frames systematically serve to reinforce hegemony, to
Agenda-killing or perpetuating?
McCombs and Shaw are concerned about how ideas enter the public’s mindset and
become salient issues. You might want to speculate with your students if the media also has
an agenda-killing function. Are they able to systematically “calm down” a hot-button issue
through slowly (or suddenly) moving away from it? Do the media operate an “out of sight, out
of mind” conspiracy on the viewing public? For example, as of this writing in April 2018, the
motive of the summer 2017 Las Vegas shooter is still unknown, and the media seems to have
long moved on from that rather pertinent question. Likewise, you might consider asking your
The Oprah Effect
For more than three decades, Oprah Winfrey has been setting the agenda through her
talk show, television station, and magazine. Without a doubt, she is one of the most influential
people in the world and some would argue, globally. The “Oprah effect” highlights her sphere
of influence; her endorsement has affected people’s book reading, beef buying, and election
voting among other things. She launched the careers of Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray, and Dr. Oz. In
recent years, she has moved her programming away from exclusively entertainment arenas to
Setting other agendas
As a theory, agenda-setting has concentrated on the news side of the media and
newsmakers’ ability to transfer their agenda to the viewing public. As the authors speculate in
the treatment of new media, traditional gatekeepers may be losing ground. Particular attention
is paid to the influence of the Internet, but I wonder, too, if even in more traditional media like
television and radio, the agenda-setters are changing. College students increasingly report
getting their “news” from sources like The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert (“The Late Show”),
Twitter, podcasts, or satellite radio programming. If those are the “new” news reporters, what
agenda have they set? Or, especially in the case of the comedy shows like The Daily Show or
Saturday Night Live, are they just poking fun at the agenda set by CNN, USA Today, and The
New York Times, and not trying to co-opt the job? Jon Stewart’s remarks on the show Crossfire
(Oct 15, 2004) highlighted this exact issue. In that classic segment (available on Youtube),
Stewart dismissed his own show as influential and chided the hosts of a genuine news show
Since its resurgence in 2015, the same could be true of Saturday Night Live.
Historically, the show’s satire and comedy were more than slapstick; it features some biting
criticism, in particular their “Weekend Update” feature, thanks to talented writing and well-
Agenda-setting: An Olympics sport?
I confess: I am a die-hard fan of the Olympics. Every two years, I feast on the Olympic
sports and watch hours upon hours of coverage of sports I would rarely bat an eyelash at
during the regular year. But, it seems to me, when considering agenda-setting, even the
Olympics are fodder for discussion. The hours upon hours of coverage areclearly only a
Beyond the agenda-setting of nationalism, you might ponder how the sports are
chosen. Do we only care about speedskating because it’s covered on TV? If NBC had made a
deliberate choice to focus on the biathlon or a Nordic sport, might we care more about them?
The 2018 Winter games served as a good example. The media darlings coming out of the
Games were not your typical heroes. Instead, a couple of young snowboarders, a photogenic
Lastly, it is noteworthy that the coverage is often not balanced in terms of sex. How is
agenda setting reflected in coverage choices, when for sports that emphasize aggression or
speed (hockey, downhill skiing) men’s competitions receive more coverage than women’s
competitions? On the other hand, the grace and elegance of female figure skaters usually gets
more airtime than the male skaters. 2018 was a remarkable year for the Olympic broadcast.
The #metoo movement in the six-months prior had certainly set the stage for more female-
friendly coverage. The media downplayed coverage of the men’s hockey tournament; there
Sample Application Log
Glenda
I think the media’s agenda setting works all too well on children (at least it did on me). Except
it wasn’t news I was watching; it was the Saturday morning line-up. After all, as a child I had a
very high need for orientation. For some inexplicable reason, anything that the TV displayed
from 6 a.m. to noon on Saturday had high relevance to me (including the color bars from 6-7).
And as a child, anything dealing with growing up, being an adult or understanding the world
around me touched a point of high uncertainty within my semi-hardened skull. As a result,
Saturday morning TV had the power to tell me what to think about. I spent my play time acting
Exercises and Activities
The social construction of gatekeeping
While discussing the concept of gatekeeping, ask your students about their prevailing
perception of media elites (that they are white, wealthy, and/or liberal, for example). What do
students think of this view? In order to complete the picture, ask your students how Hall and
his ilk would characterize the same handful of news guardians. No doubt Hall would consider
the gatekeepers’ perspective to be an insidious orthodoxy, but it would be the ruling principles
Recreating one’s self
Bono, Kanye West, Barack Obama, Miley Cyrus, Bill Clinton, Oprah, James Comey, Tiger
Woods, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and the late Mother Teresa are just a few of the subjects that
could inspire interesting analyses. During your discussion, you may discover certain figures
that have the uncanny ability to frame themselves; thus, resisting or overriding frames that
Princess Di did for British royalty 20 years ago. As you think through how Pope Francis is being
portrayed, ask students to speculate on whose agenda is served by making the Pope more
personable. In 2017, I spent time in Buenos Aires and was surprised to find that among the
Argentine, there is wide disparity in their opinions of their native son. Compared with most
positive coverage in US and European presses, there are many in Argentina who feel he did too
little as a bishop of the Church during the military rule and on behalf of the Disappeared
What’s not getting talked about?
Question #3 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook encourages
students to ponder the media’s ability to bring specific issues into the public’s agenda,
whether they originally care about them or not. An interesting way to follow up the question is
to ask, “Conversely, is there a national or local issue that concerns you that has not been
emphasized by the media? How does their neglect make you feel?” After all—as so many
What effect do the media have on your behavior?
You may want to have your students discuss and debate the potential behavioral effect
of the media on them. Has media coverage of crime, for example, made them more careful
about locking doors or securing their cars? Clearly, this harkens back to Gerbner’s cultivation
effect, and I’m curious how students see the cross-over between these perspectives. Gerbner
speculated that the consumption of media contributes to the cultivation of attitudes, but,
compared to McCombs and Shaw, was also more concerned with the institutional choices that
Feature-film resources
A few outstanding films that might help enliven a discussion of agenda-setting include:
• All the President’s Men (1976), about Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into
Watergate.
• Hotel Rwanda (2004) exposes the genocide in Rwanda.
• A Mighty Heart (2007) tells the story of the capture and murder of journalist Daniel
Pearl.
• Good Night and Good Luck (2005) shows Edward R. Murrow’s decision to expose
Senator McCarthy.
• Syriana (2005) focuses on power and corruption in the oil industry.
• Argo (2012) centers on the Iran hostage crisis.
Two other full-length feature films of note include Spotlight (2015) and The Post
(2017). Spotlight tells the story of the Boston Globe’s investigation of and reporting on the
child sex abuse scandal in Boston-area Catholic churches. The film does a brilliant job showing
the tenacity of the journalists who persevered, despite much resistance, in order to get to the
36).
Further Resources
One of the most famous political statements about the agenda-setting function of the media is
Spiro Agnew’s “Television News Coverage” speech (transcript of the speech is available online
at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm). Focusing on
recent news coverage of Nixon’s handling of the war in Indochina, the Vice President argued
Theoretical considerations
Amélie Godefroidt, Anna Berbers, and Leen d’Haenens, “What’s in a Frame? A Comparative
Content Analysis of American, British, French, and Russian News Articles,” International
Communication Gazette, Vol. 78, 2016, pp. 777-801.
Leo W. Jeffres, “Mass Communication Theories in a Time of Changing Technologies,” Mass
Communication and Society, Vol. 18, 2015, pp. 523-530.
Amie Kreppel and Buket Oztas, “Leading the Band or Just Playing the Tune? Reassessing the
781-802.
W. Russell Neuman, Lauren Guggenheim, S. Mo Jang, and Soo Young Bae, “The Dynamics of
Public Attention: Agenda-Setting Theory Meets Big Data,” Journal of Communication,
Vol. 64, 2014, pp. 193-214.
Joaquín Trigueros and Ivan Lacasa-Mas, “Colloquy with Maxwell McCombs at the University of
Texas at Austin: Agenda Setting, a Limitless Theory in a Connected World,” Church,
Communication and Culture, Vol. 3, 2018, pp. 53–74.
Chris J. Vargo and Lei Guo, L. “Networks, Big Data, and Intermedia Agenda Setting: An Analysis
of Traditional, Partisan, and Emerging Online U.S. News,” Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly, Vol. 94, 2017, pp. 1031-1055.
Hong Tien Vu, Lei Guo, and Maxwell E. McCombs, “Exploring ‘the World Outside and the
Pictures in Our Heads’: A Network Agenda-Setting Study,” Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly, 91, 2014, pp. 669-686.
The media’s gatekeeping function
Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini, “Monica and Bill All the Time and Everywhere:
The Collapse of Gatekeeping and Agenda-Setting in the New Media Environment,”
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 47, 2004, pp. 1208-1230.
Mark Lee Hunter, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, Maria Besiou, and Mignon van Halderen, “The
Agenda-Setting Power of Stakeholder Media,” California Management Review, Vol. 56,
2013, pp. 24–49.
Kathleen Searles and Glen Smith, “Who’s the Boss? Setting the Agenda in a Fragmented
Media Environment,” International Journal of Communication, Vol. 10, 2016, pp. 2074-
2095.
Agenda-setting in sports
James R. Angelini and Andrew C. Billings, A. C. “An Agenda That Sets the Frames: Gender,
Language, and NBC’s Americanized Olympic Telecast,” Journal of Language & Social
Laureen M. Burch, Evan L. Frederick, Matthew H. Zimmerman, and Galen E. Clavio, “Agenda–
Setting and La Copa Mundial: Marketing Through Agenda-Setting on Soccer Blogs
During the 2010 World Cup,” International Journal of Sport Management & Marketing,
Vol. 10, 2011, pp. 213-231.
Andrea Eagleman, Lauren M. Burch, and Ryan Vooris, “A Unified Version of London 2012: New-
Media Coverage of Gender, Nationality, and Sport for Olympics Consumers in Six
Countries,” Journal of Sport Management, Vol. 28, 2014, pp. 457-470.
John A. Fortunato, “Agenda-Setting Through the Television Programming Schedule: An
Examination of Major League Baseball on Fox,” JMM: The International Journal on
Media Management, Vol. 18, 2016, pp. 163-180.
Kevin Hull and Annelie Schmittel, “A Fumbled Opportunity? A Case Study of Twitter’s Role in
180-195.
Agenda-setting in politics
Lei Guo, Yi-Ning Katherine Chen, Hong Vu, Qian Wang, Radoslaw Aksamit, Damian Guzek,
133.
Donald L. Shaw, Thomas C. Terry, and Milad Minooie, “Military Communication Strategies
Based on How Audiences Meld Media and Agendas,” Military Review, Vol. 95, 2015,
pp. 16–28.
Daphne van der Pas, “Making Hay While the Sun Shines: Do Parties Only Respond to Media
Attention When the Framing Is Right?,” International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 19,
2014, pp. 42–65.
Other applied contexts
Helen Dixon, Charles Warne, Maree Scully, Suzanne Dobbinson, and Melanie Wakefield,
“Agenda-Setting Effects of Sun-Related News Coverage on Public Attitudes and Beliefs
About Tanning and Skin Cancer,” Health Communication, Vol. 29, 2014, pp. 173-181.
Jiyoon (Karen) Han, Seungae Lee, and Maxwell McCombs, “The Attribute Agenda-Setting
Influence of Online Community on Online Newscast: Investigating the South Korean
Sewol Ferry Tragedy,” Asian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27, 2017, pp. 601-615.
Pavlos C. Symeou, Philemon Bantimaroudis, and Stelios C. Zyglidopoulos, “Cultural Agenda