Setting the Agenda : Mass Media and Public Opinion (Hardcover)

Foreword: ‘Messages and Residues’ Donald L. Shaw and David H. Weaver

Preface

Notes

1 Influencing Public Opinion

Our pictures of the world

Contemporary empirical evidence

The accumulated evidence

The 1972 US presidential election in Charlotte

The 1976 US presidential election in three communities

National concern about civil rights

British and American concern about foreign affairs

Public opinion in Germany

Agenda setting in a Swedish election

Public opinion in Louisville

Local public opinion in Spain, Japan, and Argentina

Replication with other issues

Cause and effect

A new communication landscape

1. Do online media have agenda-setting effects among the public?

2. Has the proliferation of online media diminished the agenda-setting impact of the traditional media?

3. To what extent are there specific channel effects vs. the collective impact of a communication gestalt?

Summing up

Notes

2 Reality and the News

Idiosyncratic pictures

A decade of American public opinion

Creating a crisis

National concern about drugs

Fear of crime

Discovering the environment

Alarmed discovery

Perspectives on agenda-setting effects

Content versus exposure

Agenda setting in past centuries

Summing up

Notes

3 The Pictures in our Heads

Pictures of political candidates

Candidate images in national elections

Candidate images in local elections

Visual images and attributes

Attributes of issues

Compelling arguments

Agenda setting and other communication theories

Attribute agenda setting and framing

Summing up

Notes

4 Networks of Issues and Attributes

Associative memory

Networks of candidates and attributes

Accumulated evidence on network agenda setting

A new gestalt perspective

Summing Up

Notes

5 Why Agenda Setting Occurs

Relevance and uncertainty

Occurrence of agenda-setting effects

Relevance

Personal experience with public issues

Individual differences

Incidental learning

Agenda-melding

Summing up

Notes

6 How Agenda Setting Works

Carrying capacity of the public agenda

Diversity and volatility of the public agenda

Education and agenda setting

Explaining the transfer of salience

Timeframe for effects

Diversity of salience measures

Summing up

Notes

7 Shaping the Media Agenda

The president and the national agenda

Subsidizing the media agenda

Capturing the media agenda

Three election agendas

Media agendas in local elections

Attributes of local issues

Three elements of elections

A broader portrait

Intermedia agenda setting

Summing up

Notes

8 Consequences of Agenda Setting

Priming public opinion

Attribute agendas and opinions

Forming opinions

Influencing behaviour

Agenda setting role of business news

Summing up

Notes

9 Communication and Society

Transmission of culture

New agenda-setting arenas

Other cultural agendas

Concepts, domains, and settings

Continuing evolution of agenda-setting theory

Notes

Bibliography

Index