Agenda-setting researchers discuss how the media shape what we think about
By Stephanie Cook (MJour'18) with an introduction by Elizabeth Skewes
In summer 2017, most of us heard about the shooting of U.S. Rep.听Steven Scalise听and the aftermath of听James Comey's听蹿颈谤颈苍驳.听
Around the same time, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to tell us that Vladimir Putin denied meddling in the 2016 election and that 鈥渓ow I.Q. Crazy Mika鈥� Brzezinski鈥攚ho had been critical of him鈥攖ried to play up to him at Mar-a-Lago. And then there was the infamous 鈥渃ovfefe鈥� tweet.
But in the midst of all of that, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reopened Alaska鈥檚 National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas exploration, and research showed that every year, more than 65,000 pregnant women in the U.S. suffer life-threatening complications, and that more than 600 women die from these complications.
By and large, the media didn鈥檛 cover these last two stories, which led to a lack of awareness. Unless a friend or family member suffered or died, how would you know that our country is in the midst of a maternity crisis? When the media is distracted, important issues can go unreported. This phenomenon is known as the agenda-setting effect, and it may be changing what we think is important.
Agenda-setting theory holds that the issues that we hear about most in the media are the ones that become important to us as citizens and voters.
The theory began during the 1968 presidential race between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, when researchers Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw interviewed voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and found a strong correlation between what was being reported in the local news and what voters thought were the important issues of the day.
Fifty years later, this study is one of the most cited in all of mass communication history, and the agenda-setting theory has spawned hundreds of studies in a broad range of contexts. McCombs and Shaw鈥攁long with David Weaver, who joined them soon after the initial study鈥攁re broadly referred to as the founding fathers of agenda-setting theory.听 Their research continues to inform what we know about the impact of media coverage on people.
During the summer, CMCI Assistant Professor Chris Vargo hosted the three scholars, along with researchers from international and national universities, at a two-day conference celebrating the past, present and future of agenda-setting research.
David Weaver
Roy W. Howard Professor Emeritus
Indiana University in Bloomington
Maxwell McCombs
Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication Emeritus
University of Texas at Austin
Donald Shaw
Kenan Professor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Vargo鈥攚ho teaches in CMCI鈥檚 Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design鈥攕at down with McCombs, Shaw and Weaver to discuss how their work can be applied to the media landscape today.
Vargo:听What is agenda setting?
Weaver:听Agenda setting has to do with focusing people鈥檚 attention on certain issues or problems鈥攏ot necessary telling them what to think, but what to think about鈥攁nd that鈥檚 an important effect of media that was overlooked for a long time.
Vargo:听It鈥檚 still happening today. If you look at Trump and his presidency, it鈥檚 a clear example of him being able to control the agenda on issues鈥攐n what is being talked about in the press. He certainly doesn鈥檛 have control over the way in which the issues are talked about, but he does have the ability to push an issue into the forefront of public debate.
奥别补惫别谤:听And to make certain issues or problems more salient, at the expense of others that some people might consider more important.
Vargo:听I think that鈥檚 an intentional tactic to divert attention from one issue to another. When something isn鈥檛 going right, it鈥檚 time to distract鈥攖o set the agenda in a new way. This effect that you really were the first to uncover and prove is now being used by all types of different actors. Today, the agenda-setting effect isn鈥檛 just a media phenomenon, it鈥檚 also a political tactic. Did you ever envision that when you first studied this?
厂丑补飞:听Well, it鈥檚 easy to single Trump out, but all presidents have been interested in setting agendas, all the way back to the Founding Fathers. All leaders want to set the agenda. And many of the elements of effective agenda setting were established without knowledge of what they were doing, in a social sciences fashion, by Hitler and his regime. He was very effective at setting agendas. But every leader wants the issues to reflect favorably on themselves and their government.
McCombs:听But this is not to say the public is just being programmed. For instance, the studies on the president as an agenda setter show a batting average of about .400鈥�.500, pretty astounding in baseball, not quite so good in public opinion. In many instances it was the media setting the president鈥檚 agenda. Sometimes, it was the other way around. What I particularly remember are two different studies of Ronald Reagan, and they went in opposite directions. Once, he was clearly the agenda setter, and once, the media was clearly the agenda setter.
Vargo:听A lot has changed since 1968. The media landscape has certainly become much bigger in the number of media organizations creating news content that鈥檚 consumed, both online and off. How do you think that changes the way agenda setting works today?
惭肠颁辞尘产蝉:听The New York Times鈥攁nd increasingly听The Washington Post鈥攁re still major agenda setters because of their influence on other media. They influence those other media because they鈥檙e the ones who can deploy dozens of reporters to cover things. They simply have the journalistic strength that very few other organizations have.
Shaw:听In my view, agenda setting is about what Max alluded to earlier, an exchange of priorities and saliences. We鈥檝e looked at it in a news context, but agenda setting does have all kinds of contexts. We now recognize the audience more than we did, and the audience has huge choice.
Vargo:听Do you think that fake news can set the agenda for the country or for a specific group of people? And did fake news have agenda-setting power in the 2016 election?
McCombs:听I think it did for some people. I don鈥檛 think it did broadly because, going back to, say,听The New York Times听补苍诲听The Washington Post, they may say, 鈥淲e see all these news stories out there but we鈥檝e never heard of all these media sources. Let鈥檚 check these things out.鈥� And in most cases, it doesn鈥檛 check out, so they say, 鈥淚t鈥檚 never going to see the light of day in our newspaper.鈥� For some people, yes, it probably can have an effect. Broadly speaking, I think our media system鈥檚 healthy enough to push back on that, and increasingly so, now that it鈥檚 clearly out in the open.
Weaver:听Can agenda setting exist without verifiable facts? I think so. If certain messages are repeated over and over again, they become more salient, and unless there鈥檚 some kind of contradictory messages, then I think over time, people can come to believe that, 鈥淵es, this is true.鈥� And, 鈥淵es, this is important.鈥澨�