Setting the Agenda. Maxwell McCombs
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decades. When this continuously shifting salience of civil rights on the public agenda was compared with the news coverage on the front page of the New York Times for the month preceding each of the twenty-seven polls, the result was a robust correlation of +0.71. Even when the influence of news coverage in earlier months is removed, the correlation remains +0.71. This is especially compelling evidence of the media’s agenda-setting role. Also note that the salience of the civil rights issue among the public primarily reflects the preceding month of news coverage, a relatively short-term response to the media agenda. Because the media agendas examined over this 23-year period were prior in time to the public agenda, this evidence on time-order further supports agenda-setting’s causal assertion that the public agenda results, to a considerable degree, form the media agenda.
British and American concern about foreign affairs
Obviously, the news media are most people’s primary source of information about foreign affairs. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, the salience of foreign affairs regularly rises and falls in response to media attention.19 The salience of foreign affairs among the British public from 1990 to 2000 was significantly correlated (+0.54) with the number of foreign affairs articles in The Times. During an overlapping twenty-year period in the United States, 1981–2000, the salience of foreign affairs among the American public was significantly correlated (+0.38) with the number of foreign affairs articles in the New York Times. Beyond the sheer number of articles in each newspaper, there is an additional impact on the public agenda by news stories reporting home country involvement.
Public opinion in Germany
Weekly comparisons between the public agenda and media agenda in Germany across the entire year of 1986 revealed that television news coverage had a significant impact on public concern about five diverse issues: an adequate energy supply, East–West relations, European politics, environmental protection, and defence.20
The energy-supply issue illustrates these agenda-setting effects. Early in 1986 this issue had low salience on both the news agenda and the public agenda. But a rapid rise in May on the news agenda was followed within a week by a similar rise on the public agenda. News coverage catapulted from fewer than a dozen mentions per week to over a hundred per week. Concern among the public about an adequate supply of energy, which had been around 15 per cent of the population, suddenly moved into the 25 to 30 per cent range. When news coverage subsequently declined, so did the size of the constituency expressing concern about Germany’s energy supply.
During this same year there were no agenda-setting effects on eleven other issues. As noted previously, the public is not a collective automaton passively waiting to be programmed by the media. The pattern of media coverage for some issues resonates with the public. For other issues, there is no resonance.
Agenda setting in a Swedish election
A panel study tracking the issue of unemployment during the 2006 Swedish national election found significant agenda-setting effects in this Northern European country.21 When the media focused on unemployment, people also rated unemployment an important issue. These agenda-setting effects were stronger among those with higher interest in political news.
Public opinion in Louisville
All our examples of the agenda-setting influence of the news media examined to this point have been grounded in presidential elections or national portraits of public opinion. But there are also agenda-setting effects on local public issues. We begin with the long-term public opinion trends in an American city, trends that are analysed for the aggregate agenda, as well as separately for the eight individual issues on that agenda.22 When the trends in public opinion from 1974 through 1981 in Louisville were compared to the news coverage of the Louisville Times, the overall correlation between the public agenda and the news agenda was +0.65. Further analysis examined the ebb and flow of concern across these eight years for each of the eight issues. Significant agenda-setting effects were found for the top four issues on the news agenda: education, crime, the local environment, and local economic development.
Despite their influence on many issues, the news media are not all-powerful dictators of public opinion. The issues ranking fifth and sixth on the Louisville Times’ agenda – public recreation and health care, respectively – are examples of reverse agenda setting, a situation where public concern sets the media agenda. The lack of media omnipotence is also detailed in two other instances. Public concern about local government was independent of the trends in news coverage, despite the fact that local government is one of the traditional staples of daily newspaper coverage. Perhaps heavy continuing coverage of local government – or any other topic, for that matter – becomes a blur of white noise rather than a stream of information. Not only was public concern about local government immune to any agenda-setting influence of the press, the trend in news coverage was also immune to any reverse agenda setting, even though local government ranked sixth on the public agenda during those years.
Local public opinion in Spain, Japan, and Argentina
Unemployment and urban congestion, especially in the old quarter of the city during the weekends, topped the public agenda in Pamplona, Spain, during the spring of 1995.23 Comparisons between all six major concerns on the public agenda and local news coverage in the preceding fortnight found high degrees of correspondence. The match with the dominant local daily newspaper was +0.90; with the second Pamplona daily, +0.72; and with television news, +0.66.
Agenda setting also occurred in a 1986 mayoral election in Machida City, a municipality of 320,000 residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area.24 Comparison of the public agenda, which had seven issues in all, with the coverage of the four major newspapers serving Machida City, yielded a modest, but significant, correlation of +0.39. Although there were no significant variations in the strength of this relationship among persons differing in age, sex, or level of education, Chapter 5 will take up a psychological factor that does provide an explanation for this relatively low correlation.
Local agenda-setting effects also were found in the 1997 legislative elections in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.25 In September, the correlation for the top four issues of the day was +0.20 between the public agenda and the combined issue agenda of five major Buenos Aires newspapers. However, as election day approached in October, the correspondence between these agendas for the top four issues soared to +0.80, an increase that suggests considerable learning from the news media in the closing weeks of the election campaign.
Additional evidence of significant agenda-setting effects in Argentina was found during the 1998 primary election held to select the presidential candidate for a major political coalition. For the six major issues of the day, the correspondence between the public agenda at the time of the election and the newspaper agenda of the previous month was +0.60. For television news, the correspondence was even higher, +0.71.26
Replication with other issues
Similar evidence about the variable impact of news coverage on the trends in public opinion comes from the individual analyses of eleven different issues in the United States during a 41-month period in the 1980s.27 In each of these eleven analyses, the media agenda is based on a mix of television, newspapers and news magazines. The public agenda is based on thirteen Gallup polls that asked Americans to name the most important problem facing the country. Two patterns are evident in these analyses. First, all except one of the correlations summarizing the match between the media agenda and the public agenda are positive. The median correspondence between these agendas is +0.45. The negative match for morality is easy to explain because morality is a topic seldom broached in the news media.
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