A Case of Local Press on Agenda Setting. The Effect of the Antalya Newspaper on Turkish-Italian Relations, 1923-1925

Correlational or second-order linkage analyses (Schulz, 2008) correlate content data points and survey data at the aggregate level. They are generally used to infer the impact of public opinion climate, the media context or media use on individual attitudes, cognitions and behaviors. Correlational linkage analyses make use of data collected at different points in time to be able to describe patterns of change and stability over time and to compensate for the reduced number of observations resulting from aggregating individual-level data. They often employ manual and automated content analysis, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, and time series analysis.
 
 Field of application/theoretical foundation:
 Linkage analyses have extensively been used in the fields of political communication (Soroka, 2002), EU studies (Brosius et al., 2019a), and more recently, social media and social movements. Studies that employed second-order linkage analyses are related to theories of agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), framing (Vliegenthart et al., 2008), or media bias and tone (Brosius et al., 2019b) (see chapter Content Analysis in Mixed Method approaches for a detailed account of applications and advantages of using linkage analyses).
 
 Example studies:
 In this data entry we describe two studies that regress survey data on media content data with additional weighs to better model news media effects. The first study (Boomgaarden & Vliegenthart, 2007) weigh media coverage of a particular topic (immigration) by issue prominence and circulation of the newspapers considered in the study. The second one (Vliegenthart et al., 2008) further introduces a publication recency moderator to account for how close in time a given news story was published from when survey data was collected and individuals may have been exposed to such piece of information.
 
 References
 Boomgaarden, H. G., & Vliegenthart, R. (2007). Explaining the rise of anti-immigrant parties: The role of news media content. Electoral Studies, 26(2), 404–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2006.10.018
 Brosius, A., van Elsas, E. J., & de Vreese, C. H. (2019a). Trust in the European Union: Effects of the information environment. European Journal of Communication, 34(1), 57–73.
 Brosius, A., van Elsas, E. J., & de Vreese, C. H. (2019b). How media shape political trust: News coverage of immigration and its effects on trust in the European Union. European Union Politics, 20(3), 447–467. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116519841706
 McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187.
 Schulz, W. (2008). Content analyses and public opinion research. The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research, 348–357.
 Soroka, S. N. (2002). Issue attributes and agenda-setting by media, the public, and policymakers in Canada. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 14(3), 264–285.
 Vliegenthart, R., Schuck, A. R., Boomgaarden, H. G., & De Vreese, C. H. (2008). News coverage and support for European integration, 1990–2006. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 20(4), 415–439.
 
 Table 1. Data matching in correlational linkage analyses
 
 
 
 
 
 Author(s)
 
 
 Relationship of theoretical interest
 
 
 Sample
 
 
 Time frame
 
 
 Content-analytical constructs
 
 
 Linkage strategy
 
 
 
 
 Boomgarden & Vliegenthart (2007)
 
 
 News media reporting about immigration-related topics on aggregate share of vote intention for anti-immigrant parties
 
 
 (a) 157,968 articles collected through computer-assisted analysis, dealing with immigration and
 published in the five most-read Dutch national newspapers
 
 (b) Monthly self-reports on vote intention toward anti-immigrant parties from surveyed representative samples of the Dutch population
 
 (c) Monthly number of
 people that moved to the Netherlands and unemployment
 rates available from the Dutch governmental statistical institute
 
 
 1990-2002
 
 
 Visibility of immigration-related topics in news
 
 
 (1) The authors calculate a visibility score per article by computing:
 
 (1.1.) an average person’s log probability that
 s/he is exposed to news about immigration through a given article. This is done by using the frequency with which this article mentions immigration-related topics (f(t,a), both in the headline (fh(t,a)), in which case the frequency is weighed by 8, and in the body of the text (fb(t,a)), in which case the frequency is multiplied by 2. 
 
 (1.2.) 1.1. is weighed by circulation of the newspaper where the article is published (c(a)).
 
 (1.3.) 1.1. is weighed by whether the article is placed in the front page or other to account for how prominently the topic is featured (fp(a)).
 
 Notationally, the equation can be written as follows:
 (…)
 (2) In a second step, V(a) are aggregated for all articles in all outlets by month (the time unit to link content and survey data)
 
 (3) Final immigration visibility scores (independent variable) are linked to monthly percentage of people that reported intending to vote for an anti-immigration party (dependent variable) through time series analysis. The authors run ARIMA models, successively adding controls for extreme right leadership peaks (Fortuyn’s entrance in the political arena and assassination), immigration levels, unemployment rates, the interaction between the both and finally, the media visibility variables.
 
 
 
 
 Vliegenthart, Schuck, Boomgaarden, De Vreese (2008)
 
 
 How framing of EU news in terms of benefit and conflict explains public support for the EU
 
 
 (a) 329,746 articles that contained at least one reference to the European institutions in main newspapers of 7 EU countries (Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United
 Kingdom) were computer-assisted content analysed to obtain data on EU media visibility.
 
 (b) 9,649 hand-coded articles that mentioned the EU at least twice (at least one of these references in
 the headline or in the lead of the article) were then analysed to investigate the framing of the EU. Approximately 50 articles per country were coded for each 6-month period.
 
 (c) Self-reports on EU support from the bi-annual standard Eurobarometer.
 
 
 1990–2006
 
 
 (a) News media attention/visibility of the EU
 (b) Presence of a benefit frame or a disadavantage frame in EU news coverage
 © Presence of a conflict framing in EU news coverage
 
 
 (1) Articles dealing with the EU (at least one reference) are weighed by prominence and publication recency as follows: Articles on the first page of a newspaper are counted twice as heavily as articles in the remainder of the newspaper; articles appearing in the month before a Eurobarometer survey was conducted are weighed six times, they are counted five times if appeared 2 months before, etc. The weighted EU visibility score is aggregated for each time period t in each country c.
 
 (2) Framing scores are then assigned to each article (benefit and disadvantage frames 0-2, conflict framing ranged from 0 to 3)
 
 (3) Mean framing scores per time period–country combination (fs(t,c)) are multiplied by visibility scores (vs(t,c)) to capture the overall salience of the frames (beyond its presence) as follows:
 (…)
 
 (4) OLS regressions with panel corrected standard errors are run with benefit, disadvantage and conflict framing as main independent variables, and aggregated-level support for the EU as dependent variable
 
 
 
 
 

The 2006 elections were different from earlier elections in more ways than one. It was an intriguing campaign, full of events and shifts, with a genuine agenda and new heroes. Throughout the campaign—which started with Amir Peretz’s victory over Shimon Peres in the Labour party leadership elections—voters watched the media covering the implosion of the Likud and its ensuing electoral debacle, the shrinking of Labour, Sharon’s descent from stage, the creation of Kadima. Although parties were born, split, shrivelled and withered away, the public did not notice major differences between the main parties’ platforms. In light of their ideological weakness the parties sought to brand themselves by concentrating on their prime ministerial candidate’s image and building a differentiated political agenda. Those tasks were outsourced, handed over to PR specialists. As a result, leadership grooming and platform composing were replaced by the use of vague catchphrases, well-designed sound bites, misleading examples, and the use and abuse of statistics under the spin-doctors’ guidance. The latter had to decide, among other things, whether to emphasize the issue of security, regarded traditionally as the primary focus of Israeli politics, and to discuss the Intifada, the disengagement plan and Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections—or to emphasize socioeconomic issues, reflecting the unprecedented number of citizens living below the poverty threshold, massive education, health and welfare budget cuts, state workers fired and salary payment delays, and pensioners condemned to hunger. Socioeconomic issues, denied centre-stage for years on the pretext of a national emergency, received greater attention and had more impact

Ten Thousand Democracies: Politics and Public Opinion in America's School Districts – By Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer School's in: Federalism and the National Education Agenda – By Paul Manna

This article addresses the role of transnational socialist party cooperation in setting the agenda of the European Community (EC) in the policy field of development aid in the early 1970s. Although agenda-setting has a high relevance for understanding why certain issues are successfully inserted in the EC (later the European Union) policy-making cycle while others not, this important stage of political decision-making often tends to escape our attention. The article argues that socialist transnational party cooperation through networks on the European level developed various strategies for placing development aid issues on the EC agenda. However, the article also shows that with a view to implementation there were several reasons that made it difficult for transnational socialist party cooperation to push forward development aid issues in the cycle of EC policy-making beyond agenda-setting.

Government agenda-setting rights in the Bundestag are weak. The theoretical part of this article discusses various aspects of agenda setting and their theoretical relevance in the context of the Bundestag. It will be argued that analyses of agenda setting should distinguish between two analytical foci, one concentrating on policy effects in the context of spatial models, the other analysing executive–legislative relations in the broader context of political competition. In addition, agenda setting among veto players should be distinguished from agenda setting between veto players and non-veto players. While the article's theoretical part drives the subsequent empirical analysis, readers more interested in the empirical aspects of agenda setting in the Bundestag may wish to turn directly to the article's second section, which provides an empirical and descriptive account of the formal rules of agenda setting in the Bundestag. In this part, it will be argued that the weakness of the government under the Bundestag's first permanent rules of procedure introduced in the early 1950s can be explained by historic circumstances. Since then, party system characteristics and the strong role of the Bundesrat have made it unattractive for the federal government to seek increased agenda control in the Bundestag. Overall, agenda setting rules in the Bundestag underscore the characterisation of Germany as a consensus democracy.

This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan cues can help presidents further increase public perceptions of issue importance, though such cues are unlikely to spur increased support. Over the years, scholars have asserted that U.S. presidents play an important role at the agenda setting stage of the policy making process (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Cohen, 1995, 1997; Downs, 1972; Kingdon, 1995; Light, 1991). Given their formal position atop the hierarchy of the executive branch and high visibility in the media, it makes sense that presidents would have ‘‘a presumptive right to play a leading role in identifying and defining the problems that command governmental attention’’ (Cobb & Elder, 1972, p. 182; Jones, 1994; Kingdon, 1995). Nevertheless, despite a vibrant and growing literature, important questions linger concerning the full extent to which presidents can be influential agenda setters. In a recent critical overview of presidential agenda-setting research, Wood (2009) points out that, ‘‘Although it seems evident that presidents should All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jose D. Villalobos, Political Science Department, University of Texas at El Paso, Benedict Hall 111, 500W. University Avenue, El Paso, TX, 79968, USA. E-mail: jdvillalobos2@utep.edu at U niersity of T exas at E l Paso on M arch 3, 2012 http://ijpoordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from be influential agenda setters at both the systemic and institutional levels, hard scientific evidence showing that presidents are influential agenda setters is limited’’ (p. 109). Among the quantitative studies that systematically examine the agenda-setting ability of presidents, most scholarly work has been restricted to time series research designs. Even though time series analyses have proved to be highly valuable in contributing to the accumulation of scientific knowledge in this area of research, limitations in historical data often oblige scholars to resort to using short time periods, a small sample of issues, and a few administrations (see Lawrence, 2004, p. 17). As a viable alternative to time series research, Wood (2009, p. 117) posits that scholars should look to experimental designs for further exploring presidential influence in agenda setting. Building on and extending the literature on presidential agenda setting, and addressing the call for alternative research designs in this area of scholarship, this study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, while taking into consideration several key factors that may condition such effects. Specifically, we consider three central factors that influence public reactions to presidential policy initiatives at the agenda setting stage: Issue salience, policy domain, and the type of cue (bipartisan versus partisan) that presidents use in their messages to the public. Our experimental study focuses on issue salience, policy domain, and presidential cueing for several reasons. To begin with, past studies tend to examine either low salience issues (e.g., trade or foreign aid) or high salience issues (e.g., the economy or a military intervention), but often fail to compare the two. In addition, although presidential agenda setting in domestic policy has been widely examined, foreign policy agenda setting has been relatively overlooked (but see Andrade & Young, 1996; Peake, 2001; Wood & Peake, 1998). Among the few works that do look at foreign policy, they mostly do so without systematically comparing it to the domestic policy domain. Therein, scholars who examine presidential influence on the foreign policy agenda generally investigate media coverage and congressional attention to issues rather than public attention (but see Cohen, 1995, 1997; Hill, 1998; Lawrence, 2004). Building on these works, we consider the conditioning effects of high and low salience issues across both policy domains with regards to presidential influence on the public agenda. Most studies also tend to overlook how presidential use of bipartisan or partisan cues in their public appeals may influence the public agenda. Although Ragsdale (1987) finds that non-partisan speeches can have a positive impact on presidential approval, her study does not test the impact of presidential speeches on issue salience or public support for policy action. Other studies focus instead on how other informational cues, such as source cues I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P U B L I C O P I N I O N R E S E A R C H 22 at U niersity of T exas at E l Paso on M arch 3, 2012 http://ijpoordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from (e.g., whether a president endorses a policy), elite cues (e.g., signaling elite consensus or dissent), or voting cues (e.g., political party affiliation) affect evaluations of presidential performance, voting behavior, etc. (see, for example, Hetherington, 2001; Sigelman, 1980; Sigelman & Sigelman, 1981). To address this gap in the literature, we take into consideration how focusing on broad (bipartisan) or narrow (partisan) constituencies may further condition the effect presidential appeals may have on public perceptions of issue salience and support for policy action. In all, by bringing together the key factors of issue salience, policy domain, and presidential cueing within an experimental setting, this study advances the debate over whether and to what extent presidents can effectively influence public perceptions of issue importance and garner support for policy action. Our findings provide new insights on how presidents can refine their use of public appeals to help maximize their potential as agenda setters. Presidential Agenda Setting and the Mass Public Agenda setting generally refers to ‘‘the process whereby matters of concern for the political system become defined as policy problems for consideration on political agendas’’ (Wood, 2009, p. 108). This process involves an ongoing competition among numerous issue proponents to gain the attention of media outlets, the public, and policy elites (Dearing & Rogers, 1996, p. 2). At the outset, in addressing the extent to which presidents can influence the agenda-setting process, scholars asserted that ‘‘no other single actor in the political system has quite the capability of the president to set agendas’’ (Kingdon, 1995, p. 23; see also Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Cobb & Elder, 1972; Schattschneider, 1960). However, more recent scholarly works argue that presidential influence in agenda setting is inherently weak due the difficulty of attaining agenda space within a highly competitive and dynamic environment (e.g., Edwards & Wood, 1999; Wood & Peake, 1998). Such scholarly investigations have helped stimulate a vibrant and growing literature on presidential agenda-setting influence over (a) political institutions, particularly Congress (e.g., Edwards & Barrett, 2000; Bond & Fleisher, 1990), (b) the media (e.g., Edwards & Wood, 1999; Peake & Esbaugh-Soha, 2008; Wood & Peake, 1998), and (c) public opinion (e.g., Behr & Iyengar, 1985; Cohen, 1995, 1997; Hill, 1998; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Lawrence, 2004). Building on the latter vein of this area of research, our study examines the impact of presidential public appeals on public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action. In doing so, we provide additional evidence and new insights to the literature concerning presidential influence on the public agenda. A G E N D A S E T T I N G F R O M T H E O V A L O F F I C E 23 at U niersity of T exas at E l Paso on M arch 3, 2012 http://ijpoordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from Influence of Presidential Public Appeals on Perceptions of

China scholars have examined the ‘China threat’ theory from various theoretical perspectives, offered a range of explanations for the theory's emergence and forecast the potential implications for US–China relations. However, few scholars have empirically studied the ‘China threat’ theory through the lens of the US media. This is a critical oversight, because the media plays a pivotal role in shaping US public opinion and US foreign policy, and the media is a key channel for ‘China threat’ dissemination and popularization. This study seeks to redress this oversight by empirically examining ‘China threat’ coverage in the US print media over a 15-year period from 1992 to 2006. We use content-analysis methodology to systematically collect, code and analyze ‘China threat’ data from five major US newspapers and to track the frequency and content of this coverage over time. Our analysis reveals many interesting patterns in ‘China threat’ media coverage. First, the initial emergence of ‘China threat’ arguments in the US print media corresponded with the sharp upward turn in China's economic growth rates in the early 1990s. However, since the early 1990s, ‘China threat’ coverage has not mirrored China's steady growth. Rather, the media coverage was cyclic, featuring three key peaks (1996, 2000 and 2005) followed by subsequent declining interest. Second, our analysis reveals that the focus of these stories also varied over time. Perceptions of China as a political/ideological threat dominated media coverage in the earlier years (1992–1994) but steadily declined after 1995 and totally disappeared from the US print media after 2001. Perceptions of China as a military/strategic threat replaced political/ideological concerns in 1995, and the military focus has dominated media coverage ever since. Perceptions of China as an economic/trade threat persisted steadily throughout the 15-year time period with a clear uptick in recent years. We conclude this analysis by turning to the literature on realism, agenda setting and information processing to offer possible explanations for these empirical trends.

Agenda setting for maternal survival in Ghana and Tanzania against the backdrop of the MDGs

A comparison of front-page New Yor-k Times'content and national public opinion from 1954 to 1976 showed strong agenda-setting effects for the civil rights issue. For this issue, the optimal effect span was the fourto six-week period immediately prior to field work. These findings contradict previous findings and assertions about a cumulative media effect over a longer period of time. James P. Winter is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University. Chaim H. Eyal is on the faculty of the Communications Institute at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 45:376-383 ? 1981 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/81/0045-376/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:32:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms AGENDA SETTING FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE 377 case in the literature. The question of the appropriate for analysis has received little systematic attention; in fact it has only recently been elaborated (Eyal et al., 1981; Eyal, 1980). One of the time frame components identified is the optimal effect span or peak association between media and public emphasis of an issue. Those studies that have to some degree broached the questions of time frame suggest that the optimal effect span between aggregate media attention and public priority is between two and five months, and that the impact is a cumulative one, with exposure over time leading to enhanced public salience (McCombs, et al., 1975). As McCombs and Masel-Walters (1976) indicated: It appears that the cumulative effects of from three to four months of day-to-day news play result in some issues rising high on the agenda and others disappearing from public view (p. 7). In a nonelection study of university students, Stone (1975) examined Time and Newsweek for six months before and three months after the dates of his fieldwork. Accumulating the media duration backward from the interviews, he found a monotonic increase in correlations between media and public agendas, especially up to two months prior to interviewing. Cumulative media content from a full seven months prior to the interviews provided the highest zero-order correlations with students' agendas, on several issues. Despite this indication, some researchers have found agenda-setting effects using as little as one week's media content from immediately prior to the interview period (Mullins, 1977; Becker and McCombs, 1977). Indeed, in a study comparing national television and Gallup Poll data over an eight-year period, Zucker (1978) found that the media emphasis in the month immediately prior to the interview period was a better predictor of public opinion than was earlier media content. However, Zucker's study was designed to focus on the causal order in agenda setting, and on types of issues and their duration of exposure in the media rather than the optimal effect span. A second important variable that has only recently been considered is the nature of the individual issues examined. McCombs (1981) described four approaches to agenda-setting research: using either aggregate or individual public agenda data, in conjunction with either a set of issues or a single issue. But perhaps the variable nature of issues precludes treating them in the aggregate, another problem that may explain inconsistent findings. With a few recent exceptions (Zucker, 1978; Stroman, 1978; Erbring et al., 1980; Winter et al., 1980) agenda-setting researchers have aggregated diverse issues, and expected wholesale transferral of issue saliences from media to public. The problems associated with treating issues in the aggregate have This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:32:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

One of the question marks of the 1992 presidential campaign was how television would cover it. After the debacle of campaign coverage in 1988, television vowed to do better. At issue was the amount of substantive information vs. the time spent on the horse race, strategy, and campaign events. Campaign coverage is important because of the role of information in democratic choice. Essential to democratic participation is the opportunity to choose among alternatives. Given alternatives, citizens can say “yes” or “no,” thereby giving consent to the policies which best represent their interests (Schattschneider 1975, 138). Schattschneider also emphasized that the alternatives must be relevant to voters' concerns. Unfortunately, television coverage of elections does not emphasize information about public issues. Another important aspect of campaign coverage is its potential effect on election outcomes: public opinion is shaped by the tone, quantity, and content of the candidates' coverage. Questions about the political effects of news, the nature of campaign information, and the relationship between democracy and information provide an interesting framework to examine campaign communication in 1992. Did television news offer voters adequate issue information? How did talk shows compare to news in terms of information? Finally, what impact, if any, did the two formats have on the outcome of the election? This paper will examine Bill Clinton's news coverage and talk show appearances from June 2 to July 22.

Since McCombs and Shaw first introduced the theory in 1972, agenda setting has emerged as one of the most influential perspectives in the study of the effects of mass media. Broadly defined, “agenda setting” refers to the ability of mass media sources to identify the most salient topics, thereby “setting the agendas” for audiences. In telling us what to think about, then, mass media sources are perceived to play an influential role in determining priorities related to policies, values, and knowledge on a given topic or issue. Scholars have studied this phenomenon according to both object (issue) salience and attribute salience and along aggregate and individual audience responses. The audience characteristics of need for orientation, uncertainty, relevance, and involvement are advanced as moderating and predicting agenda-setting effects. When agenda-setting theory is applied to the study of messaging related to health and risk communication, scholars have reviewed and identified common themes and topics that generally include media’s role in educating and informing the public about specific health conditions as well as public health priorities and administrative policies. Agenda setting is often examined in terms of measuring mass media effects on audiences. Looking at interpersonal communication, such as that coming from medical providers, opinion leaders, or peer networks, in studies will allow research to examine the combined effects of interpersonal and mass communication. Testing possible interactions among differing sources of information along with assessment of issue and attribute salience among audiences according to an agenda-setting framework serves to document audience trends and lived experiences with regard to mass media, health, and risk communication.

Max McCombs is widely known among communication scholars, for he has devoted almost four decades to building agenda setting from a successful hypothesis into a robust and popular theory of how news influences the salience of issues. From the initial McCombs and Shaw (1972) Chapel Hill study, done during the 1968 presidential election and published in Public Opinion Quarterly, this theory has engendered more than 400 published studies. What McCombs calls the invisible college of agenda-setting scholars includes researchers from every settled continent. British scholars Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) once observed, Among the field's master paradigms, agenda setting may be most worth pursuing (p. 225). McCombs's contribution to communication theory extends beyond the elucidation of agenda setting itself; he has helped reestablish scholarly appreciation for the power of media in influencing public perceptions of the political world. Acknowledging and expanding on Walter Lippmann's (1922) insights in Public Opinion, he has shown that media messages have great influence on the pictures in our heads. The Chapel Hill study's correlations between the media agenda and the public agenda offered a finding that has become scholarly history. Lowery and Defleur (1995) list the early agenda-setting studies among 15 milestones in communication research. Magnitude of Contribution To understand the magnitude of McCombs's contribution to communication theory, it should be remembered that from the 1940s through the 1960s, prevailing scholarly wisdom held that media exerted little influence. In The People's Choice, Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1948) had shown that social processes, and not media messages, the prime influencers in the 1940 election. In a later study titled Voting, Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee (1954) found the surface effects of newspapers and radio in the political campaign were not impressive (p. ix). Klapper (1960) offered the observation that mass communication ordinarily does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, but rather functions among and through a nexus of mediating factors (p. 8). From his early days as a New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter, however, McCombs knew that news stories influenced people. He and Shaw designed their 1968 Chapel Hill study to seek news influence in a different realm: voters' perceptions of the most important problems of the day. As McCombs would later explain, he and Shaw sought media influence at the cognitive level, rather than at the affective or behavioral level. They found gold in this initial study (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Correlating the media agenda (as measured by content analysis) with the public agenda (as measured by a survey of voters), yielded a .967 rank order correlation on major campaign issues, and a .979 correlation on minor issues. The study revealed two other interesting conclusions. McCombs and Shaw designed their research specifically to attack the prevailing wisdom that voters' selective attention to news stories, as cued through social processes, would nullify media influence. They showed conclusively how voters' perception of the importance of issues was determined by media attention to those issues (in terms of numbers of stories), rather than by the voters' selective attention. The landmark agenda-setting study also showed a high degree of correlation among the various media. That is, television news, magazines, and newspapers all agreed significantly on how much coverage they gave to the various issues of the day. Both CBS and NBC network news agendas, for example, had a .66 correlation with the New York Times agenda. As news channels proliferated, this finding served as an important benchmark for future research on inter-media agenda setting. The Charlotte Study Having established high correlations between the media agenda and the public agenda, McCombs and Shaw set out to establish time-order, the second condition necessary for determining causal influence of media messages. …

Television News, Real-World Cues, and Changes in the Public Agenda

Despite extensive commentary on the failure of health care reform, little systematic analysis has addressed the question of why reform became a national political issue in the early 1990s. Drawing on studies of agenda setting and examining opinion surveys, media coverage, and various measures of congressional activity, I identify the major factors that pushed health care reform onto the government agenda and explore the relationships among them. These factors fall into three categories: underlying structural changes in Congress and the interest group community that created a receptive climate for addressing health care reform; more immediate changes in the medical system, public opinion, media coverage, and the budgetary and political environments that increased attention to the issue; and a crucial political catalyst that thrust the issue to the top of the government agenda--the 1991 victory of Harris Wofford in a special Senate race in Pennsylvania. A content analysis of media coverage of that election reveals that journalists and politicians rapidly interpreted Wofford's triumph as a sign of broad-based public support for reform. This widely shared interpretation redefined the political risks and benefits of health care reform, creating an opportunity for legislative action. Party because of the way reform reached the government agenda, however, this window of opportunity was more fragile than many believed. My argument thus has implications not only for agenda-setting research but also for the failure of national health legislation and the future possibilities for reform.

For the fourth consecutive year the economy ranked as the leading news story in U.S. media. In 2011, nearly 40 percent reported paying attention to the topic, and in 2010 the domestic economy placed first or second news story of interest 41 weeks out of 52.1Since 2007 and the crisis of the housing market,2 the public's preference for domestic economic issues as measured by the Pew's News Interest Index has remained high regardless of the severity of the international economic turmoil.Subsequently, two questions bear investigation:* Despite abundant empirical evidence, do U.S. citizens truly favor domestic topics rather than international issues?* Scant research previously investigated whether Americans gravitate toward softor hard economic reports. So do U.S. citizens prefer articles with human interest or timely information instead?The Pew Research Center certainly presents the economy as a ubiquitous topic in the media,3 yet do business reporters really know which format leads to a higher recall of economic and financial information? As it privileges hard news, the Pew Index only focusdes on a partial picture. Focused on practical implications for the profession, this research relies on an experiment to evaluate what economic news yields the highest recall and consequently what type of stories should media present to the public.Domestic and International Economic CoverageResearch targeting economic news seldom introduces ample evidence regarding the difference in geographical perspectives of the stories covered. More regularly, content analyses distinguish between domestic and international stories, or local and national news. A recent investigation of the differences in coverage of the current recession between Chinese and U.S. media revealed that more than 75 percent of front-page articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal focused on domestic issues while international issues and the global economy accounted for 15 percent of the sample.4Similar disproportions had been previously divulged. A content analysis of national and local news organizations sampled in 2002 and 2003 found that local media devoted 41.6 percent of their coverage to national economic issues versus 4.8 percent for global topics. Furthermore, the national press secured 73.7 percent of its content for national matters and 18 percent for international issues.5As posited by agenda setting,6 issues salient in the media transpire into the public agenda as the most important questions. A survey previously showed a positive correlation between the public opinion about the economy as a major national problem and the extensive economic coverage.7 It thus appears logical considering the reported saliency of domestic economic news to present the following hypothesis:H1:People reading domestic economic news will recall more information than will those presented with international economic articles.Softand Hard NewsScholars have previously analyzed the dichotomy between hard and softnews in relation to the social history of the press, the sociology of news production and political communication. 8 Tuchman9 first introduced the distinction, defining hard news as a produced content with high news values demanding instant attention and softnews as its direct opposite. Recent publications further conceptualized softnews as typically more sensational, more personality-centered, less time-bound, more practical and more incident-based than other news.10Studies have since indicated a growing interest in softer news. A national survey revealed that international stories covering ordinary people rather than politics and governments generated a higher interest.11 Additionally, a content analysis of more than 5,000 news stories from 33 U.S. media between 1980 and 1999 exposed that articles with a human interest represented 11 percent of the sample in the early 1980s, and 26 percent 10 years later. …