Exploring Media Versus Public Agenda: The Case of Pakistan

Abstract

Media bridges the gap between people and events that may be inaccessible, such as war zones or distant locations, and keeps the public well-informed about important news. As observed by Walter Lipmann, a pioneer in mass communication research, people rely on the media for information, forming their perception of the world based on the information provided. Five extensively covered national issues have been analyzed in the light of agenda setting theory to measure the media audience relationship. From May 2020 to October 2020, the researchers chosen readers of two prominent Urdu Dailies the Jung and Express for content analysis. To measure the audience agenda a survey has been conducted. The results of the study demonstrate meaningful effects, significant, moderate, and low correlations between +.95 to +.14. There is not significant difference in setting the agenda on five issues between both the newspapers. The results show that the agenda setting theory is validated the outcome of the study.