Medios poderosos, ciudadanos inteligentes: agenda setting en la ciudad de Buenos Aires en octubre de 2013

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A phrase popularized by Bernard Cohen in 1963 —which claims that, although the press might not be very efficient at telling people what to think, it is unbelievably successful at suggesting what they should think about— has led to the concept that immensely powerful communication media clearly influence malleable public opinion. In academia, the agenda setting hypothesis has been confirmed on numerous occasions with convincing results. However, the variables that might increase or debilitate the effects of media (or “contingent conditions,” as they have been termed) have not been adequately addressed. In the investigation on which this paper is based —which included a poll with 460 respondents carried out on the streets of Buenos Aires, along with a survey of more than 14 thousand news items and around twenty in-depth interviews — we observed the inconsistent but relevant influence of certain determining factors (psychological, behavioral, attitudinal, demographic, and those related to media or topic type), although many of these were significantly affected by respondents’ political slants and party affiliations. In line with what the specialized literature suggests, we determined the relevance of the intervening variables by comparing the results of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients, applied to measure the correlation between respondents’ thematic hierarchies and those that emerged from an exhaustive survey of the press. The population groups with the highest coefficients (since their thematic priorities were closest to those proposed by the media) were those whose members were the best educated, the most politically active, at the highest socioeconomic level, and living in the most sought-after neighborhoods in the city. However, one of the most surprising findings was that Victory Front voters and readers of newspapers like Pagina 12 and Tiempo Argentino, who generally reflected the above traits, were among those individuals likeliest to steer closest to the journalistic priorities of traditional communication media opposed to the professed interests of these same respondents. Interviews allowed us to look at why Buenos Aires residents choose their preferred news topics and at the meaning they attach to media (and news) consumption. Among the main reasons respondents picked certain topics are personal experience and, more notably, the belief that such topics might lead to integral solutions to political and social problems. Buenos Aires residents might be critical of media, but they still eagerly consume it. They prefer to hear different perspectives and draw their own conclusions. And —perhaps as an inevitable consequence of media influence, which has not spared our respondents— they deeply value different sources of information.