Need for Orientation as a Predictor of Agenda-Setting Effects: Causal Evidence from a Two-Wave Panel Study

Abstract

The purposes of this article are to test the new need for orientation (NFO) scale by Matthes (2006) in an agenda-setting study, and to explore the role of NFO for the second level of agenda setting. A panel survey on the issue unemployment was combined with an extensive content analysis of TV and newspaper coverage. The results show that NFO leads to an increase in the perceived media salience of the issue, and by doing so, it fosters the (first-level) agenda-setting function of the news media. However, although a second-level agenda-setting effect occurs, NFO has no influence on the perceived media salience of affective issue attributes. It can be concluded that NFO explains the amount of information seeking, but not the affective tone of the information that individuals are looking for.