Agenda Setting

How does an issue move towards the centre of public attention?

Suppose a city newsroom runs a sustained series on rising housing costs. Reports lead its homepage, interviews recur in bulletins, and short clips circulate through neighbourhood groups. Housing becomes an increasingly familiar topic of conversation.

Residents may disagree sharply about the remedy. Some favour public housing, others favour changes in construction policy, and others focus on wages. Yet more of them may begin to name housing among the city’s most important problems.

An agenda is a set of topics or objects ordered by their relative salience. Salience refers to how prominent, accessible or important something becomes within a specified agenda. Researchers define and measure the relevant form of salience.

Think of a spotlight

A spotlight draws attention towards part of a stage. People can see the illuminated scene and still interpret it differently. Media emphasis can similarly bring a topic forward while audiences continue to debate its meaning, causes and solutions.

Three questions to carry through the chapter

• Priority: which topics receive sustained prominence, and which become important to a public?
• Depiction: which characteristics and connections become prominent within those topics?
• Formation: who and what shape the agendas that circulate?

In my lecture, I move from the basic salience relationship to attributes and agenda building. This chapter develops that route through evidence, media examples and research exercises.

A longstanding question became a testable research programme.

Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion (1922) examined the relationship between a complex external world and the pictures through which people understand it. Bernard Cohen’s The Press and Foreign Policy (1963) sharpened the distinction between directing attention towards subjects and determining a person’s position.

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw developed the agenda-setting hypothesis through research during the 1968 United States presidential election. Their Chapel Hill study appeared in the summer 1972 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly.

The researchers reported a strong correspondence between media emphasis and voters’ issue priorities. For major-item emphasis on the main campaign issues, the reported correlation was +.967. This finding gave the emerging research programme a striking empirical starting point.

What the study contributed

The design joined content analysis with audience research. It made a relationship between two agendas measurable and directed attention towards a consequential media effect: the organisation of issue priorities.

Its local setting, selected audience and observational design also define the scope of that particular finding. Later research used other populations, longitudinal designs and experiments to examine conditions and causal influence.

From correspondence to experimental evidence

Iyengar, Peters and Kinder’s 1982 experiments varied the emphasis within television news and examined viewers’ responses. Their results supported effects on perceived problem importance and on the weight given to issues when evaluating presidential performance.

This development shows how a research tradition grows: an initial association generates hypotheses, and subsequent designs test mechanisms, direction and limits.

Read McCombs and Shaw (1972) and Iyengar, Peters and Kinder (1982). The latter examines agenda setting alongside priming.

Media emphasis can help organise the issues people regard as important.

First-level agenda setting concerns the salience of objects: issues, events, public figures, organisations or other topics. A study of city problems might compare the prominence of housing, water supply, employment, transport and parks.

The media agenda is the pattern of emphasis in the content examined. The public agenda is the pattern of importance expressed by a defined public. The hypothesis asks whether, and under what conditions, emphasis in the first influences priorities in the second.

Attention and prominence

The lecture distinguishes the amount of attention an issue receives from the prominence given to it. Ten brief mentions and a sustained lead investigation represent different patterns of emphasis.

Relative priority matters

An agenda orders attention among alternatives. Housing can rise because its coverage expands, because competing issues recede, or through both processes. Examine absolute amounts and relative shares when the distinction affects the question.

The public can also contain different issue publics. Tenants, employers, students and homeowners may encounter different information and rank concerns differently. Define whose agenda is being measured before interpreting an aggregate pattern.

Salience transfer

Salience transfer names the proposed influence of one agenda on another. The emphasis supplied by a source becomes relevant to the importance attached to an object, attribute or relationship elsewhere.

A critical investigation of a policy can increase the policy’s prominence. Supporters and opponents may both begin discussing it more often. This is why a study can find growing issue importance alongside continuing disagreement.

Competition for attention

News space and audience attention are allocated among topics. An issue’s share can decline even while the number of reports about it stays constant, because total output expands or another issue receives a surge of coverage.

Specify the denominator. “Twenty housing reports” describes an amount; “twenty per cent of the sampled reports” describes a share. Both can be useful, and they answer different questions about the agenda.

Translate the hypothesis into measurements that can be checked.

Suppose a study codes 100 city-news items, assigning each one a single primary issue. A separate survey asks 100 residents to choose the most important issue from the same five categories. The following counts produce two rankings.

Read the relationship

Housing ranks first in both agendas. Water supply and employment exchange second and third place. Transport and parks retain fourth and fifth place. The rankings show a strong positive correspondence.

For these five untied ranks, Spearman’s rank correlation is ρ = 0.90. The squared rank differences sum to 2, giving ρ = 1 − 6 × 2 / [5 × (5² − 1)] = 0.90.

This calculation summarises similarity in ordering. Report the counts, categories, period and sampling procedure alongside the statistic so that readers can assess what was compared.

Match the scope of the measures

A city agenda should be compared with priorities about that city over an appropriate period. A national survey, a campus sample and an online discussion each refer to different populations and contexts.

The example uses a closed list. An open-ended question allows respondents to name concerns outside the researcher’s categories. Researchers then need a transparent coding procedure that preserves meaningful distinctions.

Define the unit of inference

A comparison of aggregate agendas describes a group-level relationship. To investigate individual effects, measure individuals’ exposure and priorities, ideally across time. A strong aggregate correlation can coexist with considerable variation among people.

The time window also matters. Concern may respond quickly to a sudden event, grow through cumulative reporting or remain elevated after coverage falls. Compare plausible lags and justify the chosen period.

Prominent attributes help shape the picture of an issue or person.

Second-level agenda setting concerns the salience of attributes: the characteristics attached to an object. Housing may already be prominent, while coverage emphasises affordability, construction, tenant security, commuting distance or neighbourhood change.

The research question moves inside the object: which attributes receive emphasis in the media, and which become prominent in the public’s account of that object?

Substantive emphasis and tone can combine

A report can foreground a candidate’s experience while evaluating it favourably. Another can foreground the same experience while questioning its relevance. Code the characteristic and the evaluation as separate variables when both matter.

The 1997 study by McCombs, Llamas, López-Escobar and Rey examined candidate images during Spanish elections. It extended agenda-setting inquiry through comparisons of media and advertising content with voters’ images of candidates.

Attribute selection can guide subsequent judgements

When affordability dominates accounts of housing, people may increasingly use that characteristic to describe the issue. Whether this changes support for a proposal depends on further information, values and circumstances that a study can investigate.

Use precise questions: which attributes were encountered, which became salient, and which evaluations followed? This sequence gives the explanation more detail than a general claim that media determine how an audience thinks.

Attribute research: McCombs and colleagues (1997). For its relationship with framing, see Section 8.

Issues and attributes can become salient as connected bundles.

Network agenda setting, often called the third level, investigates the salience of relationships among objects or attributes. Coverage may repeatedly connect housing with employment, transport and water supply. The inquiry asks how these patterns relate to the associations people make.

Suppose a housing series links rents with wages, commuting and infrastructure. A public association study might find some of those links prominent while revealing other connections. Compare the patterns of relationships, including their strength.

Define what a link means

A media link might be co-occurrence within the same story, paragraph or other defined unit. A public link might come from open-ended associations or a structured task. Different definitions produce different networks and require justification.

Guo’s 2012 methodological article developed the application of social network analysis to these comparisons. Vu, Guo and McCombs’s 2014 study examined aggregated media and public data across several years.

Ask what joint prominence adds

Two topics can receive the same amount of attention while being connected differently. Linking housing with wages suggests one bundle; linking it with traffic suggests another. Network analysis adds a question about that organisation of attention.

Study whether the links concern co-salience, causal interpretation or another relation. A co-mention measure records joint presence; a claim about a causal frame requires evidence about how the relationship is presented.

People seek orientation through different concerns and information needs.

Need for orientation helps explain differences in susceptibility to agenda-setting influence. It concerns how relevant an issue feels and how uncertain a person is about it. An issue that matters greatly while remaining difficult to understand can prompt a strong search for guidance.

Suppose a student is moving to the city and deciding where to live. Housing is relevant, and uncertainty about rents, transport and local conditions is high. News coverage may become a useful source of orientation.

Experience and issue obtrusiveness

An obtrusive issue enters everyday experience more directly. A resident encounters a rent increase or a disrupted journey personally. An unobtrusive issue is encountered mainly through mediated accounts, such as a distant policy negotiation.

Direct experience can establish importance, provide a competing interpretation or stimulate further media use. The relationship varies by issue and audience. Investigate how experience and information use combine in the setting studied.

Exposure, attention and trust

Available content becomes influential through encounters with people. Measure which sources individuals use, what they attend to and how credible or relevant they find the information.

Selective exposure can reinforce some priorities while opening others. A person may follow housing specialists, general news and a local group for different reasons. Interpersonal discussion can carry an issue beyond its original audience.

Accessibility and importance

Repeated encounters can make an issue easier to retrieve from memory. People may also learn that editors, officials or peers regard it as consequential. These routes help explain why content and prominence cues can shape salience.

Recognition, recall, personal importance and perceived societal importance are distinct measures. Select the outcome that answers the research question and describe it precisely.

Time and prior concern

Priorities have histories. A person already concerned about housing may seek related coverage, while sustained reporting may introduce the topic to someone else. Repeated measurements help separate these paths.

For psychological mechanisms and audience differences, consult McCombs and Stroud (2014).

Different questions reveal different media effects.

Agenda setting examines salience. Framing examines the organisation of an account through problem definitions, interpretations and related elements. Priming examines how the considerations available to people affect the standards used in subsequent evaluation.

The housing example can be studied through all three approaches, with a different outcome measured in each case.

Attribute selection and interpretive organisation

An attribute study might count how often affordability appears and compare that emphasis with public responses. A framing study might analyse how affordability is connected with responsibility, causes and proposed remedies.

These questions can intersect. An explanatory frame may make an attribute prominent, while an attribute may be salient across several competing frames. Define the unit of analysis and the mechanism proposed.

From issue priority to evaluative criteria

Priming adds a further step. Suppose reporting raises the importance of housing, and residents then place more weight on housing performance when judging a mayor. The first change concerns salience; the second concerns the basis of evaluation.

Measure both outcomes to test the sequence. A study may find an increase in issue importance with little change in the weight of that issue, or changes in judgement shaped by other information.

Keep persuasion in view

Persuasion concerns changes in evaluations, attitudes or intended action. Attribute emphasis and framing can contribute to such changes, and researchers can investigate those connections directly.

One report may influence several outcomes at once. Clear measures allow an explanation to show whether it changed attention, interpretation, evaluation or some combination.

Compare Weaver (2007), Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007) and Entman (1993).

The news agenda is itself produced through competing claims and routines.

Agenda building examines how issues gain access to agendas and acquire prominence. In media research, this includes the formation of the news agenda through events, sources, institutions, organisational practices and journalists’ decisions.

A source may release a report, organise a press conference or supply an accessible spokesperson. Journalists assess the claim, seek other accounts and decide where to place the resulting coverage. The agenda emerges through this work and its wider conditions.

Agenda formation involves purposeful strategies and routine work. A campaign may seek attention deliberately, while a deadline or familiar source list can shape emphasis through ordinary production. Evidence about an agenda-setting effect addresses a different question from evidence about a participant’s intention.

Events, issues and sources

An event is a bounded occurrence: a report release, meeting, speech or demonstration. An issue groups related occurrences into a broader concern. Sources are the actors and materials through which claims enter reporting.

A council debate about a housing scheme is an event. Housing affordability is a wider issue. Officials, tenants, researchers, developers and records may become sources within its coverage.

Shoemaker and Reese provide a more differentiated hierarchy of influences, distinguishing individuals, routines, organisations, social institutions and social systems. Use these levels to organise evidence about content production.

Media, public and policy agendas

The policy agenda concerns issues receiving attention within decision-making institutions. Hearings, committee work and official priorities can be measured separately from news prominence and public concern.

Access and institutional attention

Cobb, Ross and Ross examine agenda building as a broader political process through which demands compete for public and formal attention. Different routes can bring an issue to officials, including organised public mobilisation and specialised institutional access.

An issue can gain news prominence while institutional action remains limited. Officials can also pursue an issue through specialised channels with little public visibility. Follow the relevant agenda directly.

Institutional attention and policy action

A question raised in a hearing, a draft proposal, an approved budget and an implemented programme represent different institutional outcomes. Define which one indicates entry to the policy agenda and which indicates a later decision or action.

Suppose housing receives extensive coverage and a committee schedules a hearing. That observation supports a question about institutional attention. Claims about changed spending or improved housing conditions require additional records. Trace each step through the evidence appropriate to it.

Read Dearing and Rogers (1996), Cobb and colleagues (1976) and Shoemaker and Reese (2014).

Agendas circulate through interacting media and audience choices.

Intermedia agenda setting concerns influence among media agendas. An investigation published by one outlet may prompt follow-up elsewhere. A local post may enter television news, while a televised account may stimulate online discussion.

Establish the content and timing of those movements. Similar coverage can also arise through shared events, sources or routine access to the same material.

A hybrid environment

Chadwick’s hybrid media system approach examines interactions among older and newer media logics. This provides a wider context for studying how journalists, campaigners, creators, institutions and audiences compete to organise attention.

Meraz’s study of blog networks and Vargo and Guo’s large-scale intermedia study show ways to investigate these changing relationships. Findings remain attached to their sampled media, issues and periods.

Platforms organise encounters

Search, recommendation, sharing and moderation can influence the content people encounter. Personalisation and audience choices may produce overlapping agendas, with different priorities among groups.

Suppose a resident repeatedly encounters housing videos after following a tenants’ group. A study could compare the encountered agenda with the publication agenda, the group’s shared material and the resident’s changing priorities.

Agenda melding

Agenda melding considers how people combine agendas through media use and social affiliations. A resident may bring together priorities from a national bulletin, a professional group, a neighbourhood association and family conversation.

Shaw, McCombs, Weaver and Hamm’s 1999 formulation links this process with group connection. It directs attention towards the work audiences perform as they seek belonging and assemble their own account of important matters.

Automated summaries and curated bundles

An automated summary can become another point at which topics and attributes are selected. Suppose a summary foregrounds a housing dispute’s political conflict while compressing its affordability data. Researchers can compare source material, generated emphasis, actual exposure and audience responses.

Keep the research tied to observable outputs and encounters. A visible result, an inferred system rule and a participant’s interpretation provide different kinds of evidence.

Content reuse and apparent influence

Several outlets may publish versions of the same agency report or press release. A burst of similar coverage can therefore reflect shared material as well as direct influence from one outlet to another.

Retain publication times, source credits, links and text histories where available. Distinguish original reporting, syndicated copies and later follow-up. These records help explain how an apparent common agenda was produced.

Explain the organisation of attention while keeping the audience and context visible.

Agenda setting provides a clear route from a communication question to measurable relationships. It connects content analysis with audience research and extends the inquiry from topic priorities to attributes, associations and the formation of agendas.

What the approach contributes

• A consequential media effect: the importance attached to an issue can shape conversation, evaluation and demands for action.
• A cumulative research programme: surveys, experiments and longitudinal analyses can test related hypotheses through different designs.
• A bridge between production and reception: agenda building asks how emphasis is produced; effects research asks how people respond.
• A flexible object of inquiry: issues, candidates, organisations and other objects can be studied where their agendas are clearly defined.

Specify whose agenda

An aggregate public agenda can conceal differences among languages, places, occupations or social groups. A campus sample, a neighbourhood sample and a national sample each answer a different question.

In an Indian media study, language and regional circulation can be built into the sampling design. Compare relevant outlets and publics directly, including interpersonal and community sources where they contribute to the explanation.

Measure concern beyond visible activity

People can care deeply about an issue while remaining silent online. Others may post repeatedly about a topic they regard as entertaining, irritating or useful for attracting attention. Combine behavioural traces with measures that address the proposed outcome.

Low coverage also deserves investigation. Ask which topics are difficult to report, lack organised sources or remain outside accepted news categories. Examine whether affected communities maintain a different agenda through experience and local communication.

Power and democratic responsibility

Media attention can expose neglected conditions and sustain scrutiny. It can also concentrate on accessible, spectacular or strategically promoted subjects while pushing other concerns into the background.

Evaluate the selection through evidence about public consequences, source access and editorial judgement. Public interest involves more than a count of attention: an issue’s seriousness, affected populations and available knowledge also matter to responsible journalism.

Keep the explanation proportionate to the design

A cross-sectional correlation, an experiment and a time-series analysis support different inferences. Report what the design establishes, how constructs were measured and which plausible explanations remain open.

The strongest account connects a defined media agenda, a relevant audience, a defensible period and a measured outcome. This gives a familiar claim about media influence a form that others can examine.

Compare attention with underlying conditions

Where the question permits, add independent indicators of the issue being reported. Housing coverage, recorded rents and reported public concern provide three different series. Their comparison can reveal whether attention follows changes in conditions, precedes public concern or develops through another pattern.

Indicators also have definitions and limits. Record their coverage and construction, then explain how they bear on the proposed relationship. This strengthens the inquiry into what news contributes to public understanding.

Choose the level and outcome before explaining the influence.

For each case, identify the media agenda, the audience and the proposed outcome. Then decide which evidence would distinguish agenda setting from another process.

Case 1 · Housing becomes a city priority

Suppose a newspaper and local channel devote several weeks to rising rents. A survey conducted afterwards finds that more residents name housing as an important city problem. During the same period, many households receive rent-increase notices, and a tenants’ organisation holds public meetings.

Your task: identify the first-level hypothesis and at least two competing or interacting explanations. Propose a stronger research design.

Case 2 · A candidate becomes associated with competence

Suppose coverage of a candidate increasingly foregrounds administrative experience and describes it favourably. Audience interviews later mention competence more often. Support for the candidate rises slightly among some groups and stays stable among others.

Your task: distinguish substantive attributes, affective treatment, attribute salience and support. Identify what would establish a priming effect.

Case 3 · A local discussion enters national coverage

Suppose community accounts connect housing costs with long commutes. A local news site investigates the link. National outlets follow the story, and many later reports connect housing with employment. Online activity grows, while a representative survey reveals different issue priorities across regions.

Your task: separate agenda building, intermedia influence, network agenda setting and evidence about the public agenda.

Listen for the shift from attention to attributes and agenda building.

Watch my lecture on Agenda Setting, then return to the housing example. Connect the basic salience hypothesis with media prominence, substantive and affective attributes, and the influences that shape news agendas.

Watch my Agenda Setting lecture on YouTube ↗

A three-pass viewing exercise

1. First pass: explain the relationship between media emphasis and public issue importance.
2. Second pass: identify an object and distinguish its substantive attributes from evaluative tone.
3. Third pass: select one influence on agenda building and describe how you would investigate it.

Finish by writing two separate research questions: one about the formation of a media agenda and one about its possible influence on a public agenda.

Ten questions to test levels, mechanisms and evidence.

Choose one answer before opening its explanation. For each concept, add an example from a media environment you know.

Build a study around a defined agenda and a defensible comparison.

Begin with a focused question. You might investigate whether housing emphasis predicts later public concern, whether competence becomes salient in candidate images, or whether one outlet’s priorities precede those of another.

Activity 1 · Audit a media agenda

1. Select two outlets covering the same place or audience and a defined two-week period.
2. Define the unit: story, bulletin item, homepage display or another justified unit.
3. Develop issue categories and a rule for items that contain several issues.
4. Record attention and one separate prominence measure.
5. Pilot the coding with another coder, discuss ambiguities, revise the codebook and assess agreement.
6. Compare issue shares and rankings. Write 400 words explaining what the comparison establishes about the sampled media.

Activity 2 · Separate issues, attributes and frames

Select ten reports about one issue or public figure. Identify the object, the substantive attributes emphasised and their evaluative tone. Then examine how two reports define the problem, responsibility or remedy.

Produce a coding table and a short comparison. Identify one question about public response that the content alone leaves for further research.

A practical research workflow

Choose a design that answers the question

A cross-sectional study can compare agendas at a point in time. A panel follows the same people and can examine change in priorities alongside exposure. A time series compares agendas across repeated periods. An experiment varies exposure or emphasis under controlled conditions.

Time-series precedence strengthens a temporal argument while still requiring attention to shared events and other causes. An experiment strengthens causal identification within its conditions, while audience and setting affect the reach of its conclusions.

Measure exposure and prior importance

Ask which sources participants encountered during the relevant period and how the topic mattered beforehand. Combine self-reports with other appropriate exposure measures where feasible and with consent.

A survey can ask an open-ended question about the most important problems facing a specified community. Another measure can ask how personally important each issue is. Keep the wording aligned with the construct and allow meaningful answers beyond a predetermined list.

Document coding and analysis

Define categories, multi-issue treatment, tone, time intervals and duplicate content. Report intercoder reliability for human coding. For automated coding, assess performance against a justified human-coded reference and examine consequential errors.

Rank comparisons require attention to ties and category choices. Analyses with only a few issues offer limited information. For network comparisons, specify nodes, link construction and methods appropriate to dependent relational data.

Examination prompts

• Short answer: distinguish media, public and policy agendas with examples.
• Conceptual answer: explain first-level, second-level and network agenda setting.
• Applied essay: design a study of an issue’s movement from local coverage into public concern.
• Critical essay: evaluate agenda setting in a hybrid media environment, considering agency, measurement, power and causality.

A strong answer states the relevant hypothesis, explains selected concepts, follows a concrete example and matches its conclusion to the available evidence.

Keep concepts, measures and explanations connected.

Use the glossary to connect terms with their research questions. Begin further reading with the original study and the conceptual syntheses, then follow the experimental, attribute, network or agenda-building branch that fits your inquiry.

Glossary

Agenda

A set of issues or other objects ordered by relative salience within a specified setting.

Salience

Prominence, accessibility or importance, defined and measured for a particular agenda.

Agenda setting

Influence on the salience of objects, attributes or relationships within an agenda.

Salience transfer

The proposed influence of one agenda’s emphasis on salience within another agenda.

Object

The issue, person, organisation or other topic whose salience is studied.

Media agenda

The pattern of emphasis in the media content or encounters examined.

Public agenda

The pattern of importance expressed by a defined public.

Policy agenda

Issues receiving attention within decision-making institutions.

First-level agenda setting

Influence on the salience of issues or other objects.

Attribute

A characteristic, aspect or evaluative feature attached to an object.

Second-level agenda setting

Influence on the salience of attributes associated with an object.

Substantive dimension

The characteristics or themes selected for emphasis within an object.

Affective dimension

The evaluative tone attached to an object or attribute.

Selective exposure

Patterns of choosing information sources or content in relation to interests, identities or preferences.

Network agenda setting

Influence on the salience of relationships among objects or attributes.

Co-occurrence

Joint appearance within a defined unit, used as one possible indicator of a relationship.

Agenda building

Processes through which issues enter agendas and acquire prominence.

Intermedia agenda setting

Influence among the agendas of different media outlets or types.

Agenda melding

The combination of agendas through media use, interpersonal connection and group affiliation.

Need for orientation

An information-orientation need associated with issue relevance and uncertainty.

Relevance

The perceived bearing of an issue on a person’s concerns or goals.

Uncertainty

A person’s perceived lack of sufficient understanding or confidence about an issue.

Obtrusive issue

An issue encountered relatively directly through everyday experience.

Unobtrusive issue

An issue encountered mainly through mediated accounts rather than direct experience.

Exposure

An encounter with media content, defined for the period and setting studied.

Issue public

People for whom a particular issue has special relevance or sustained importance.

Prominence

The display, placement, duration or other emphasis given to content.

Accessibility

The ease with which a consideration can be retrieved from memory.

Framing

The organisation of an account through selected problem definitions, interpretations and related elements.

Priming

Influence on the considerations or standards given weight in subsequent evaluation.

Persuasion

Change in evaluations, attitudes or intended action through communication.

Event

A bounded occurrence that may enter news and wider issue discussion.

Issue

A broader concern that can organise multiple related events and claims.

Source

An actor or material through which information and claims enter reporting.

Time lag

The interval between a proposed influence and the outcome examined.

Panel study

A design that follows the same participants across repeated measurements.

Time-series analysis

Analysis of observations collected across successive time periods.

Content analysis

Systematic examination of content through explicit sampling, categories and coding procedures.

Codebook

Definitions and rules guiding the classification of material.

Intercoder reliability

The consistency of independent coding, assessed with an appropriate measure.

Aggregate agenda

A combined pattern of salience for a group or set of sources.

Rank correlation

A statistic summarising correspondence between orderings of the same objects.

Causal inference

Reasoning about whether and how a proposed cause changes an outcome under specified conditions.

References and further reading

1. Lippmann, W. (1922). Public Opinion. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Read / view source ↗A foundational discussion of mediated pictures of a complex public world; freely available text.
2. Cohen, B. C. (1963). The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton University Press. Read / view source ↗A precursor to the agenda-setting distinction between attention and positions. The publisher links a reissued edition.
3. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. Read / view source ↗The Chapel Hill study linking media issue emphasis with voters’ issue priorities.
4. McCombs, M. (2004). Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion. Polity. Read / view source ↗A synthesis of the research tradition. The link opens a publisher-provided sample chapter.
5. Iyengar, S., Peters, M. D., & Kinder, D. R. (1982). Experimental demonstrations of the “not-so-minimal” consequences of television news programs. American Political Science Review, 76(4), 848–858. Read / view source ↗Experimental evidence on problem importance and the standards used in presidential evaluation.
6. McCombs, M., & Stroud, N. J. (2014). Psychology of agenda-setting effects: Mapping the paths of information processing. Review of Communication Research, 2(1), 68–93. Read / view source ↗Explores need for orientation, information processing, relevance, selective exposure and audience differences.
7. McCombs, M., Llamas, J. P., López-Escobar, E., & Rey, F. (1997). Candidate images in Spanish elections: Second-level agenda-setting effects. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74(4), 703–717. Read / view source ↗A study of media, advertising and voters’ images of political candidates.
8. Weaver, D. H. (2007). Thoughts on agenda setting, framing, and priming. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 142–147. Read / view source ↗A focused discussion of the relationships and differences among these approaches.
9. Scheufele, D. A., & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9–20. Read / view source ↗Develops conceptual and process distinctions among three influential models.
10. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. Read / view source ↗A foundational account of selection, salience and interpretive organisation in framing.
11. Dearing, J. W., & Rogers, E. M. (1996). Agenda-Setting. SAGE. Read / view source ↗Connects media, public and policy agendas and approaches to studying their relationships.
12. Cobb, R., Ross, J.-K., & Ross, M. H. (1976). Agenda building as a comparative political process. American Political Science Review, 70(1), 126–138. Read / view source ↗Examines routes through which demands compete for public and formal institutional attention.
13. Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the Message in the 21st Century: A Media Sociology Perspective. Routledge. Read / view source ↗Provides a hierarchy of influences for investigating the production of media content.
14. McCombs, M. E., Shaw, D. L., & Weaver, D. H. (2014). New directions in agenda-setting theory and research. Mass Communication and Society, 17(6), 781–802. Read / view source ↗A synthesis of developments including attributes, networks, audience connections and broader agendas.
15. Guo, L. (2012). The application of social network analysis in agenda setting research: A methodological exploration. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(4), 616–631. Read / view source ↗Introduces procedures for comparing media and public networks of objects and attributes.
16. Vu, H. T., Guo, L., & McCombs, M. E. (2014). Exploring “the world outside and the pictures in our heads”: A network agenda-setting study. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91(4), 669–686. Read / view source ↗Examines network agenda setting with aggregated national media and public data.
17. Meraz, S. (2009). Is there an elite hold? Traditional media to social media agenda setting influence in blog networks. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(3), 682–707. Read / view source ↗Investigates source influence and agenda relationships within political blog networks.
18. Vargo, C. J., & Guo, L. (2017). Networks, big data, and intermedia agenda setting: An analysis of traditional, partisan, and emerging online U.S. news. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 94(4), 1031–1055. Read / view source ↗A large-scale study of intermedia relationships that vary across media, issues and periods.
19. Shaw, D. L., McCombs, M., Weaver, D. H., & Hamm, B. J. (1999). Individuals, groups, and agenda melding: A theory of social dissonance. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 11(1), 2–24. Read / view source ↗Connects agenda formation with group affiliation and interpersonal and media connections.
20. Chadwick, A. (2017). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Read / view source ↗A wider framework for interactions among older and newer media logics and political actors.

Six ideas to retain

1. Define salience. Identify what importance or prominence means in the agenda being studied.
2. Choose the level. Distinguish objects, attributes and their relationships.
3. Examine audience conditions. Relevance, uncertainty, experience and exposure help explain variation.
4. Follow agenda formation. Sources, organisations, institutions and competing media shape emphasis.
5. Match evidence to inference. Correspondence, temporal order and causal effects require appropriate designs.
6. Keep public consequences visible. Ask whose priorities enter attention and whose concerns remain difficult to hear.