Agenda Setting When media tells the public what to think about, sets agenda for what public thinks is important

Research on agenda setting “Minimal effects thesis” – Berelson and Lazarsfeld (studied effects of media in the 1948 campaign) – minimal effects

Iyengar and Kinder, News that Matters Don’t believe ‘minimal effects’ of media Set up experiments to test for agenda setting How did experiments work?

Iyengar and Kinder, News that Matters SEQUENTIAL EXPERIMENTS: participants exposed to a sequence of altered network newscasts (e.g. saw newscasts that emphasized unemployment, or civil rights, or nuclear arms control, or US defense preparedness) ASSEMBLAGE EXPERIMENTS: Viewers see 40 minute collection of news stories that pay no attention, some attention or a lot of attention to a problem

Then ask: what effect did seeing different newscasts have on viewers’ opinion of whether a problem is one of most serious problems facing the nation – (Measure “problem importance” attached to a problem – unemployment, national defense etc. – after seeing different types of newscasts) Findings???? Persistence of agenda setting? –

Non-experimental test of agenda setting Looks at trends is news coverage over time and compare to changes in public opinion – use a statistical method to show that causal effect goes from news to public opinion, not the reverse. Findings: more stories on issue (inflation, energy, etc.) --- leads to higher percent of people naming that as the nation’s most important problem =

Who is most vulnerable to agenda setting? Iyengar and Kinder also looked at this question “Victims” of agenda setting – Used same experiments already discussed (people exposed to stories covering problems or not exposed/less exposed). For whom is agenda setting most likely to occur? EDUCATION PARTY IDENTIFICATION (R, D, I) POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT (political interest, informal communication about politics)

Priming Calling attention to certain matters, thereby influencing the STANDARDS by which political officials are judged. Test: experiments where viewers see broadcasts emphasizing different issues (e.g. defense capacities, civil rights) Test to see whether people who saw stories on problem x give more weight to the president’s performance on that issue, in their overall evaluation of the president