Media Agenda Setting

Question 1

Chapel Hill Study Design

Answer 1

• Content Analysis: on the salience and duration of an issue
  
  • Done by counting frequency of issue, people rating issue’s importance.
  • Any correlation would imply that media portrayal affects audience perception.
• Surveys: What is the most salient issue facing the country?
• Conducted survey of undecided voters who waited last minute to vote

Question 2

Iyengar & Kinder Study Design

Answer 2

• Experimental design (to prove causation)
• Creating ‘doctored network evening news
• Participants: Real voters from local communities
• Random assignment to watch a version of network news
• Mimicked people’s living room TV viewing situation
• Before/after comparisons

Question 3

Iyengar & Kinder Findings

Answer 3

• Watching network news changed issue importance rating.
• No signficant change
• The more number of stories they are exposed t, the greater the importance rating.
• Further evidence:
  
  • More stories–> stronger effects?
  • Different issues featured
  • On each issue, different number of stories
  • Post-test only design
• = Evidence for agenda-setting hypothesis!!!

Question 4

Further Studies: Characteristics of those more susceptible to media agenda-setting effects

Answer 4

• Need for cognition
• Politically independent
• Politically inactive
• When faced with an unobtrusive issue

Question 5

Obtrusive vs. Unobtrusive Issue

Answer 5

• Obtrusive: more pressing, relating to your everyday life
• Unobtrusive: only heard from news (ex: foreign relations)

Question 6

Evolution of the Idea of Agenda Setting

Answer 6

• McCombs & Ghanem (2001): The Convergence of Agenda Setting & Framing
• From the first-level (object) to the second level (attribute) agenda setting
  *

Question 7

Framing

Answer 7

When you highlight specific aspects or attributes of an issue

Question 8

Frame (Goffman 1974)

Answer 8

• Is a schema we use to locate, perceive, identify or label events or occurrences
• Is cued/identified by terms and symbols.
• Ex) Partial abortion: baby vs fetus
• Protecting consitutional rights
• Tax: estate (only wealthy people have) vs. death tax (you pay tax for stuff inherited from dead ancestors)

Question 9

Evolutions of the Idea (Shaw, McCombs (1999))

Answer 9

• Individuals, groups, and agenda melding: a theory of social dissonance
• Two changes: multiple media outlets, rising prominence of multiple grops
• Media agenda-setting: powerful media
• Agenda setting
• Motivations:
  
  • Avoid social dissonance (facing disagreements alone)
  • Get benefits of belonging (visiblity & influences)

Question 10

agenda melding

Answer 10

individuals seek to find their groups to belong in and issues as well as frames to hold onto

Question 11

Vargo 2014 Study Design

Answer 11

• Network Issue Agenda
• Content Analysis
• Study based on the congruence of issue-constellation in the Twitterland
• Sampled messages of Twitter stream from 2012 general election.
• Who? Media outlets, Obama/Romney, supporters
• Media? ‘Vertical’ vs. ‘Horizontal’
• What: Eight issue (broad topics)
• Measures sentiment, correlations among issues, network characterisitcs of an issue.

Question 12

Vetical vs. Horizontal Media

Answer 12

• Horizontal: when audiences turn to sources that are based on social status, preferences
  
  • Interested in building partisan social groups
• Vertical: the transfer of info. from ahigher source to a more general audience

Question 13

Beyond Politics…?

Answer 13

• Lazarsfeld & Merton (1948): Status conferral function of the media
• Co-orientation of societal attention, or focal points of social conversation
  
  • Celebrities
  • Events
  • Brands
  • Memes
• Locations: social congregation sites (eg. Beauty saloons, bars) & social media sights.
• Pattern: Diffusion or ‘Go viral’
• “Gatekeepers” (regulate the flow of information) and promoters