Question

agenda setting theory

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Answer 1

Answer:

Agenda-setting theory describes the "ability (of the news media) to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda".[1] Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in a study on the 1968 American presidential election. Agenda setting is a social science theory; it also attempts to make predictions. The theory also suggests that media has a great influence to their audience by instilling what they should think instead of what they think. That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.

Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. As well, agenda-setting describes the way that media attempts to influence viewers, and establish a hierarchy of news prevalence. Two basic assumptions underlie most researches on agenda-setting:

the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it;

media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

These core statements were established by measuring the changes in salience through the use of surveys with the presence of more frequent news coverage.[2][3]

One of the most critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is the time frame for this phenomenon. Different media have different agenda-setting potential. From the perspective of agenda setting, the analysis of the relationship between traditional media and new virtual spaces has witnessed growing momentum.[4]

In the 1968 "Chapel Hill study", McCombs and Shaw demonstrated a strong correlation coefficient (r > .9) between what 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina thought was the most important election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue.[