Scholars long have known that media have the potential for structuring issues for the

public. One of the first writers to formalize this idea was Walter Lippmann, a prominent
American journalist. Lippmann took the view that the public responds not to actual events in
the environment but to “the pictures in our heads,” which he calls the pseudo-environment:
“For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct
acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many
permutations and combinations. And altogether we have to act in that environment, we have
to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it.” The media offer us that
simpler model by setting the agenda for us.

Agenda setting seems to operate through a process of priming. When you prime a
pump, you fill the line with water so that when the pump comes on, the water flows
immediately. Thus media, through repeated attention, make certain issues prominent and
prime individuals’ thoughts (or cognitions). Donald Shaw, Maxwell McCombs, and David
Weaver are media scholars who built on Lippmann’s work and claim that media depictions
can affect how people think about the news, help organize the world of experience, and are
“stunningly successful in telling us what to think about.” In other words, agenda setting
establishes the salient issues or images in the minds of the public; the media tell us what to
think about and why (although not necessarily what we should think).

Agenda setting occurs because the media must be selective in reporting thenews.
News outlets make choices about what to report and how to report it. What the public knows
about the state of affairs at any given time is largely a product of media gatekeeping. Two
levels of agenda setting originally were identified. The first establishes the general issues that
are important (object agenda setting), and the second determines the parts or aspects of those
issues that are viewed as important (attribute agenda setting). For example, the media may
tell us that worldwide oil prices are an important issue (first level), but they also tell us how
to understand this development as it impacts US economics (second level). The third level is
a relatively recent addition to the theory and is discussed below.

The agenda-setting function is a three-part process. First, the priority of issues to be

discussed in the media, or media agenda, must be set. Second, the media agenda in some way
affects or interacts with what the public thinks, creating the public agenda. Finally, the public
agenda affects or interacts in some way with what policy makers consider important, called
the policy agenda. In the theory’s simplest and most direct version, then, the media agenda
affects the public agenda, and the public agenda affects the policy agenda. Although a
number of studies show that the media can be powerful in affecting the public agenda, it is
still unclear whether the public agenda also affects the media agenda. The relationship may
be one of mutual rather than linear causation. Further, it appears that actual events have some
impact on both the media agenda and the public agenda.

The prevailing opinion among media researchers seems to be that the media can—but
do not always—have a powerful effect on the public agenda. The power of media depends on
such factors as media credibility on particular issues at particular times, the extent of
conflicting evidence as perceived by individual members of the public, the extent to which
individuals share media values at certain times, and the public’s need for guidance. Media
most often will be powerful when media credibility is high, conflicting evidence is low,
individuals share media values, and the audience has a high need for guidance.

Through the ongoing interaction of theorizing and empirical research consistent with
the scientific method, agenda setting theory has evolved from a tightly focused
perspective to a broad theory. Initially, the focus was on the way media affect the
public’s view of which issues are important. Later the theory broadened to encompass
distinct aspects of public life: basic and attribute agenda-setting effects, the
psychology of these processes, and the consequences of these effects for opinions and
behavior. The participation of scholars worldwide has been central to the continuing
productivity of the theory.

Maxwell McCombs

accomplish personal ends. This is what happens, for example, when politicians buy
airtime or when a popular president gives the press the “privilege” ofinterviewing him. In the
third type of relation—a lower-power source and a highpower medium—the media
organizations themselves will be largely responsible for their own agenda. This happens
when the media marginalize certain news sources such as occurred with the student radicals
and women’s movements in the 1960s. The fourth type of relation is where both media and
external sources are low in power, and the public agenda probably will be established by the
events themselves rather than the media or the leaders. The media coverage of a disaster is an
example of an event creating the agenda rather than the media, leaders, or the public doing
so.
 McCombs and colleagues recently revisited agenda setting theory and identified seven
key facets of agenda setting theory, including many of the point reviewed in this section.
They also highlighted three of these points as being especially relevant for theorizing today:
network agenda setting, need for orientation, and agendamelding.

Network agenda setting is a third level of agenda setting complementing the two
previously mentioned. Agenda setting theory suggests that objects and attributes are bundled
together in messages and in our mental images, and the media can transfer these bundled or
networked images to the public. Thus, the media can tell about an issue (oil prices), its
attributes (impact on US economy), and other related aspects (e.g., how the impact on the
economy may affect jobs and foreign relations). The networked elements provide a larger
picture of the related issues that are associated with a specific topic or story.

Need for orientation refers to personal characteristics of audience members that

impact the ability of the media to shape the public agenda. More specifically, it includes the
level of relevance and uncertainty a person has about an issue and thus how much that
individual attends to and considers the issue. If you always bike to work, you may see the
issue of oil prices as irrelevant and thus have a low need for orientation. If you are concerned
about oil prices and also have low uncertainty about the future (e.g., you know for certain that
oil costs will rise), you have a moderate need for orientation. If you are concerned about oil
prices and have high uncertainty (e.g., you are uncertain about what will happen to oil prices
in the future), you have a high need for orientation. The greater the need for orientation, the
more impact that media agenda has on the public agenda.

Agendamelding refers to ways people borrow from various media and public

agendas to create or find personal communities in which they want to live.

Agendamelding is about creating a satisfying image of the world. McCombs and

colleagues use the unhyphenated word to reflect the intimate and often unconscious ways that
this merging occurs. Agendamelding includes three elements: (1) vertical media agenda
setting; (2) horizontal media agenda setting; and (3) personal preferences. Vertical media are
the traditional large scale media (e.g., major network news broadcasts) that convey messages
to large and diverse audience. Horizontal media are more tailored, focused media that convey
messages to a specific audience and can be considered alternative media (e.g., magazines or
websites focused on a specific interest group). Personal preferences include your own social
networks, such as those found on your Facebook accounts. These three elements are
interrelated and shape perspectives on objects and attributes in a dynamic process that exerts
varying degrees of influence.

The idea that alternative media and personal preferences also shape agenda setting is
consistent with Web 2.0 and the ability of individuals to create their own media content.
Russell Neuman and his colleagues conducted a study of 29 political issues in 2012 to
determine the ways that traditional and social media set agendas. They use “big data” to
analyze whether individual users can in fact shape media agendas or whether a reverse
agenda-setting approach is more likely. Big data refers to the ability to include massive
amounts of information in social and traditional media through computer crawlers that collect
such information. For example, a video that goes viral is big data if it encourages people to
search for information from media outlets. The authors examined more than 100 million
active Twitter users, over 160 million blogs, and 300,000 forums as well as traditional media
broadcasts to understand how agenda setting works in today’s media climate.

Neuman and colleagues found that social media performed more agenda setting for
social issues such as birth control, same-sex marriage, and LGBT (lesbian/
gay/bisexual/transgender) concerns as well as foreign affairs, such as Arab Spring. On the
other hand, social media were less likely to include discussions of economics and government
functioning. In the answer to the question of who sets the agenda, the authors conclude that
for some issues, it is social media; for others, it is traditional media; and for still other issues,
it is a mutual relationship. These findings support the emergence and significance of
agendamelding in agenda setting theory: there is a complex web of media and personal
experiences that shape public agendas, especially given the development of Web 2.0. The
next theory explores the role of framing to further illustrate the influence of media production
on society.