nucleation

LIT-1335: The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media

1 min read

Properties5
StatusActive — read 2026-10-21 (NOTE-1046) in full, from a copy of the published article posted on a UNC Chapel Hill course page; worth reading as the founding test of agenda-setting, for its distinction between influence on what an audience thinks about and on what it thinks, and for its comparison of agenda-setting against selective perception. Read it knowing that its evidence is an aggregate cross-sectional correlation over a handful of issues in one sample of 100 undecided voters in one town, with no test reported, that the direction from media to voters is argued and not identified, and that the authors say the correlations do not prove agenda-setting. The correlations are held as THEORY-842, the hypothesis as THEORY-838 (Proposed).
Version2
Tagssocial-science, society-and-governance
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1046 — McCombs and Shaw — The agenda-setting function of mass media
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-838 — The emphasis the news media give to issues raises the importance their audiences assign those issues, independently of any change in the audiences' attitudes toward the issues: the media influence what people think about more than what they think, THEORY-842 — Among 100 Chapel Hill voters not yet committed to a candidate in September–October 1968, the aggregate emphasis they gave the campaign's main issues correlated +.967 with the emphasis of the major news items, and +.979 with that of the minor items, in the nine media serving them; and voters leaning to a candidate agreed more with all the news than with news about their own side in 18 of 24 comparisons

Graph View

McCombs, M. E. & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly 36(2): 176–187. doi:10.1086/267990.

Read 2026-10-21 in full (NOTE-1046). The correlations are held as THEORY-842, and the agenda-setting hypothesis they are offered for as THEORY-838 (Proposed).

Why this is here

A21: “the selection and prominence of news can influence the importance audiences attach to issues.” One of the two media routes A21 gave for controlling which considerations reach a decision, with Entman on framing. Bears on CLAIM-404.

Backlinks