The Evolution of the Agenda-Setting Theory

The Evolution of the Agenda-Setting Theory
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The Evolution of the Agenda-Setting Theory
The Evolution of the Agenda-Setting Theory Introduction Several political, economic, and social news events occur daily worldwide. Whether the mainstream media, social media, or digital publishing platforms, the media ensures that people know about these events. The events are numerous, and they cannot be covered simultaneously. Thus different media firms decide to share them with their audience in the order of significance. They do this using the agenda-setting theory. It is a theory explaining how media influences people's consumption and how they judge news stories. The theory describes the ability of media firms to influence the significance attached to various topics on the public agenda (Cheng, 2021). Media bias on political, economic, and social issues drives the process of agenda-setting. The media tells their audience what and how to think about events in these news stories instead of what they think. The theory has evolved since it was founded in 1968, with the proliferation of social media widening the scope of the agenda-setting process. Background Although it was officially developed in 1968, the agenda-setting theory can be traced back to 1922. In the first chapter, titled The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads, of his book "Public Opinion," Walter Lippmann asserts that the media is the connection between the images in the minds of the people and the events in the world (Lippmann, 1965). Lippmann did not use the agenda-setting term in his work, but the content shows that that is what he was addressing in the contemporary context. In 1963, Bernard Cohen, deducing from Lippmann (1922), argued that the press does not have much influence over what the public thinks about it. According to him, the world looks different to different people based on what the writer, editors, and press publishers share with their readers in their papers. The agenda-setting theory was officially developed in a 1968 study of the presidential elections named "the Chapel Hill Study" by Dr Maxwell McCombs and Dr Donald Shaw. The study demonstrated a correlation between one hundred residents of Chapel Hill who thought it was the most significant election issue and what the local media stations reported. McCombs and Shaw compared the salience of issues in news stories with the public perception to determine the degree to which the news media can sway the public (McCombs & Shaw, 1968). The agenda-setting theme attracted the attention of scholars. By 1993, over 200 articles about it had been written in the social science literature, like Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman (1993) noted. Most of the research about agenda-setting reported that the media and the press do not reflect reality, meaning they shape and filter what the public thinks. The media sways the public to believe that other issues are more important than others by concentrating their reporting on them (Dearing & Rogers, 1988). Everett Rogers (1993) introduces another scholar, Ray Funkhouser, to the agenda-setting theory's background history. Funkhouser (1973) carried out research similar to McCombs and Shaw (1968) at around the same time, formalizing the agenda-setting theory. According to Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman (1993), Funkhouser (1973) presented his research paper at the same academic conference, but his study was published five years later. This is the primary reason he is not always recognized as one of the initial proposers of the agenda-setting theory. Rogers (1993) gives two more reasons which he believes inform why Funkhouser is not considered a proposer of the agenda-setting theory. He did not further his research beyond the initial article and did not formally name the theory. Development of the Agenda Setting Theory The agenda-setting theory has five stages that inform the research process on the agenda-setting topic, and all the five exist simultaneously. This means they are equally helpful because one stage does not give rise to another and goes extinct. McCombs (2005) names these stages as attribute agenda-setting, basic agenda-setting effects, consequences of the agenda-setting effects, the psychology of the agenda-setting effects, and the source of the media agenda. The attribute agenda-setting stage sets the foundation for presenting a news event to the audience. In this case, attribute refers to the salience that media create on a particular news event and the way the event is described (McCombs, 2005). For example, a political event can have disagreements between various competing entities in the same political party. This may cause conflict or confrontation, and how a media firm reports this shapes how people perceive the political event. The news media can report that chaos erupted over political sibling rivalry, which may make the public view the political function as disorganized. At the attribute agenda-setting stage, various communication factors converge, including stereotyping, gatekeeping, status conferral, and image building (Scherer, 2018). Therefore, the attribute agenda-setting stage emphasizes the salience of news-making events. The agenda-setting effects stage can be viewed from two perspectives: the pre-proliferation of the internet and the contemporary time, where most of the audience can access the internet, digital platforms, and social media (McCombs & Stroud, 2014). Before internet use escalated, the public depended entirely on the media for agenda-setting. This means that what the media reported was final for the audience. In the contemporary world, the internet has enabled other forms of communication like the mail, social media, websites, chat rooms, and other digital platforms (McCombs, 2005). This removes the agenda-setting role for the media as people consume various information from various digital platforms, representing unique economic, ideological, and commercial ...