Agenda-Setting Theory
Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw · 1972
"McCombs and Shaw showed media may not tell you what to think, but it decisively tells you what to think about — the correlation between media agenda and public agenda is among the most replicated findings in communication science."
During the 1968 Chapel Hill election, McCombs and Shaw asked undecided voters what mattered most. The ranked list almost perfectly matched the ranked coverage of the local paper, not the reality outside it.
First-level agenda-setting: the salience of issues in media predicts the salience of those issues in the public. Second-level: the attributes emphasized about an issue (is it framed as competence or corruption?) set the criteria by which the public judges it. Effects are strongest where personal experience is thinnest — foreign policy, not potholes — which is why national media sets national agenda more powerfully than it sets neighborhood agenda.
What does agenda-setting theory claim media most powerfully determines?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media (McCombs & Shaw, 1972)McCombs & Shaw / Wikipedia
Manufacturing Consent
"Chomsky and Herman argued mass media pass through five filters — ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and ideology — that systematically shape which stories survive to publication without any central conspiracy needing to give orders."