Communication and International Relations

Many studies have illustrated the media’s role in agenda setting. Though many of these studies look at it from different angles, they all seem to support a main idea: media play a big role in setting or supporting an agenda and telling the public what’s important. The three articles reviewed here all contribute to our understanding of how public opinion is formed.

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Know Thy Enemy
By Mary Gilmer

In the New York Times, the word ‘Koran’ (referring to the main religious text of Islam) appeared in 459 articles in the six years leading up to September 10, 2001. Since 9/11, references to the Koran appear in 1,320 articles. This is more than double over the same time period, pointing to the increased need for both information and understanding of this new “war on terror.”

In Wanta, Golan, and Lee’s 2004 study, Agenda Setting and International News: Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Foreign Nations, they found that the more media coverage a foreign nation gets, the more important that nation becomes in the eyes of the public. One reason given is that television news is the major source of information for most people. Since there is so much going on in the world and not everything can be covered within that format, people believe that what is being presented to them is what is most important.

Stefaan Walgrave also published a study in 2004, The mass media’s political agenda-setting power – Towards an integration of the available evidence. In it, he discusses the mass media’s power in political agenda-setting, specifically focusing on media coverage during elections. He found that during election time, the media have less impact on the political issue agenda because they are focused more on “searching for any political news to fill pages and minutes devoted to the election [race]” rather than the issues themselves. However, the media play a huge role in campaigns and codetermining outcomes, according to Walgrave, as they “fuel the personalization of politics,” and contribute to “candidate centered politics.” So indirectly, they do assist in setting an agenda.

Maxwell McCombs brings up another aspect of media agenda-setting in his article The Agenda-Setting Role of the Mass Media in the Shaping of Public Opinion: setting an agenda of attributes. He states that every public issue has its “own characteristics and traits that describe [it].” Some of these attributes are emphasized and others are ignored by the media. The result of this selection process is the creation of certain “pictures” in the public minds as to what issue attributes are most important. This eventually influences public viewpoints and opinions.

These articles suggest that the agenda setting function of media not only tells us what topics are important, but also what nations, candidates, and issue attributes as well.