Agenda Cueing Effects of News and Social Media

ABSTRACT

Agenda cues, in which individuals perceive that media has frequently covered a problem regardless of actual exposure to that coverage, have initially been shown to produce powerful agenda setting effects (Pingree and Stoycheff, 2013). This study uses two experiments to test the presence and prominence cueing effects across a variety of issues and whether the cue originates from traditional news or Twitter users. Agenda cues produced significant effects on five of six issues studied for news and four of six for Twitter. For one issue (gun control/rights), both types of agenda cues produced effect sizes rivaling those of the strongest effects found in Iyengar and Kinder’s (News That Matters: Television and American Opinion, University of Chicago Press, 1987) classic agenda setting experiments. On average, news agenda cues were stronger than Twitter agenda cues, and were about 78% as strong as classic news agenda setting effects, suggesting that cueing may be the dominant mechanism driving agenda setting effects. The role of gatekeeping trust as a moderator of agenda cueing was only inconsistently replicated.s

Notes

1. The social media gatekeeping trust scale was adapted from the original gatekeeping trust measurement by replacing media and journalists with social media and the public users. Similar to the traditional gatekeeping trust scale, it offers good face validity in capturing different facets of the social media’s role as a news gatekeeper.

2. While the traditional MIP question, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this nation today?” is often used, scholars have also suggested using different wording or additional questions to obtain a fuller picture of the public’s priorities (Yeager, Larson, Krosnick, & Tompson, 2011). In this present study, we revised the MIP question to ensure participant responses would extend beyond well-established issues that were not attributed to our treatment. In other words, by emphasizing, “If a friend who doesn’t follow politics at all wanted to know” the most important issues facing the country, we sought to arouse participants’ attention to news, which thus helps to improve the effect of our media cue treatment.