Knowledge as a Measure of News Reception in the Agenda-Setting Process

Abstract

This study investigates the role knowledge plays in the agenda-setting process, conceptualizing public affairs knowledge as a measure of news reception. Comparing content analysis data and opinion survey results of 2 election campaigns in Canada and the United States, this study finds that, on the individual level, knowledge better predicted media's agenda-setting effects than traditional self-reported exposure items. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that knowledge mediated the effects of interest on the variance of agenda-setting effects. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Notes

Notes

¹ Content analyzed are the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown, and Fox Special Report with Brit Hume. These news outlets may well represent the American media, due to their primary status in the media environment. However, cable news such as CNN and Fox have been criticized for their partisan slant in news coverage. On the other hand, because of mixed findings, it is difficult to conclude that cable news agenda differs from the mainstream media (Baum & Groeling, 2008; Aday, Livingston, & Hebert, 2005). Furthermore, cable news audiences considerably overlap across channels (Prior, 2007). Thus, these cable channels were included into analysis, due to their growing roles in American journalism.

² The issue categories are diplomacy, government services and spending, defense spending, government insurance, jobs and living, aid to black Americans, environment, guns, and women's roles.

³ Results of the content analysis are (1) for August, diplomacy (N = 94, Rank = 1), government services/spending (N = 55, Rank = 2), defense spending (N = 42, Rank = 3), government insurance (N = 11, Rank = 5), job/living (N = 18, Rank = 4), aid to Black Americans (N = 0, Rank = 8), environment (N = 2, Rank = 6), guns (N = 2, Rank = 8), and women's roles (N = 1, Rank = 7) (2) for September, diplomacy (N = 78, Rank = 1), government services/spending (N = 57, Rank = 2), defense spending (N = 36, Rank = 3), government insurance (N = 12, Rank = 5), job/living (N = 21, Rank = 4), aid to Black Americans (N = 0, Rank = 8), environment (N = 6, Rank = 7), guns (N = 7, Rank = 6), and women's roles (N = 0, Rank = 8).

⁴ Many reliability coefficients here do not reach acceptable level. However, the goal of this study is to compare various media use items/scales with knowledge as measures of news reception in the agenda-setting process. Thus, scales shown to have sufficient validity in the literature (Eveland et al., 2009) were built and tested as suggested in the research.

⁵ The response rate was between 40 to 45%. Due to absence of a final technical report, only estimated range was available (Fournier, personal communication, 2012).

⁶ The news media outlets are Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and CTV.

⁷ Issue categories and content analysis results are crime (N = 124, Rank = 2), health care/social welfare (N = 83, Rank = 3), jobs/economy (197, Rank = 1), environment (N = 20, Rank = 5), defending Quebec (N = 2, Rank = 6), and foreign affairs (N = 69, Rank = 4).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jae Kook Lee

Jae Kook Lee (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in The Media School: Journalism, Film, Communication at Indiana University. His research focuses on communication and public opinion in the changing media environment.