A Failure to Communicate: Agenda Setting in Media and Policy Studies

Abstract

In this article, we review two research programs that could benefit from a more extensive dialogue: media and policy studies of agenda setting. We focus on three key distinctions that divide these two robust research programs: the agenda(s) under investigation (public versus policymaking), the typical level of analysis (individual versus systemic), and framing effects (individual versus macro level). We map out these differences and their impacts on understanding the policy process. There is often a policy disconnect in the agenda-setting studies that emanate from the media tradition. Though interested in the effects of political communication, scholars from this tradition often fail to link the media to policy outcomes, policy change, or agenda change. Policy process scholars have increasingly rejected simple linear models in favor of models emphasizing complex feedback effects. This suggests a different role for the media—one of highlighting attributes in a multifaceted political reality and involvement in positive feedback cycles. Yet, political communication scholars have for the most part been insensitive to these potentials. We advocate a shared agenda centering on the role of the media in the political system from an information processing framework, emphasizing the reciprocal effects of each on the other.

Keywords:

• agenda setting
• policy process
• framing

Notes

1. Exceptions to this include Altheide (1991) Gilliam, Iyengar, Simon, and Wright (1996), Cook et al. (1983), Protess et al. (1987), and Wanta, Stephenson, Turk, and McCombs (1989).

2. But see Gonzenbach (1996), Entman (2004), Dearing and Rogers (1996), and Cook et al. (1983) for work in political communication analyzing issue attention in the government, media, and the public.

3. But see Behr and Iyengar (1985) Cook et al. (1983), Gonzenbach (1996), and Entman (2004) for qualitative and quantitative examples of multidirectional agenda setting in political communication.

4. The organization of this review is guided by the format of McCombs's (2004) and Lee and McCombs's (in press) much more lengthy discussion of the development of agenda-setting research in communications. Rather than providing a detailed review of agenda setting, our intention is to acknowledge the several paths in which agenda setting has progressed. While priming and framing are sometimes coupled as outgrowths in some way or another of agenda setting, we reserve our discussion of the framing literature in communications to a subsequent section where it is explicitly compared to framing from the policy studies perspective.

5. Media exposure can also reinforce existing attitudes and opinions. See Bennett and Iyengar (2008 2010) for a recent discussion of the increasing endogeneity of media exposure.

6. There is much less consensus in the communications literature on the definition and consequences of media frames and the relationship between agenda setting and framing than that of the link between priming and agenda setting. For example, McCombs and Ghanem (2001) and McCombs (2004) argue that framing converges with attribute agenda setting when frames are defined in such a way that they organize or “bundle” sets of attributes that describe an object; however, a frame is a concept, whereas attribute agenda setting is a theory (McCombs, 2004, p. 87). See Iyengar and Simon (1993), Weaver (2007), Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007) and McCombs (2004) for overviews of agenda setting, framing, and priming; Chong and Druckman (2007b)on framing and priming; and Kinder (2007)and Entman (1993) primarily on framing. Agenda setting and priming are processes based on the accessibility of attitudes (Scheufele, 2000;see also Scheufele & Tewsbury, 2007), in which levels of salience play a moderating role in activating the information that contributes to attitude strength and direction (McCombs, 2004; Weaver, 1991;Iyengar & Kinder, 1987).

7. Indeed, coverage led the rise in crime. This could have been a consequence of differences in the local and national crime rates. Media coverage measured using the New York Times Index series from the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org).

8. Measured by Gallup's Most Important Problem series from the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org).

9. Measured using the congressional hearings series from the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org).

10. Measured using the U.S. budget series from the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org).