Mapping agenda-setting research in China: a meta-analysis study

Abstract

Since the 1968 Chapel Hill study by McCombs and Shaw (1972), agenda-setting theory has become a main perspective of research on media effects, and it has been tested in many other countries outside the United States. The thematic meta-analysis of Chinese agenda-setting articles performed in this study identifies some important trends of agenda-setting research in mainland China, including an increase of interest in agenda-setting theory, a dominance of the original agenda-setting approach and focus, a diversity of topical domains, an atheoretical and non-empirical research tradition, and an increasing concern about the Internet. Challenges and future directions of Chinese agenda-setting research are also discussed in this study.

Keywords:

• agenda setting
• media effects
• thematic meta-analysis
• research trends
• China

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank David H. Weaver and Amy Reynolds, as well as the three anonymous reviewers and the journal editors, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.