The Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media

Introduction

In 1922, Walter Lippmann suggested the very first idea of agenda-setting in his book “Public Opinion”, and Bernard Cohen (1963) said “The media may not tell us what to think, but they are stunning successful in telling us what to think about”. Those concepts assumed that with the limited ability and innate curiosity of human beings, most people rely on media institutions to gain information outside family, neighborhood and workplace. Thus the media organizations have the priority to choose which information is quality enough to be the most important, which is not, and the information emphasized by the media could salience transfer to the public.

To verify this concept, McCombs and Shaw conducted the first empirical research, which had been published in 1972, since then the basic agenda-setting theory has been established. After the first research published, they retested the reliability and validity of that research, and developed contingent conditions to enhance and limit this theory. Then many researchers became involved in this field, and the detail and extension of agenda-setting theory started. Weaver, Graber and McCombs and Eyal (1976) extended the idea of agendas into politics and election campaign domains. Since 1980s the map of agenda-setting has been becoming complex, continuously. Under the origin theory frame of agenda-setting, analysis of the salience of media agenda to public agenda, the process of agenda-setting, and the affect of three levels agenda-setting detailed this theory. Also, the idea of agenda-setting theory has been explored into several domains, which include political advertising, consequences and subsequent behavior of audience, and international marketplace and so forth. In addition, t...

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