This work is based off the lectures and questions given by Dr Ian Ward in POLS2111: Politics and the Media, UQ.
The concept of ‘agenda setting’ was first established in the early 20th Century, by Walter Lippmann. In his book, Lippmann argued that “mass media are the principal connection between events in the world and the images of these events in the citizens' minds”. Basically, the media sets the public agenda – what it displays as important, the public comes to think of as important.
From this early beginning, the concept
of agenda setting – through the media, for the public - grew, until the 70’s,
where it was ‘properly’ formalised in papers published by McCombs and Shaw. McCombs
himself was not only influenced by Lippmann, but also by Bernard Cohen, who in
the 60’s stated that “the press may not be successful much of the time in
telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its
readers what to think about”. This encouraged McCombs to collaborate with Shaw
in writing The Emergence of
American Political Issues: The Agenda-setting Function of the Press. This work achieved much
acclaim and helped spark an interest in the agenda setting abilities of the
media amongst their peers.
Nearly ten years later, in 1988,
Rogers and Dearing theorised that agenda setting is a process with three
elements. “News media identify and give prominence to important issues,
constructing a 'media agenda'. News coverage and priorities influence
the way the public thinks. In turn the ''public agenda' influences the
priorities and thinking of policymakers or the 'policy agenda'”.
This idea, while not very different from the ideas postulated by McCombs
and Shaw, and even by Cohen, helped fill in details on a political and public
institution that has for too long been assumed unimportant to the running of
society – the media.
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