Agendamelding

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1.1: Trump’s Tweet Frequency January 2017−December 2018

Figure 1.2: Number of Commercial Television Stations in the United States From 1950 to 2017

Figure 1.3: Circulation of Weekday and Sunday Newspapers in the United States From 1950 to 2017

Figure 1.4: Number of Available Websites From 1992 to 2017

Figure 2.1: A Model of Agenda Setting Level 1

Figure 2.2: A Model of Agenda Setting Level 2

Figure 2.3: A Model of Agenda Setting Level 3 (NAS)

Figure 2.4: Antecedents of Need for Orientation

Figure 2.5: Contrasting Agenda Communities

Figure 3.1: The Percentage of News Platforms by Age Group in the U.S. in 2018

Figure 3.2: Distribution of Monthly Newspaper Reach in the United States in 2016, by Age Group

Figure 3.3: Television and Streaming Service Consumption Among Viewers in the United States as of October 2017, by Age Group

Figure 3.4: Percentage of Adults in the United States Who Use Social Networks as of January 2018, by Age Group← ix | x →

Figure 3.5: Three Sources of Information

Figure 3.6: Dynamics of Agendamelding

Figure 4.1: Voters and Media: Correlational Relationships

Figure 4.2: Correlations by the Number of Key Issues in the 2016 Presidential Election Across Time

Figure 4.3: Correlations of Key Issues in the 2016 Presidential Election Between October and the Week of the Election

Figure 4.4: Progression of Correlational Values for Democratic-Leaning Twitter Users in 2016

Figure 4.5: Progression of Correlational Values for Republican-Leaning Twitter Users in 2016

Figure 4.6: Carter’s Paradigm of Affective Relations in an Orientation Situation

Figure 4.7: ACA for Democratic-Leaning Twitter Users During the 2016 Campaign

Figure 4.8: ACA for Republican-Leaning Twitter Users During the 2016 Campaign

Figure 5.1: Voters and Media: Correlational Relationships

Figure 5.2: Correlations of Key Issues in the 2012 Presidential Election Between October and the Week of the Election

Figure 5.3: Progression of Correlational Values for Democratic-Leaning Twitter Users in 2012

Figure 5.4: Progression of Correlational Values for Republican-Leaning Twitter Users in 2012

Figure 5.5: Obama’s Associative Issue Ownership Network Perceived by Democratic-Leaning Users During the Week of the 2012 Election

Figure 5.6: Romney’s Associative Issue Ownership Network Perceived by Republican-Leaning Users During the Week of the 2012 Election

Figure 5.7: ACA for Democratic-Leaning Twitter Users During the 2012 Campaign

Figure 5.8: ACA for Republican-Leaning Twitter Users During the 2012 Campaign

Figure 6.1: ACA for Democratic, Republican, and Independent Voters During the 2008 Campaign

Figure 6.2: Agenda Community Attraction, The Election of 1968

Figure 6.3: ACA for College-Educated vs. Non-College-Educated Voters in 1972 ← x | xi →

Figure 6.4: ACA for the Three-State Studies of 1976

Figure 7.1: Agenda Community Attraction (ACA) Among Nations in 2016

Figure 7.2: ACA Among Traditional Agenda Dominant Nations in 2016

Figure 7.3: ACA Among Transitional Agenda Nations in 2016

Figure 7.4: ACA Among Alternative Agenda Dominant Nations in 2016

Figure 7.5: ACA of Nations and Political Stability

Figure 8.1: Hypothetical and Actual ACA Values in Iran, 2015

Figure 9.1: Components of Agendamelding

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TABLES

Table 4.1: Correlational Values for Democratic-Leaning Twitter Users in 2016

Table 4.2: Correlational Values for Republican-Leaning Twitter Users in 2016

Table 4.3: Changes in the Salience of 16 Issues Over Time

Table 5.1: Correlational Values for Democratic-Leaning Twitter Users in 2012

Table 5.2: Correlational Values for Republican-Leaning Twitter Users in 2012

Table 5.3: Changes in the Salience of 16 Issues in the 2012 Campaign Over Time

Table 6.1: Salient Issues of Traditional/Vertical Media and Social/Horizontal Media in 2008

Table 6.2: Traditional/Vertical vs. Social/Horizontal Media-Audience Correlations, 2008

Table 7.1: List of Countries Based on the 2016 Freedom in the World Ranking

Table 7.2: Selected Countries From the ACA Table, 2016

Table 8.1: Ranking of Traditional Media Agenda Compared With Public Agenda ← xiii | xiv →

Table 8.2: Ranking of Social Media Agenda (Community Agenda) Compared With Public Agenda

Table 8.3: Differences Between Public Agenda and Personal Preference

Table 8.4: Traditional and Social Media Agenda-Setting Correlations

Table 8.5: Agendamelding, Actual and Theoretical

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FOREWORD

By David H. Weaver and Maxwell E. McCombs

This book is the culmination of a 20-year research program by Professor Donald Shaw, one of the original pioneers of agenda-setting research, that looks at agenda setting mainly from the perspective of the news audience instead of the effects of news media—a process that he has called agendamelding to distinguish it from other media agenda-setting research that is focused more on the influence of media agendas on public priorities.

The focus of this book, as he puts it, is on “the way audiences blend messages from traditional and social media (including other people) into more personal renditions of civic life. …” In exploring this focus in beautifully written detail, Shaw has linked agenda-setting research firmly with the uses and gratifications approach to mass communication research that asks what people do with media rather than what media do to people.

He has also added a seventh stage to agenda-setting research that now includes six stages or facets: (1) basic object agenda setting, (2) attribute agenda setting, (3) network agenda setting, (4) the psychology of agenda setting, (5) the consequences of agenda setting, and (6) the origins of the media agenda.

In doing so, he has made clearer the limits of media agenda setting and expanded our understanding of why media agendas sometimes are reflected in audience agendas and sometimes not—and why audiences sometimes seek ← xv | xvi → guidance about which issues and topics are most and least important from media sources and sometimes from other sources such as family, friends and various groups.

In the 50-year history of agenda-setting research and theory, this agendamelding approach is more relevant today than ever, given the increased complexity of the media landscape and the ability of people to choose very different patterns of media consumption. Now, much more than 50 years ago in 1968 when the first agenda-setting study was done in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, there are so many different sources of media content and so many more opportunities to choose from these sources, making selective exposure and selective perception more relevant than ever before.