Agenda Setting, Media Effects on
Maxwell McCombs, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
Agenda setting explicates Walter Lippmanns thesis in Public Opinion that the news media are a major link between the world
outside and the pictures in our heads. In the decades since the seminal Chapel Hill study, evidence of this media inuence has
been found worldwide for public issues, perceptions of public gures, and other topics. This evidence also explicates the
underlying psychology of these agenda-setting effects and the consequences of these media effects for attitudes, opinions, and
behavior.
The news media have a major inuence on the focus of public
attention, the specic issues that members of the public regard
as most priority at any moment. Beyond this inuence, the
news media also direct our attention to specic aspects of these
issues. This combined inuence of the news media on the
publics attention to and learning the key details of the major
issues of the day is referred to as the agenda-setting role of the
news media.
The intellectual father of agenda-setting theory is Walter
Lippmann, whose book, Public Opinion (1922), began with
a chapter titled The world outside and the pictures in our
heads. The central thesis of the book is that the news media are
the primary bridge between the vast array of events in the
external world and the truncated views of these events in our
minds. As Lippmann noted, our opinions and behavior are
a response to these pictures in our heads, not the larger outside
world.
Nearly half a century later, during the 1968 US presidential
election, Lippmanns observations were the basis of the
seminal Chapel Hill study (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) that
introduced the theory of agenda setting. The core concepts of
this theoretical metaphor are a media agenda, a public agenda,
and the transfer of salience of the items on the media agenda to
the public agenda. In agenda-setting theory, salience refers to
the prominence and perceived importance of items in the news.
The term agenda as it is used here is a neutral descriptive term,
quite the opposite from its meaning in the phrase to have an
agenda. The transfer of salience from the media agenda to the
public agenda is the inadvertent by-product of the necessity of
the news media to focus their attention on a small number of
topics at any particular point in time. In other words, agenda-
setting effects are an incidental result of peoples use of the
news media. However, as we shall see, the strength of these
agenda-setting effects can vary considerably. The public are not
a tabula rasa waiting to be programmed by the media.
Comparing Media and Public Agendas
To test the central assertion of agenda-setting theory that the
media agenda sets the public agenda, the Chapel Hill study
compared the salience of ve major issues dening the media
agenda with the salience of these issues on the public agenda of
undecided voters. The focus on undecided voters in Chapel Hill
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 1
was a strategic decision about the most likely setting for media
effects because the conventional wisdom of the time held that
the media had little impact on the public due to their selective
exposure to compatible political messages (Klapper, 1960).
McCombs and Shaw reasoned that selective exposure should
be minimal among undecided voters and a more likely setting
for media effects.
In the Chapel Hill study and subsequent research, the media
agenda is dened by the pattern of news coverage over a period
of several weeks. Systematic content analysis reveals which
issue receives the most coverage, which the second most
coverage, etc. In other words, the issues in the news can be rank-
ordered according to the amount of coverage that they receive.
The public agenda most often is determined by the long-
standing Gallup Poll question, What is the most important
problem facing this country today? The aggregate responses to
this question or similar measures of the perceived importance
of the issues of the day also can be rank-ordered from most to
least frequent.
In Chapel Hill, McCombs and Shaw compared the salience
of ve major issues dening the media agenda with the public
agenda among undecided voters and found a near-perfect
match in their rank-order (0.97, where the maximum value
of this correlation coefcient used to index the strength of
agenda-setting effects is 1.0). The empirical correlations
among general populations are somewhat lower. A year-long
study during the 1976 US Presidential campaign found
a peak correlation of 0.63 between the television agenda and
the public agenda during the spring primaries (Weaver et al.,
1981). In the 1995 local elections in Pamplona, Spain
(McCombs, 2014), there were substantial matches between the
public agenda and the agendas of both local newspapers
(0.90 and 0.72, respectively) and television news (0.66).
Wanta and Ghanems (2000) meta-analysis of agenda-setting
studies found a typical correlation of 0.55 between the
media agenda and the public agenda.
There are now hundreds of empirical studies worldwide
documenting agenda-setting effects. These studies have exam-
ined the presentation of a wide variety of public issues and
a handful of other topics by various combinations of news-
papers, television, and other communication media and the
publics response to these media agendas in both election and
nonelection settings in Asia, Europe, Australia, and South
America, as well as in the USA and Canada. For rigorous tests of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.95007-4 351
352 Agenda Setting, Media Effects on
agenda-setting theorys assertion of a causal link between the
media agenda and the public agenda that is, the media
agenda sets the public agenda these effects also have been
produced in controlled laboratory experiments (Althaus and
Tewksbury, 2002; Conway and Patterson, 2008; Iyengar and
Kinder, 1987).
In the new media landscape, a wide variety of Internet
channels have joined the chorus of media voices and demon-
strate agenda-setting effects among the public similar to those
found over the decades for newspapers and television (Tran,
2014). With this vast expansion and transformation of the
communication landscape, some observers have predicted the
diminution, if not the actual disappearance, of agenda-setting
effects on the scale that we have observed them over the past
half century (Chaffee and Metzger, 2001). Despite the popu-
larity of speculation on this possibility, the overwhelming
preponderance of the evidence to date suggests that the agenda-
setting role of the communication media endures.
Although there is divergence in the contemporary media-
use patterns among different generations, two statewide
surveys in the US found little difference in agenda-setting
effects among the younger, middle, and older generations
(Coleman and McCombs, 2007). Greater attention to the
Internet and much less attention to traditional media among
younger adults had little impact on agenda setting. Particularly
compelling is the comparison in Louisiana of the issue agendas
of low and high Internet users to the issue agenda of the states
major newspapers. For low Internet users, the correlation with
the newspaper agenda is 0.90. For high Internet users, the
correlation is 0.70.
Both the strength of agenda-setting effects in past decades
and their continuing strength in the contemporary media
setting result from long-standing patterns of behavior in the
media and among the public. The high degree of homogeneity
among media agendas found in the original Chapel Hill
investigation continues in contemporary settings (Boczkowski,
2010). Among the public, strong agenda-setting effects across
the population result from civic osmosis, the continuous
exposure to a vast sea of information from many channels of
communication (McCombs, 2012; Stromback and Kiousis,
2010; Webster and Ksiazek, 2012). For most people, this
exposure ranges from habitual and deliberate attention to
some news channels to incidental exposure to other news
channels in the course of daily life. In tandem with the
homogeneity of these news channels, the outcome is a high
degree of consensus on the major issues of the day.
A Second Level of Agenda-Setting Effects
Agenda-setting theory focused initially on the objects dening
the media and public agendas. The term object is used here
with the same meaning as the term attitude object in social
psychology. In agenda setting, the objects most frequently
studied are public issues and political gures. However, any set
of objects that is of interest can be analyzed, such as institu-
tions, corporations, or brands of goods. Moving beyond the
focus on objects, media messages about public issues and other
objects include descriptions of these objects. In abstract terms,
objects have attributes. Just as these objects vary in salience, so
do the attributes of these objects. When the media present an
object and when the public thinks about and talks about an
object some attributes are emphasized. Others are mentioned
less frequently, some only in passing.
Just as there is an agenda of objects, there is an agenda of
attributes for each of these objects, an agenda on which the
attributes can be rank-ordered according to their frequency of
appearance. The inuence of the media on the relative salience
of these objects among the public is the rst level of agenda
setting. The inuence of the media on the relative salience of
these objects attributes is the second level of agenda setting.
Images of political leaders among the public afford exam-
ples of attribute agenda setting (McCombs, 2014). In the 1994
mayoral election in Taipei, Taiwan, the correlations ranged
from 0.59 to 0.78 for six comparisons between voters
images of the three candidates their attribute agenda and
news coverage of these attributes the attribute agenda in two
major daily newspapers. Here the substantive attributes of
these candidates included personal qualities, such as ability,
experience, and political style, as well as nonpolitical attributes,
such as personality, integrity, and speaking ability.
Beyond the substantive attributes of a candidate or other
object in the news the specic traits or characteristics that
describe the object of attention there is a second dimension
of the attribute agenda, the affective tone associated with each
substantive attribute. When the media and the public describe
an object in terms of its substantive attributes, these attributes
are presented in positive, negative, or neutral terms.
In the 1996 Spanish general election, both the media
attribute agendas and the public attribute agendas for these
candidates were organized in terms of both their substantive
and affective dimensions. In this demanding test of attribute
agenda-setting effects, there was substantial correspondence
between the news coverage in seven news media of the three
major candidates and their images among Pamplona voters.
In the analysis, the combination of ve substantive categories
and three levels of affect resulted in a 5  3 matrix describing
each candidates attribute agenda. For six comparisons of the
voters attribute agendas for each of the three candidates with
the attribute agendas of two local newspapers, the median
correlation was 0.70. For six comparisons with two national
newspapers, the median correlation was 0.81, and for six
comparisons with two national TV news services it was 0.52.
Attribute agenda setting also occurs with public issues
(McCombs, 2014). Some aspects of issues are emphasized in
the news and in how people think and talk about issues. Other
aspects are less salient. News coverage in Japanese newspapers
about global environmental problems in the months prior to
the 1992 United Nations Rio de Janeiro conference resulted in
a steady increase in public agreement with the media agenda.
In February, the match was 0.68 and by April, 0.78.
A similar pattern was found during a 3-week period prior to
a local tax election in the USA. Correspondence between the
voters attribute agenda, the relative salience of various aspects
of the issue, and the local newspapers framing of the local tax
increased from 0.40 to 0.65. The match with the political
advertising on the issue increased from 0.80 to 0.95.
A longitudinal study of a Swiss referendum on changing the
countrys political asylum law also found strong attribute
agenda-setting effects evolving among persons reporting heavy

reliance on newspapers and TV for public affairs information.
By the third wave of interviewing, the match between the
medias attribute agenda and the publics attribute agenda was
0.92. The news media have a signicant inuence on both
object salience and attribute salience.
Exploring a Third Level of Agenda-Setting Effects
Returning to Lippmanns phrase the pictures in our heads,
the rst level of agenda setting the transfer of object salience
from the media agenda to the public agenda answers the
question What are the pictures about? The second level of
agenda setting the transfer of attribute salience from the
media agenda to the public agenda answers the question
What are the principal characteristics presented in these
pictures? The emerging third level of agenda setting brings us
closer to answering the question What are the pictures?
Beyond the transfer of salience for objects and attributes taken
individually, can the news media transfer the salience of a more
integrated image, a more comprehensive picture of an object
and its attributes?
In the research to date on the rst and second levels of
agenda setting, the elements that have been investigated are
discrete objects and attributes. That is, the objects have been
disaggregated from their larger context and rank-ordered
according to their frequency of appearance in news stories
and in survey respondents answers to the most important
problem (MIP) question or a similar measure of object
salience. At the second level of agenda setting, the attributes
describing political gures, issues, or other objects have been
disaggregated from their larger context and rank-ordered
according to their frequency of appearance in news stories
and in survey respondents answers to questions measuring
attribute salience. However, in the actual news stories and in
respondents descriptions, these elements are bundled together.
Attributes are linked to objects and typically more than one
attribute appears in a news story or a respondents reply.
The third level of agenda-setting effects theorizes that the
salience of these bundled relationships among objects and
attributes are also transferred from the news media to the
public. Theoretically central to this perspective is an associative
network model of memory. Rather than conceptualizing our
mental representations as a hierarchical or linear structure as
implied in the traditional understanding of agenda-setting
theory, this associative network model holds that the repre-
sentation operates pictorially, diagrammatically, or carto-
graphically (Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson, 2007; Cummins,
1996). In this network model, individuals cognitive repre-
sentations are presented as a network-like structure where each
element is connected to numerous other elements.
To explore whether the media can bundle a variety of
elements and make them salient in the publics mind simul-
taneously, Guo and McCombs (2011a) reanalyzed data from
a previous study that had found strong attribute agenda-setting
effects based on a traditional analysis of discrete sets of political
candidates attributes. In the original study of the images held
by voters of four statewide political candidates in the USA (Kim
and McCombs, 2007), the overall correspondence between the
media attribute agenda and the public attribute agenda was
Agenda Setting, Media Effects on 353
0.65. Similar correlations were found when the attribute
agendas of each of the four candidates were analyzed sepa-
rately. Using the statistical technique of network analysis to
analyze the pattern of bundled attributes on the media agenda
and the public agenda that is, an investigation of third-level
agenda-setting effects the correlation was 0.67, a result
that is statistically very similar to the original analysis. Of
course, the networked representations of these agendas are
a much richer picture of these attributes. These results from the
bundled 2002 Texas election data were replicated with new
data collected during the 2010 gubernatorial election and
yielded a correlation of 0.71 (Guo and McCombs, 2011b).
In the 2012 US presidential election, Vargo et al. (2014)
compared the correspondence of Twitter network issue
agendas from mainstream media, partisan media, and the
supporters of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
Explaining Agenda-Setting Effects
News reports are a limited portrait of our environment and,
as Lippmann noted in Public Opinion, create a pseudo-
environment to which the public responds. Often there is
little correspondence between the pattern of news coverage and
underlying historical trends.
Shortly after the Chapel Hill study, Funkhouser (1973)
compared the responses to the Gallup Polls MIP question
across the entire decade of the 1960s with the pattern of
coverage on those issues in the news magazines and found
a high degree of correspondence, a correlation of 0.78. Most
importantly, he added a third set of data, statistical indicators
of the reality of those issues across the 1960s. Funkhouser
(1973: p. 72) noted that the patterns of media coverage did
not have a one-to-one relationship to the realities of any of the
issues. While the media and public agendas were strongly
linked, both had an arms-length relationship with the histor-
ical trends of the decade.
Similar disconnects between the world outside and the
agendas of the media and the public have been found over the
years for a wide variety of issues. From 1970 to 1990, the public
responded to the increasing coverage of environmental prob-
lems in the face of decreasing air and water pollution (Ader,
1995). In the 1970s, public concern was aroused by news
reports about the availability of petroleum in Germany when
there was no real evidence of any shortage (Kepplinger and
Roth, 1979). The salience of crime as an issue appears to be
particularly susceptible to news coverage. Gordon and Heath
(1981) found signicant differences in concern about crime
in Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco between readers of
newspapers with amboyant crime coverage vs newspapers
with conservative crime coverage. In the 1990s there was
a similar public response in Texas to an increase in news
coverage of crime during a time when there was a decreasing
trend in actual crime (Ghanem, 1996). More recently, Gross
and Aday (2003) found that exposure to local TV news with
its heavy crime coverage was the major predictor of naming
crime as an important issue in Washington, DC.
The publics response in all these situations is reminiscent of
the phenomenon of alarmed discovery, the initial stage of
public response to a new issue on the agenda that is described
354 Agenda Setting, Media Effects on
in Downss (1972) theory of the issue attention cycle. The
medias presentation of the issues just discussed also can be
characterized as alarmed discovery because the news began to
emphasize each of these issues at a time that nothing out of the
ordinary was occurring in the real world. In effect, these were
natural experiments in a real-world setting that yield compel-
ling evidence of the agenda-setting impact of the news on the
public.
These agenda-setting effects of the mass media occur
worldwide, wherever there are reasonably open political and
media systems. Under these circumstances, the public
frequently turns to the news media for orientation on the major
issues of the day, especially those issues beyond the ken of
personal experience. Even in many cases where personal
experience creates high salience for an issue, people turn to the
media for additional information and perspective.
The concept in agenda-setting theory explaining this
behavior is need for orientation (NFO), the cognitive equiva-
lent of the physical science principle that nature abhors
a vacuum. People are psychologically uncomfortable in unfa-
miliar situations, such as elections with a plethora of candi-
dates and issues, and frequently turn to the media to satisfy
their NFO (Weaver, 1977). This psychological concept, which
is dened in terms of relevance and uncertainty, explains, for
example, the strong agenda-setting effects found in 1968
among Chapel Hill undecided voters. Obviously, both rele-
vance and uncertainty were high for these voters, the condition
dening the highest level of NFO.
Matthes (2006) recent reconceptualization of the
measurement of NFO takes account of new developments in
agenda-setting theory, particularly, attribute agenda setting,
and expands the measurement to three dimensions: the NFO
toward issues, toward facts, and toward journalistic evalua-
tions. Chernov et al.s (2011) experimental study found that
both the traditional and new Matthes NFO scales are reliable
tools for predicting rst-level agenda-setting effects, and that
they are signicantly correlated with each other. The traditional
NFO scale performs better than the new NFO scale when pre-
dicting rst-level agenda-setting effects. However, when only
the rst subdimension of the new NFO scale is used (i.e., NFO
toward issues), both the traditional and new scales perform
about equally.
With increased levels of media use, there is also increased
agreement about the most important issues of the day among
disparate demographic groups, such as men and women or
those with high and low education. These patterns of social
consensus have been found in Spain, Taiwan, and the USA
(McCombs, 2014). Consensus also is facilitated by the limited
capacity of the aggregate public agenda. Typically, no more
than three to ve issues are individually able to garner
a constituency of 10% or more of the public who regard that
single issue as the most important issue of the day, and the
public agenda is best characterized as a zero-sum game
(McCombs and Bell, 1996).
Sources of the Media Agenda
Although the majority of empirical research on agenda setting
has examined the relationship between the media agenda and
the public agenda, scholars also have asked Who sets the
media agenda? Inuences shaping the media agenda range
from the external activities of major news sources to the
internal dynamics of the media system (Dearing and Rogers,
1996; McCombs, 2014). Examination of the New York Times
and Washington Post across a 20-year period found that nearly
half of the news stories were based substantially on press
releases and other direct inputs by news sources, such as press
conferences and background briengs. News coverage of
Louisiana government agencies was substantially based on
information provided by their public information ofcers to
the states major newspapers. Across an 8-week period the
correspondence between the agenda originating with the press
information ofces and all news stories about those agencies
was 0.57.
Political campaigns make a concerted effort to inuence the
news agenda. In the 1993 British general election, a series of
comparisons between the three major parties agendas and
seven news media, both newspapers and television, found
a median correlation of 0.70. American political parties do
not fare as well at the national level. A comparison of television
news coverage during the 1996 New Hampshire Presidential
primary, the inaugural primary in the lengthy US election year,
with the candidates speeches found only a moderate corre-
spondence (0.40) in their agendas. However, at the local
level, in an election for Governor of Texas the combined
agendas of the Democrat and Republican candidates shaped
the issue agenda of both the local newspaper (0.64) and the
local television stations (0.52) in the state capital. The Texas
election also reected intermedia agenda setting, the inuence
that one news medium has on another. In Austin, the corre-
spondence between the local newspaper agenda and subse-
quent television news coverage of public issues was 0.73.
A similar comparison in Pamplona, Spain, of two local news-
papers with local television news found correlations of 0.66
and 0.70. In the USA, the New York Times is regarded as
a major agenda-setter among the news media. A case study of
the drug issue during the 1980s found that the New York Times
inuenced subsequent coverage by the national television
networks, news magazines, and major regional newspapers.
Consequences of Agenda Setting
The agenda-setting role of the media has consequences beyond
the focusing of public attention. These consequences encom-
pass both attitudes and opinions and observable behavior.
In terms of attitudes and opinions, it is important to distin-
guish two aspects, rst the strength of opinion, beginning with
the fundamental point of whether an opinion even exists.
Strength of opinion also distinguishes between weakly and
strongly held opinions regardless of whether those opinions
are positive or negative. Second is the widely measured direc-
tion of opinion, whether some object or attribute is regarded in
a positive or negative light.
To begin with the strength of opinion, there is a funda-
mental link between the rst level of agenda setting, the transfer
of object salience from the media agenda to the public agenda,
and the formation of opinions by members of the public.
For example, Kiousis and McCombs (2004) found a strong

relationship (0.81) between the pattern of news coverage
during the 1996 presidential election and the percentage of
persons who held an opinion about each of 11 political gures.
The greater the amount of news coverage, the greater the
salience of that person among the public and the greater the
likelihood of having an opinion about them. A strong rela-
tionship also was found between the pattern of news coverage
and the strength of these opinions. Comparisons of the
frequencies of presidential campaign stories mentioned in the
New York Times and three network news broadcasts with a time
series from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Study also
found that increases in media coverage of the election were
negatively related to the refusal rate in surveys about the elec-
tion (Stroud and Kenski, 2001).
Turning to the direction of opinions, positive opinions
during 1992 and 1993 about the overall performance in ofce
by Hong Kongs last British Governor were signicantly primed
by the pattern of news coverage on his proposals to broaden
public participation in local elections. Exposure to this news
coverage signicantly increased the importance of these
proposals in Hong Kong residents overall approval of the
Governors performance. By calling attention to some matters
while ignoring others, the news media inuence the criteria by
which public ofcials subsequently are judged (Iyengar and
Kinder, 1987). This process of priming is a major conse-
quence of rst-level agenda-setting effects, a process in which
the salience of an issue among the public becomes a signicant
factor in opinions about a public gure associated with that
issue. Priming effects on opinions about the overall perfor-
mance of the president of the United States have been found
for many presidents on a wide variety of issues. In short, there is
a major link between the rst level of agenda setting, the
transfer of issue salience from the media agenda to the public
agenda, and the direction of opinions expressed by members of
the public.
At the second level of agenda setting, the tone of news
reports and their attribute agenda-setting effects on the public
are also related to the direction of opinions expressed by
members of the public (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010).
In Germany, shifts in the tone of news stories about Helmut
Kohl preceded shifts in public opinion from 1975 to 1984
(Kepplinger et al., 1989). Daily observations during the nal
3 months of the 1992 and 1996 US Presidential campaigns
found that the positive and negative tone of television news
about key campaign events inuenced voters opinions about
the candidates (Shaw, 1999). The pattern of negative headlines
about the US economy over a 13-year period inuenced both
subsequent measures of consumer sentiment and major
statistical measures of the actual economy (Blood and Phillips,
1997).
Conclusion
The history of agenda-setting theory in the decades since the
1968 Chapel Hill study is rich and productive. In particular, the
theoretical expansion to three levels of effects and the conse-
quences of these effects for attitudes and opinions require the
revision of Bernard Cohens (1963) seminal observation that
the media may not tell us what to think, but are stunningly
Agenda Setting, Media Effects on 355
successful in telling us what to think about. His distinction
between the affective and cognitive effects of the media was an
important precedent for research on rst-level agenda setting.
In turn, the expansion to a second level of effects, attribute
agenda setting, and its consequences reinvigorated the
consideration of media effects on attitudes and opinions. This
expanding perspective, now joined by a third level of effects,
also is a rebuttal of the criticism that agenda setting has focused
narrowly on the initial stages of the communication and public
opinion process.
Agenda-setting theory details the range of effects on the
public that result from the news medias inadvertent focus on
a small number of topics and their attributes. To the extent that
the news agenda is set by social forces external to the news
media, the role of news institutions is important, but neutral, as
a transmission belt. To the extent that the news media exercise
autonomy in dening the publics news diet, they are in
themselves a powerful social force.
See also: Attitudes, Political and Public Opinion; Media Effects;
Political Communication; Public Opinion: Social Attitudes.
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