The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.

McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176-187.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1972

DOI

10.1086/267990

Link

https://doi.org/10.1086/267990

Cited from

library_information_science, rhetoric

Cited by

4 citations across 4 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Presupposition Smuggling
  • In agenda-setting, items phrased with embedded presuppositions ("how shall we implement Plan X?" versus "should we?") shape what can be discussed.

    This sourceEstablishes how media framing of items determines what is salient and discussable.

• Salience-as-Significance
  • Mass media and agenda-setting. Coverage volume of a topic predicts the public's ranking of that topic's importance: editorial decisions about which stories to run are read as decisions about what matters.

Mechanisms

• Editorial Priority Calendar
  • It reflects the real power of coverage decisions — what a communications team foregrounds shapes what its audience treats as important, the core claim of agenda-setting theory.

    This sourceShows that media emphasis and placement shape which issues audiences regard as important, the agenda-setting function.

• Media Agenda Framing
  • Its failure mode is the shadow of its power: agenda-setting shapes not just what people think about

    This sourceShows that news selection and display shape which issues audiences regard as important.

Verification

This reference passed the adversarial substantiation pipeline: it was checked to exist and to support the claim it is attached to. See how references were verified.

Registry ID ref:3888b3b4e1b0 · see in the full table