The Contingency of Agenda-Setting Effects on Dynamics of Media Attention

• In Event: New Research on Agenda Setting

Abstract

This study explores how aggregate agenda-setting effects of media salience of issues unfold on a day-to-day basis and how the time-lags between media impulse and public response differ between issues. To account for between-issue differences in likelihood and strength of agenda-setting effects, it explores the impact of intensity of baseline coverage and the momentum of news waves on agenda-setting effects. It concludes that agenda-setting effects grow more likely and stronger the higher the baseline amount of coverage and the higher the momentum of news waves. Agenda-setting scholars should systematically check, report, and possibly control for baseline coverage and spike momentum, which can easily be implemented in agenda-setting studies of the natural history type.

Author

• Stefan Geiss, NTNU Trondheim