McComb & Shaw's Theory of Agenda Setting---Added Research

Summary

For some additional research on McComb & Shaw's Theory of Agenda Setting, I researched an article written by McComb and Shaw entitled The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Idea's. The article covers many areas of the theory. Different sections include The Historical Growth of Agenda Setting, New Research Venues ,and Looking Into the Future. I chose to concentrate on The Integration of Research Areas.

The Integration of Research Areas

While the opening phases of agenda-setting research concentrated on the question "Who sets the public agenda--and under what conditions?", the most recent phase of work has shifted its attention to the question "Who sets the media agenda?" This question has linked agenda-setting research to a number of social science, communication, and journalism subfields. (The link to communication subfields is more than evident on this page, as this page is an assignment for a communication theory class at Ohio University.)

McComb & Shaw make reference to the 1991 Shoemaker and Reese text Mediating the Message: Theories of Influence on Mass Media Content. According to the text, there are a vast number of influnces shaping the daily construction of the news agenda. They include media routines, organizational sociology (both internal and external to news organizations), and ideology, all in addition to individual differences among journalists. Also relevant to the broad question of who sets the media agenda is the classic theory of news diffusion--an area now calledintermedia agenda setting, which has been supplemented with new research on the role of public relations--and the tradition of gatekeeping research in journalsim--whose perspectives have been transformed by the theory of agenda setting. In some instances, established traditions are used to inform agenda-setting research. In other instances, agenda setting informs older traditions. In yet other instances, this research on media agenda initiates new traditions.

In the original Chapel Hill study and many of the studies that have followed, both the media agenda and the public agenda consisted of a set of objects and public issues. But D. Weaver, in his 1981 article Media Agenda Setting in a Presidential Election: Issues, Images and Interest, introduced a new agenda to the literature, the agenda of personal concerns, on which politics is but a single entry. The agenda also is a set of objects. Viewed in these terms, the agenda metaphor can be applied in many settings. Communication is a process. It can be about any set of objects--or even a single object--competing for attention.

Interpretation& Evaluation

The concepts discussed in The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Idea's are interesting. McComb and Shaw intertwine their ideas with those of other noted communication scholars to provide a good symposium for their agenda-setting theory. It is all too easy, when studying communication theory, to concentrate on one theory at a time without considering the relevancy that one theory has in relationship to another. This article makes the reader consider how communication theories can relate to each other while, at the same time, provides the reader with an in depth analysis of agenda-setting.

Other Links:

 Agenda-Setting theory explains how organizations provide the public with information. To further your understanding of how the organizations themselves work, check outStanley Deetz's Critical Theory of Communication Approach to Organizations

Learn more about Agenda-Setting. Check out the Agenda-Setting Title Page.

Check out Communication Theory: Aims and Scopes. It is an international journal that publishes high quality, original research into the theoretical development of communication from across a wide array of disciplines.

The University of Oregon Institute of Cognitive & Decision Sciences offers an assortment of communication scholars.

Muzafer Sherif's Social Judgement Theory

Charles Berger's Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory

Check out Dr. Judith Lee's Communication Theory Pages.

This page was created by Matt Basinger and last modified on November 18, 1998.