Page 171 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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ings on Media, Public Opinion, and Policymaking, SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Combs and David Protess. It includes the original study of McCombs and
Donald Shaw that touched off the interest in agenda setting a quarter of a century
ago. It also has a number of other studies that have appeared in communication
journals and thus offers a substantial run of data about agenda setting.
If you would rather read a series of syntheses looking into varied aspects of
agenda setting, then you should read Communication and Democracy: Exploring
the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory, edited by McCombs, Shaw,
and David Weaver.
Agenda setting assumed at the outset that media set the agenda. Other research
suggested politicians may set it. Yet, on reflection, the public may set it and
apparently has set it in some instances. This aspect of agenda setting is dealt
with in The Public and the National Agenda, by Wayne Wanta.
Another area of research is covered in The Main Source: Learning from Tel-
evision News, by John Robinson and Mark Levy. While surveys show television
as the most frequently named medium as the main source, this book makes it
clear that television is not an effective source of political information. Its con-
tribution apparently has to do with images.
The theory of cognitive dissonance has generated a great deal of empirical
data. It begins with Leon Festinger's book, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.
Brief and readable, it makes a lot of things that happen in political communi-
cation make sense.
For an overall view of theory and research, we would suggest Communication
Theories, by Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard. It deals with more than
political communication, but the book is organized in a way that makes issues
related to political communication easy to find.
Beyond this list is the frontier of political communication found in such jour-
nals as Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communi-
cation, Political Communication, and Public Opinion Quarterly.

REFERENCES
Steven H. Chaffee and John L. Hochheimer, "The Beginnings of Political Communi-
cation Research in the United States: Origins of the Limited Effects Model," in
Michael Gurevitch and Mark R. Levy, eds., Mass Communication Review Year-
book, Vol. 5 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1985).
Peter Clarke and Susan H. Evans, Covering Campaigns: Journalism in Congressional
Elections (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983).
Timothy Crouse, The Boys on the Bus (New York: Random House, 1973).
Leon Festinger, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1957).
Richard Hofstetter, Bias in the News (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976).
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992).