Page 22 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

1. NEWS INFLUENCE ON OUR PICTURES OF THE WORLD 11

Media Agenda Public Agenda

Object Salience Object Salience Public's

[Agenda-Setting] [Basic Priming]
Attitudes

&

Attribute Salience Attribute Salience Opinions

[Attribute Agenda-Setting] [Priming]

FIG. 1.1. The Agenda-Setting Process

also have been produced in laboratory experiments (Kiousis, Banti-
maroudis, & Ban, 1999).
This influence of the mass media on the public’s images of political
candidates is a very straightforward instance of attribute agenda-setting.
Most of our knowledge about the attributes of political candidates, from
their personal ideology to their personalities, comes from the news stories
and the advertising content of the mass media. Issue salience, which has
been the central focus of agenda-setting theory, also can be examined at
the second level. Public issues, like all other objects, have attributes. Dif-
ferent aspects of issues—their attributes—are emphasized to varying
degrees in the news and in how people think and talk about issues.
Again demonstrating the validity of agenda-setting theory across cul-
tures, analysis of the 1993 Japanese general election found effects at both
the first and second levels for the issue of political reform (Takeshita &
Mikami, 1995). The more people used the news media, the greater the
overall salience of the issue of political reform and, in particular, the
greater the salience of system-related aspects of political reform, the aspect
of the issue emphasized in the news.
Outside an election setting, in Minneapolis the correspondence between
the local newspaper’s presentation of the national economic situation and
the salience of specific economic problems, causes, and proposed solutions
among the public was .81 (Benton & Frazier, 1976). For an environmental
issue in Indiana, the degree of correspondence was .71 between the local
newspaper’s presentation and the public’s views on the development of a