Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media

Research on the agenda-setting role of the news media has often been guided by a rather narrow conception of how media content affects members of the public. In particular, reliance on a "mirror-image" model of media effects, and a focus on "the agenda" as an overall ranking of issues, has not shed much light on the processes linking public issue salience to varying media attention. This study introduces an "audience-effects" model which treats issue-specific audience sensitivities as modulators, and news coverage as a trigger stimulus, of media impact on issue salience, issue by issue. An analysis of "most important national problem" mentions in the 1974 National Election Study, augmented by data on front-page content in the newspapers read by respondents and on "real-world" conditions in the respondents' commuLnities, provides considerable empirical support for the proposed audience-contingent effects model. In addition, secondary diffusion of problem salience through networks of informal social communication is shown to eventually override early news media impact. Our findings underscore the need for research on agenda-setting to focus on both the temporal and the social dimension of media impact.