1. Agenda Setting
TheoryBy: Mackenzie Brown

2. What is agenda setting?
• A theory that holds
intense media attention
increases the
importance of certain
topics, issues, and
individuals
• It has the ability to tell
us what issues are
important and has a
very powerful influence
of the media
We perceive information
the way mass media
wants us to

3. Who uses agenda setting?
• Agenda setting functions
mostly in mass
communication and media
• We (as an audience to mass
media) use agenda-setting to
describe important events we
have not personally
witnessed.
• The media uses agenda
setting theory to inform us on
what they think is important
to our society

4. df
So what?
• The media provide information about “the world
outside” and we use that information to form
“pictures in our heads”.
• “The press may not be successful in telling
people what to think, but it is stunningly
successful in telling its readers what to think
about.”
Bernard Cohen

5. I still don’t get it……
• Well, research over the years believes
that agenda setting theory follows a
certain sequence:
• The media presents information and
provokes awareness of issues
• That information then provokes us
to change our attitudes or even
keep the same attitudes
• The change in attitude then will
provoke behavior change and the
media got what they were hoping to
achieve.

6. Nothing’s perfect….
•Although agenda setting and mass communication has done
wonders for us; keeping us informed, critics believe that:
“there is insufficient evidence to show a causal
connection between the importance placed on
issues by the media and the significance
attached to those issues by the public.”

7. In other words….• Because of agenda setting, mass media has the opportunity to only
inform us on the things that they want us to know.
• For example:
FOX News issued a poll regarding President Obama’s birth
certificate, 37 percent of Republican respondents said they believe
that Obama was not a natural born citizen compared to just 12
percent of Democrats. The agenda setting theory suggests that this
is the result of repeated coverage by FOX News of the birth
certificate issue, an issue that was not covered as much by other
networks.
(Blanton, 2011)

8. Presenter’s Choice
• The men in charge:
• Max McCombs and Donald Shaw
• They investigated the agenda-setting function of the mass media in the 1969 presidential campaign
• The point?
• To get information about the relationship between what voters in one community said were important issues and the
actual content of media messages during the actual campaign
• Results?
• Mass media (with the agenda-setting function) had a huge influence on what voters during the campaign
considered to be the major issues
• Why so important?
• This study began the agenda-setting theory and is now why we study it today.
They look important,
don’t they?

9. Citations
• Infante, D.A., Rancer, A.S., and Avtgis, T.A.
(2010). Contemporary Communication Theory.
Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt
• More agenda-setting information on
pg. 342-344

10. Citations
• Infante, D.A., Rancer, A.S., and Avtgis, T.A.
(2010). Contemporary Communication Theory.
Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt
• More agenda-setting information on
pg. 342-344