Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing PATRICIA MOY University of Washington, USA DAVID TEWKSBURY University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA EIKE MARK RINKE University of Mannheim, Germany As the fourth estate, the news media serve a normatively significant role in contemporary society. They are the conduits through which individuals learn of issues outside their immediate life space. In addition, they introduce information and viewpoints that foster disagreement, discussion, and democracy. Not surprisingly, then, the news media are central influences on individuals’ attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors. Such influences occur across a broad swath of issues, impact a host of demographic and social groups, and span countries and cultures around the globe. Over the past half-century, political communication and public opinion researchers have focused considerably on some related but conceptually distinct theories that have gained intellectual purchase: agenda-setting, priming, and framing. These theories have deeply shaped collective understanding of how individuals perceive and respond to their political and social worlds. Understanding these theories requires keeping in mind how they are situated in the wider arc of communication research and how assumptions about the nature of media influences have fluctuated over the years. In the early 20th century, the media—then comprising newspapers, books, film, and radio—were viewed as omnipotent. By the mid-20th century scholars were pronouncing that the media were not really omnipotent but had very limited effects. In the 1970s another pendulum swing occurred, and the field returned to the notion of an all-powerful media. This intellectual turn derived in large part from the rise of a mass society, in which individuals were living atomistically and, as scholars assumed, actively turning to the media to craft an image of social reality. Today scholars generally believe strong media effects can emerge for some individuals some of the time. The original formulation and refinements of the concepts discussed in this article—agenda-setting, priming, and framing—reflect the field’s gravitation toward this view of contingent effects, particularly in light of an increasingly complex political and media landscape. The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy. Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Robert T. Craig (Editors-in-Chief), Jefferson D. Pooley and Eric W. Rothenbuhler (Associate Editors). © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect266 2 A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G Agenda-setting Agenda-setting refers to the ability of the mass media to signal to the public what is important. By virtue of providing differential levels of coverage to specific issues, the media are able to shape individuals’ perceptions of the relative importance and salience of these issues. Agenda-setting, in the parlance of Walter Lippmann, refers to the basic correspondence between media coverage of “the world outside” and “the pictures in our heads.” Coined by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in a seminal article (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), “agenda-setting” resonates conceptually with ideas raised by others in earlier years. Cohen (1963) wrote about how “the press may not be successful all the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” (p. 13; emphasis added). Lang and Lang described how “most of what people know about political life comes to them secondhand—or even thirdhand—through the mass media. The media do structure a very real political environment but one which … we can only know ‘at a distance’” (Lang & Lang, 1966, p. 466). Agendasetting research has spawned hundreds of studies, in which key intellectual turns were made around agenda-setting effects of different news media, factors that strengthen or mitigate their effects, and the overall recognition that these agenda-setting effects do not occur in a vacuum of organizational and institutional dynamics. Agenda-setting effects across media Since its inception, agenda-setting has seen generally robust effects across the media landscape. In their milestone study of voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, McCombs and Shaw (1972, p. 178) asked citizens about their greatest concern at the time: “Regardless of what politicians say, what are the two or three main things which you think the government should concentrate on doing something about?” They found a strong rank-order correlation between citizens’ main concerns and the political issues covered by the plurality of news sources in Chapel Hill, which included local newspapers, the New York Times, and evening news broadcasts. Research soon shifted to focus solely on broadcast television news and its capacity for agenda-setting effects. In their landmark study, Iyengar and Kinder (1987) designed a series of studies to examine whether the issues that received prominent attention on the national news became the ones that the viewing public saw as the nation’s most important problems. In their sequential experiments, over the course of a week subjects viewed broadcasts into which an additional story about a specific issue (e.g., defense, pollution, unemployment, civil rights) had been spliced. Their assemblage experiments, on the other hand, involved a single viewing stimulus. Subjects watched an amalgamation of news stories that gave either moderate or extreme attention to one of three national problems (defense, energy, or inflation). Both types of experiments generated agenda-setting effects; even after exposure to one story (about drugs), a 10 percentagepoint difference emerged in the assemblage experiments. In the new millennium the decline of printed newspapers and the concomitant rise of the Internet saw scholarly interest turn to examining the agenda-setting effects of A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G 3 online news. Unlike hard-copy newspapers—which can surprise readers with unexpected headlines, catchy pull-out quotes, or compelling photographs as they are forced to turn the page—newspaper websites are more linear, organizing stories topically and from most to least important. The “jump page,” or the page on which a print story continues, does not exist in news websites. Instead, adjacent to the online news story are related stories. Experimental research shows that readers of the print version of the New York Times, after five days, systemically differed from online readers of the same newspaper in what they perceived to be the most important problems facing the country (Althaus & Tewksbury, 2002). Other survey-based research finds that the more frequently individuals read print newspapers each week, the greater number of issues they mention as being the order of the day (Schoenbach, de Waal, & Lauf, 2005). The frequency of reading online newspapers, however, was not related to the range of topics perceived by individuals. Implicit in studies of agenda-setting is how individuals easily understand the newsworthiness and importance of an issue when it appears in the news. Indeed, norms of news production give strong cues to audience members: Television news broadcasts open with the most important story; newspaper editors determine whether a story gets published above or below the fold; and online news editors signal importance by the simple placement of a link to a story. Similarly, when extremely important news breaks, media audiences’ regular programming gets interrupted and news organizations generate e-mail and social media alerts. The breadth of methods employed in agenda-setting studies runs the gamut. Because media content is usually archived, researchers can retroactively quantify coverage of issues and compare it to public opinion data, in which respondents typically are asked to rank or indicate what issues they consider to be most important in a given context (e.g., “What do you believe is the most important problem facing this city?”). The Gallup Poll regularly includes a “most important problem” item on its surveys, and the Eurobarometer asks its respondents what two most important issues face their country, their community, the European Union, and themselves at a given moment. Moderators of agenda-setting Despite the birth of agenda-setting at a time when the media were perceived to be allpowerful, agenda-setting effects are not always powerful. Rather, they hinge upon a number of individual-level and contextual factors. If the power of the media stems from their ability to bring to individuals pictures of the “world outside,” then agenda-setting effects are usually stronger for issues that are unobtrusive, or for those issues with which individuals have little or no direct experience. This was seen, for example, in Iyengar and Kinder’s (1987) experiment, in which sustained exposure to additional stories about inflation did not affect perceptions of inflation as a priority issue. Presumably inflation and the economy are directly observable by all, so that, when the news media present stories on these issues, they are not telling audiences much that their members do not experience or cannot find out for themselves. All said, that unobtrusiveness moderates the strength of agenda-setting 4 A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G effects means the public agenda will generally better reflect the media agenda for national issues than for local issues (Palmgreen & Clarke, 1977). Also, if agenda-setting was born of an atomistic society in which individuals turned to the mass media to define social reality, agenda-setting effects are moderated by one’s need for orientation (Weaver, 1977). Defined as the extent to which individuals are motivated to better understand an issue, one’s need for orientation derives from both relevance and uncertainty, the former driving the latter. That is, individuals will experience a need for orientation only on those issues they perceive to be relevant. However, even among those who deem a specific issue relevant, variance exists in their levels of uncertainty. In general, the greater an individual’s need for orientation, the more likely his or her perception of the issue agenda will reflect the media’s agenda. That the need for orientation can moderate the strength of agenda-setting effects suggests active exposure to news content, although incidental exposure to media messages can also have significant consequences. While its original formulation dealt with need for orientation toward issues, need for orientation can also be toward facts (e.g., “I want to know many different sides about that topic”) and journalistic evaluations (e.g., “I attach great importance to commentaries on this issue”) (Matthes, 2006). In this sense, audience members’ perceptions of media credibility and knowledge can moderate agenda-setting effects. Research has shown that the public agenda, as perceived by skeptics, did not match the media agenda as much as it did in the case of nonskeptics. As Tsfati (2003, p. 160) asked: “Why should people adopt the agenda of the media when they do not trust the media?” As individuals use information to reduce uncertainty and to make sense of the world around them, the media are only one source to which they can turn. Individuals also engage in discussion and interpersonal communication, which are functional alternatives to media use and can introduce additional viewpoints related to the issue at hand. Depending on the content and not merely on the frequency of a discussion, interpersonal communication about an issue can enhance agenda-setting effects (for example, when both the media and interpersonal communication resonate). At the same time a dampening effect may occur: Intense interpersonal discussion of issues might occur among people who know more about them, and because these individuals know more they are less likely to adopt the agenda suggested by the media (Atwater, Salwen, & Anderson, 1985). Variants of agenda-setting Over the years, scholars have identified and labeled processes and effects related to the traditional agenda-setting concept. While agenda-setting refers to how the news media can shape the public agenda, intermedia agenda-setting designates the process whereby one news source shapes what another news source will consider important and will therefore cover. For instance, articles from the renowned Journal of the American Medical Association often appear in more accessible format in the New York Times’s Science Times section, as journalists decide that a particular medical study is sufficiently significant for widespread dissemination. In turn, science-related stories in A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G 5 the New York Times may appear in local newspapers. In a landscape rife with media technologies, though, citizens are also content producers, and legacy media are not the only agenda-setters, as journalists often look to social media to identify what is currently engaging the public. The work on agenda-setting has also spurred research on agenda-building, the study of how the news agenda gets shaped. Shoemaker and Reese’s (2014) hierarchy of influences identifies several factors that affect news content: (1) ideological, sociocultural forces that dictate what is appropriate or newsworthy and warrants coverage; (2) extramedia forces, such as economic incentives; (3) organizational influences, such as the publisher; (4) media routines, including journalistic norms; and (5) the journalists themselves. Finally, as the field has developed, researchers have begun to extend the traditional concept of agenda-setting so as to include in it second-level agenda-setting, also called attribute agenda-setting. This more recent development predicts that the issue’s attributes emphasized by the news media will influence not only the issue’s prominence on the public agenda, but also how the public will think about that issue. This newer concept has not gone unchallenged, as some argue that attribute agenda-setting really is more aligned with framing than with agenda-setting itself. Priming Introduced to the study of political communication by Iyengar and his colleagues (e.g., Iyengar & Kinder, 1987), media-priming theory has its origins in psychological network models of memory. According to these models, information is stored in memory as nodes, with each node corresponding to a concept. Nodes (concepts) are connected to one another via associative pathways, and the distance between nodes indicates how related they are. When a node is activated (for example, when the image of a smoking factory chimney activates “global warming”), this activation can spread to other related nodes (for example, “concern”). The activation of nodes increases how accessible they are in memory—they are “primed” for application to other stimuli. The basic media-priming process consists of two steps. In the first step, information received through a media channel (i.e., the “media prime”) activates preexisting associated knowledge in the mind of the receiver (i.e., “available” cognitive units or concepts). This activation makes the cognitive units more accessible, which means that the receiver is more likely to use them in interpreting and evaluating a subsequently encountered target stimulus (i.e., the attitude object). A media priming effect occurs if, in the second step, the receiver applies the primed, now more accessible concept to a target stimulus when s/he would not otherwise have done this. The first step thus consists of the priming process, and the second speaks to its consequences. Priming is often understood as closely related to agenda-setting. First, both effects are grounded in mnemonic models of information-processing, which assume that individuals form attitudes on the strength of considerations that are most salient, and thus most accessible, when making decisions. Second, priming is seen as an outgrowth of the media effects process initiated by agenda-setting (Brosius, 1994). By making some 6 A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G issues more salient in people’s minds (agenda-setting), the mass media can shape the considerations that people take into account when making judgments about political candidates or other issues (priming). The occurrence of priming effects depends on at least four boundary conditions: (1) the recency and (2) the repetition of exposure to a prime, then (3) the applicability and (4) the subjective relevance of this prime. Recency refers to the fact that the accessibility of primed information in people’s minds decays over time, which makes any later application of the information to a target stimulus less likely. Repetition refers to the frequency with which nodes in people’s memory are primed. The higher the frequency, the more likely the primed nodes are to be activated in response to subsequent stimuli. In other words, for a priming effect to occur, the exposure to a prime must be sufficiently recent and sufficiently frequent (but not overly so). At the same time, the prime must be applicable and subjectively relevant. Applicability refers to the fact that a primed concept must overlap or be closely related to features of the target stimulus if it is to influence the standards people use for its evaluation (Price & Tewksbury, 1997). For example, Iyengar and Kinder’s (1987) experiment of political media-priming showed that coverage of specific issues impacted subjects’ evaluations of the president’s overall performance more than evaluations of his competence and integrity. Subjective relevance is closely related to applicability and highlights the fact that applicability has not only an objective, but also a subjective component: If people do not see how a primed construct relates to a given target stimulus, they will not consider it applicable to its evaluation. Meeting these four boundary conditions, however, does not mean priming effects will occur uniformly. If anything, the strength with which media primes influence individuals’ standards of judgment depends on certain microlevel characteristics. Next to their perceptions of prime relevance, citizens’ political involvement, cognitive style, and generalized attitudes can strongly influence the occurrence of political priming effects. In general, political involvement tends to diminish citizens’ susceptibility to political priming effects. Strong knowledge and intense discussion of politics appears to put them in a position where they deliberately resist received primes and stick with their default evaluative standards. Priming effects are generally smaller among those with greater general interest in politics. However, effects can become more complex, given how political involvement interacts with other characteristics: When coupled with high levels of trust in the media sources that provide the priming information, political knowledge leads to stronger priming effects, because people will be willing to trust the source of the prime and will be able to integrate the primed concept with their existing beliefs and attitudes (Miller & Krosnick, 2000). In addition, how political knowledge influences priming effects depends on the political context of the priming situation (e.g., the “easiness” of an issue and how politicized it is). Citizens’ cognitive styles also have consequences for the priming process. If individuals enjoy effortful cognitive activity (such as learning new ways to think) and prefer complex problems to simple ones (in other words, if they have a high need for cognition), they will harbor more expansive and dense cognitive networks. These networks will facilitate the activation of more nodes by a given prime—nodes that will be drawn upon during preference formation. Similarly, citizens who long for certainty A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G 7 and structure (i.e., who have a high need for cognitive closure) will likely be quicker in seizing upon considerations activated by a media prime when coming to political judgment. Political priming effects also depend on people’s generalized political attitudes. Priming effects appear to be strongest if a prime resonates with the general political preferences of its recipient. For instance, an environment prime will generally have a stronger effect on liberals than on conservatives. Like agenda-setting research, then, priming theory assumes that the magnitude of media influence will depend on what audience members bring to the reception situation: their personality traits (e.g., whether they tend to reflect), their existing cognitive networks (i.e., their knowledge, the concepts they have stored, and how these are related in their memory), and their social networks (e.g., the frequency with which they converse with others about the topics discussed in the media). Factors external to an audience member also modify the magnitude of the priming effect (e.g., whether the situation suggests a need to evaluate certain attitude objects, as is the case during an election campaign). Framing Regardless of the topic of an article, the news does not write itself. Journalists must choose the elements of a situation that best convey the gist of an event or problem. They gather information they can use in a story, and they decide how to present the story in an appealing and comprehensible fashion. Among the most important choices that a journalist makes is selecting the frame for an issue or event. A frame is a concept that summarizes the basic characteristics of a topic. Media researcher Robert Entman describes framing this way: To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. (Entman, 1993, p. 52) To a much greater extent than is the case with agenda-setting, framing is about the content of the news. A frame can be a phrase, image, analogy, or metaphor that a journalist uses to communicate the essence of an issue or event. Frames simplify the story-writing process for journalists and help audiences make sense of what they encounter in the news. Political communication researchers have identified two primary stages in the framing process (Scheufele, 1999). These stages directly parallel those developed to describe agenda-setting. Frame-building refers to the development of frames and their inclusion in news stories. Frame-setting describes audience consumption of news with frames and audience members’ consequent adoption of frames as ways to understand issues and problems. Separating the stages highlights domains of theory and research that focus on the sociology and political economy of news production on the one hand, and on the psychology of message-processing on the other. The stages are linked, of course, because the ultimate goal of journalists and other actors is the audience’s acceptance of frames 8 A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G as descriptors of the events and issues of public life. The two stages were identified for an earlier era in the news business, though. Frame-building Frame-building occurs when journalists construct news stories out of the bits and pieces of everyday life. In that process of construction, journalists do not randomly select information from what is available, of course. Rather, the mix of ideas and facts from which they choose resides within a particular culture and contains ideas and frames suggested by various sources, including people and groups interested in the issue at hand. What is more, journalists operate within the constraints and practices of their profession and of particular organizations (i.e., within the hierarchy of influences identified by Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). Three forces are particularly powerful in shaping the production of frames: culture and social norms, organizational pressures and constraints, and frame advocates. The most fundamental source of frames is the culture and the set of social norms within which both journalists and audience members reside (Scheufele, 1999). A society’s culture provides the basic terms and ways of interpreting the world, so the issues’ frames are defined, in part, by the underlying culture. This means that journalists are unlikely to encounter and use a frame that references concepts unknown within those journalists’ culture. In addition, frames are constrained by the norms of a society. When a journalist decides between competing frames for an issue, she or he must consider what is normal and acceptable for the audience. Journalists create products for public consumption, and they typically consider audience expectations. As members of often large organizations, journalists are subject to organizational pressures and constraints (Scheufele, 1999). News companies have routines that influence how the news is produced. Shoemaker and Reese (2014, p. 164) refer to routines as the “rules—mostly unwritten—that give the media worker guidance.” These routines can influence when and how frames are applied to issues; they can even prescribe the use of specific frames for different situations. For example, public debate over political issues often features opposing groups such as political parties. Journalists often emphasize the conflict between those advocates, essentially suggesting that conflict is central to the issue. Most of the issues of import in public affairs come with people who have an interest in public perceptions and opinion. These people often have a direct stake in the frames that journalists use to present and explain events and issues in the news. Frame advocates (e.g., interest groups, corporations, government actors) can go to great lengths to develop and present frames for journalists. Thus, in important ways, frames serve the people and the groups that have an interest in an issue. The most effective advocates, of course, are those who produce frames that are consistent with a society’s culture and norms and conform to the routines of everyday journalism. The presence of contesting advocates suggests that their frames might compete for public attention and acceptance. This is certainly the case, as researchers have found that frames for presenting a chronic problem can change over time (e.g., Gamson & Modigliani, 1987) and that the frames that make it into the news can compete A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G 9 with each other for widespread use (Chong & Druckman, 2007). One subtle type of advocate is the journalist her-/himself. Thus frame-building can be influenced by the set of beliefs and perceptions that journalists bring with them. Journalists might have preconceptions about the causes and consequences of problems, and those beliefs can influence how they frame the news. Researchers have identified two basic varieties of frames in the news. The first are relatively generic and can be applied to a wide range of issues. For example, Iyengar (1991) suggested that most political issues can carry an episodic frame or a thematic one. With the former, stories focus on people who experience problems related to the issue. These stories tend to particularize events and people without exploring a larger context. Stories featuring the thematic frame explore the systemic nature of issues. They highlight the social and political contexts within which events and issues reside. Stories that focus on conflict between groups are similarly generic. Frames of the second variety are those that are specific for understanding a particular situation. For these frames, journalists are choosing among ways of describing issues and problems. For example, Antilla (2005) identified four ways climate change science has been framed in US newspapers: “valid science; ambiguous cause or effects (indicating a degree of disregard for the gravity of climate change); uncertain science; and controversial science.” Frame-setting Frames in the news matter because they can influence how news audiences think about public affairs. The frame-setting process describes the effect of frames on receivers’ beliefs and feelings about issues, problems, and policies. There is even the suggestion that frames can influence political behavior. The basic idea with frame-setting is that people have perceptions about public issues and problems. These perceptions comprise beliefs about the causes and consequences of problems and about who is responsible for correcting them. As Entman (1993) and others have suggested, frames provide exactly that information. Thus frames have the potential to exert substantial influence on public opinion. If agenda-setting describes how the public accessibility of a problem is affected by how much the media cover that problem, frame-setting describes how public perceptions of what is applicable to explaining a problem are influenced by how the media frame that problem (Price & Tewksbury, 1997). Applicability refers to the mental associations people make between concepts. If people perceive that a public problem (e.g., poverty) is associated with a particular concept (e.g., high unemployment), they believe that the latter is applicable to the former. A news article can establish this link by explicitly stating the connection or by implying it in its portrayals of the poverty-stricken. Frame-setting usually happens unawares—that is, without the awareness of the audience member who experiences it; but it can also occur through more systematic consideration of a message. In other words, accepting how an issue is described in the news is not wholly irrational. In fact one would expect that the more attention people pay to the news and the longer they spend thinking about a frame, the more influence the frame would exert. 10 A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G Agenda- and frame-setting are not the only processes that occur as people consume the news. People also acquire new information from news stories and can be persuaded by arguments and claims presented there. The presence of multiple effects of news consumption has made it hard for researchers to isolate the different processes involved. In general, though, it is best to think of frame-setting as distinct from mere persuasion and learning. The latter are characterized by the acquisition and acceptance of new information, whereas frame-setting is encountered most clearly when the frame refers to something that audience members already value or believe and feel. The frame increases the applicability of already familiar concepts, heightening the likelihood that they will be used to interpret the issue in subsequent situations. Thus the frame is a vehicle for highlighting linkages between concepts rather than for introducing new concepts. This suggests another attribute of frame-setting, one that resonates with some agenda-setting research: It is most likely to occur for relatively novel issues or for issues that audiences consider to be relatively unimportant. The more individuals have thought about an issue (when that issue is familiar or perceived as important), the less likely they are to rely on a construct rendered applicable by a single news frame. Thus frame-setting for common problems can occur, but it probably requires long-term exposure to the frame. Frame-setting effects can take a number of forms. The most basic one is increasing the applicability of a concept to interpreting an issue. This belief-based effect can influence the judgments or attitudes people have about the issue and alternative public policies. Frame-setting can also affect how people evaluate political leaders and can influence news audience members’ level of political participation vis-à-vis framed issues. Framesetting is often observed in studies that look at the short-term effects of exposure to news frames; but researchers have suggested that frame-setting can have lasting effects. Research continues on the conditions under which people will retain the applicability of perceptions that come from frame-setting. Looking ahead Nearly a century ago, in his oft-cited Public Opinion, Lippmann (1922) presented an allegory set in the previous decade. Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived on a remote island that received mail once every two months. When the mail arrived in mid-September 1914, they learned about the Great War, in which their respective countries were engaged. “For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies” (Lippmann, 1922, p. 3). If, as Lippmann contended, the real environment is too large and complex for direct experience and understanding, citizens are forced to rely on whatever they can to create for themselves trustworthy pictures of the world beyond their reach. Naturally, the news media have played and continue to play a critical role in the construction of these pictures. However, the nature of these influences has evolved. The traditional formulations of agenda-setting, priming, and framing were built on certain assumptions about how the news media operate and how audiences receive the news. These assumptions were based on the media systems common before the rise of interactive media. Contemporary news A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G 11 systems provide people with substantial opportunity to offer news, information, and feedback to journalists and to one another; to serve as distributors of news, sending it to other people and to organizations; and to shape the contours of the information and news they receive from one another and from journalists. Each of these affordances of the new media environment has the power to shape how agenda-setting, priming, and framing operate today and will operate in the future. The contemporary news environment allows the public, or “the people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen, 2006), to exert substantial influence on agendabuilding and news-framing processes. Through blogging and social media activity, citizens, knowingly or unwittingly, help determine what is newsworthy and how the news gets produced. Consequently, alternative issues and problems—and their frames—have a stronger chance of wending their way into the news, ultimately reducing the influence of government actors and other traditional agenda builders. Also, technologies today allow news audiences to initiate substantial sharing of news, thereby contributing to the frame distribution. When they select and share the news, individuals can choose the frames they prefer and encourage their adoption by other people. For example, the New York Times regularly issues its Top 5 (articles that an interested party might have missed), and the Reddit Web site encourages people to recommend the news stories they prefer. When doing so, people distribute certain stories and frames at the expense of others. Frame distribution introduces a new layer between journalist-focused frame-building and audience-focused frame-setting. Finally, as news audiences migrate online, they exert increasingly greater control over the nature of the news they choose to receive. This newfound ability of individuals to select news, perhaps on the basis of their comfort with the issue or its frame, forces a revision of what agenda- and frame-setting mean. Existing models of effects assume widespread exposure; but, if the contemporary media are allowing people to be increasingly selective about what they receive, the discipline might need to rethink how much influence the news media exert on popular perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. SEE ALSO: Audiences; Cultivation Theory; Democracy; Information-Processing and Cognition; Intermediality; Metacommunication; Political Science; Public Opinion Research; Social Construction of Reality; Social Media References and further readings Althaus, S. L., & Tewksbury, D. (2002). Agenda setting and the “new” news: Patterns of issue importance among readers of the paper and online versions of the New York Times. Communication Research, 29(2), 180–207. doi: 10.1177/0093650202029002004. Antilla, L. (2005). Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change. Global Environmental Change, 15, 338–352. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.08.003 Atwater, T., Fico, F., & Pizante, G. (1987). Reporting on the state legislature: A case of inter-media agenda setting. Newspaper Research Journal, 8(2), 52–61. Atwater, T., Salwen, M. B., & Anderson, R. B. (1985). Media agenda-setting with environmental issues. Journalism Quarterly, 62(2), 393–397. doi: 10.1177/107769908506200227 Brosius, H.-B. (1994). Agenda-Setting nach einem Vierteljahrhundert Forschung: Methodischer und theoretischer Stillstand? [Agenda-setting after a quarter-century of research: Methodological and theoretical standstill?] Publizistik, 39(3), 269–288. 12 A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2007). A theory of framing and opinion formation in competitive elite environments. Journal of Communication, 57, 99–118. Cohen, B. C. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. doi: 10.1111/j.1460–2466.1993.tb01304.x Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. (1987). The changing culture of affirmative action. Research in Political Sociology, 3, 137–177. Iyengar, S. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lang, K., & Lang, G. E. (1966). The mass media and voting. In B. Berelson & M. Janowitz (Eds.), Reader in public opinion and communication (2nd ed., pp. 455–472). New York, NY: Free Press. Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York, NY: Macmillan. Matthes, J. (2006). The need for orientation towards news media: Revising and validating a classic concept. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18(4), 422–444. doi: 10.1093/ijpor/edh118 McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. doi: 10.1086/267990. Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (2000). News media impact on the ingredients of presidential evaluations: Politically knowledgeable citizens are guided by a trusted source. American Journal of Political Science, 44(2), 301–315. doi: 10.2307/2669312 Palmgreen, P., & Clarke, P. (1977) Agenda-setting with local and national issues. 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Online and print newspapers: Their impact on the extent of the perceived public agenda. European Journal of Communication, 20(2), 245–258. doi: 10.1177/0267323105052300 Shoemaker, P., & Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media sociology perspective (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Tsfati, Y. (2003). Does audience skepticism of the media matter in agenda setting? Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47, 157–176. Weaver, D. H. (1977). Political issues and voter need for orientation. In D. L. Shaw & M. E. McCombs (Eds.), The emergence of American political issues (pp. 107–119). St. Paul, MN: West. Patricia Moy (PhD, Wisconsin) is the Christy Cressey Professor of Communication, associate vice provost for academic and student affairs, and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on communication and citizenship and examines the process by which communication A G E N D A- SE T T I N G, PR I M I N G, AND FR A M I N G 13 shapes public opinion and democratic orientations. Moy is president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, editor of Public Opinion Quarterly, and editor-in-chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Communication. She is a former chair of the International Communication Association’s Political Communication Division and a fellow and former president of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. David Tewksbury (PhD, Michigan) is professor and head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research examines the role of the news media in democratic systems and has been published in Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Political Communication, and Communication Methods & Measures, among other venues. He coedited a special issue of Journal of Communication (2007) and currently serves on five editorial boards. Tewksbury is a former president of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and former chair of the International Communication Association’s Mass Communication Division. Eike Mark Rinke (PhD, Mannheim) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim’s Center for European Social Research. His scholarship on political communication, media effects, and international communication has been published in Journal of Communication, Political Communication, and International Journal of Communication. Rinke received the 2015 Gene Burd Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association (ICA) and a 2015 Distinguished Junior Scholars Award from the Political Psychology Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He edits the Political Communication Report, the newsletter of the Political Communication Divisions of the ICA and APSA.