Second-level agenda setting

In 1922, Lippman argued that there is an essential difference between ‘the world outside and the pictures in our heads.’  In Public Opinion, he recalled an island that was inhabited by an English, French and German populace.  Not knowing that the English and French were at war with the Germans, the island continued peacefully — until the unfortunate news arrived six weeks later.  Thus, Lippman began his argument for the pseudo-environments we all live in.  One that is fundamental for classifying, decoding and organizing information, but may not be a true reflection of our surroundings.
Lippman himself first purported that media play an integral role in negotiating the ‘reality’ of our outside world with our internal perspectives, opinions and thoughts.  Indeed, it was this axiom that led McCombs and Shaw to examine Chapel Hill voters in what has become the theoretical basis for over three hundred agenda setting studies (McCombs, Lopez-Escobar & Llamas, 2000).  The entire breadth of research which followed their seminal piece The Agenda – Setting Function of Mass Media, essentially derived from an initial hypothesis which suggested that mass media effectively sets the agenda for political campaigns, thereby influencing the salience of attitudes toward political issues (McCombs & Shaw, 1972).
Since 1972, countless researchers have relentlessly attempted to dissect public opinion from media representation in areas outside of politics as well.  This effort has resulted in a multitude of approaches and applications, which have been replicated numerous times over.  Ghanem has correctly suggested that agenda setting is now poised to become an indisputable theory in the field of mass communications (1997).  She references basic theoretical standards to bolster her argument: scope, parsimony, precision of prediction, and accuracy of explanation (Hage, 1972).  Clearly, agenda setting has already satisfied all four requirements and continues to strengthen its position with the continual coupling of core agenda setting principles with other mass communication theories.  One of the more recent contributions to agenda setting has been the introduction of second level agenda setting, which has a fundamental partnership with framing research.  However, before turning to this promising area of work, a brief review of the transformations that have taken place throughout agenda setting history should offer an unique perspective as to the profound impact second level agenda setting could have on the field of mass communications.

The concept of Need for Orientation introduced in the early years of agenda-setting research provided a psychological explanation for why agenda-setting effects occur in terms of what individuals bring to the media experience that determines the strength of these effects. Until recently, there had been no significant additions to our knowledge about the psychology of agenda-setting effects. However, the concept of Need for Orientation is only one part of the answer to the question about why agenda setting occurs. Recent research outlines a second way to answer the why question by describing the psychological process through which these effects occur. In this review, we integrate four contemporary studies that explicate dual psychological paths that lead to agenda-setting effects at the first and second levels. We then examine how information preferences and selective exposure can be profitably included in the agenda-setting framework. Complementing these new models of information processing and varying attention to media content and presentation cues, an expanded concept of psychological relevance, motivated reasoning goals (accuracy versus directional goals), and issue publics are discussed.

Mass media have a great power in telling us what to think –issues-, as Bernard Cohen said; but nowadays mass media go further, and in the most of the occasions they achieve to establish frames into the mind of the viewers –frames, attributes or characteristics about of what their published, and this will probably determine the viewers´ perception about broadcasted issues, people, objects, situations, etc.
The visual speech that Televisa de México Group shows –who has the higher rating and importance- and three important Mexican media press –La Jornada, El Universal and Milenio- over social movements, tend to generate a negative perception into their viewers and readers, mainly due to the fact that point graphically out the violent answer to the conflict, and in the background they show the genesis of the social movement.
Key Words: Agenda Setting, framing, social movements, mass media and news.

Resumen
Los medios masivos de comunicación tiene un gran poder en decirnos en qué pensar -los temas-, como señalaba Bernard Cohen; pero en la actualidad los medios van más allá, y en muchas de las ocasiones logran establecer en sus consumidores encuadres –frames, atributos o características de lo publicado, y será a través de éstos lo que posiblemente determine la percepción de los receptores sobre temas, personas, objetos, situaciones, etcétera que son trasmitidos.
El discurso visual que presenta el Grupo Televisa de México –quien ostenta el mayor raiting e importancia- y tres medios impresos mexicanos de relevancia –La Jornada, El Universal y Milenio- sobre movimientos sociales, tiende a generar una percepción negativa en sus consumidores, debido principalmente a que destacan gráficamente la respuesta violenta al conflicto, y en un plano secundario presentan la génesis del movimiento social.
Palabras Clave: Agenda setting, framing, movimientos sociales, medios masivos y noticias.

An important feature of media coverage are the frames that media employ to talk about news items. These frames draw attention to certain attributes and away from others. Thus, the second level of agenda setting is the transfer of attribute salience from media messages to the public. The aim of this study is to investigate the coverage of Spanish digital media during the trial of Francisco Camps, and the response of the users in the comment section. Using computer aided text analysis software and quantitative content analysis methodology, we found the objects, frames and attributes present in news and comments. Thereby, we have evidence to check the transfer of attribute salience from digital media to the users. The results show that the second-level of agenda setting does not occur.

This research examined how news content influences attitudes towards Syrian refugees in Turkey. The study aimed to understand if the way Syrian refugees are attributed in media-that is, media salience about Syrian refugees that comprise their image-would cause an attitude change in the public. More specifically, we intend to determine whether being exposed to positive news coverage about Syrian refugees would cause an attitude change in the public from negative to positive. For the purpose of the study, we have conducted a quasi-experimental research and used a pretest-posttest design to investigate the second-level agenda-setting effects. Two experiments (a pilot and a main experiment) were conducted during the Spring term of 2017 in Turkey. The participants were selected from a large private university in Turkey for the experiments. The t-test results suggest that positive media emphasis on the images of Syrian refugees had a positive impact on public opinion and caused an overall attitude change in the public.

Este trabajo ofrece una propuesta metodológica para el análisis del flujo del discurso partidista de campaña en el espacio público, concebido como una combinación de medios tradicionales y digitales. El modelo contempla, por una parte, el clásico análisis de contenido para explorar las agendas políticas de PP y PSOE, mediática y de la blogosfera, y, por otra, un doble análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de los marcos partidistas sobre el asunto que presidió la campaña electoral 2011: la crisis económica. Ambas metodologías serán aplicadas de forma combinada a la agenda partidista (a partir de las noticias publicadas en las webs de partidos), la agenda mediática (mediante una muestra de prensa escrita tradicional) y la agenda de la blogosfera (por medio de una muestra de blogs), con el fin de observar el nivel de asimilación de la agenda y los marcos partidistas por parte de viejos y nuevos medios.

Much is known about how individual differences such as age and education affect the news media's ability to transfer its agenda of issues to the public, but little is known about them at the affective level of agenda setting. Evidence shows individual differences may work differently with affect, thus this study examined demographics that predict adopting the news media's affective agenda. Using data from the U.S. Presidential campaigns in 2008, 2012 and 2016, it found that, indeed, demographics do not all work the same for affect as issues. Unlike with issue agenda setting, education showed no effect at all, while the young were more likely to adopt the news media's affective agenda than older age groups. As expected, Democrats and Republicans were more likely to adopt the news media's affective agenda of their own candidates, but Independents were not. As with first-level agenda setting, there was no effect of gender.

El presente artículo retoma una de las críticas formuladas por José Luis Dader en la década del noventa a la Teoría de la Agenda Setting y analiza como varias de las limitaciones señaladas a esta teoría no son más que el efecto de problemáticas sociológicas más complejas que aún no han sido señaladas con el suficiente rigor. El análisis se concentra en la manera en que (no)han sido problematizadas cuestiones como la acción, la interrelación entre los diferentes niveles sociales en los que operan los procesos comunicativos, el poder y la práctica de la reflexividad y se sugiere enriquecer la investigación de agenda con algunos de los marcos analíticos que puede aportar la obra de sociólogos como Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Manuel Castells y los debates que estas han generado.

We propose an implicit cognition account of attribute agenda setting (AAS). We draw a distinction between implicit AAS, which conceptualizes media effects on automatically activated object-attribute associations, and explicit AAS, which deals with their overt expression. Previous research has relied almost exclusively on explicit AAS. This is unfortunate, because people must have the motivation and the ability to report inner mental associations. We investigated AAS in the context of the 2014 European Union parliamentary elections using a content analysis and a two-wave panel survey. Exposure to the mediated attribute agenda elicited implicit AAS effects, but no impact on the explicit dimension could be discerned. Only by additionally taking into account implicit cognition were we able to reveal substantial AAS effects.

This paper introduces unpacks media favorability into two dimensions and investigates their relationship with firms 'public esteem. A firm's focal media favorability refers to the overall evaluation of a firm presented in a stream of media stories. A firm's peripheral media favorability refers the overall evaluative tone accumulating from a stream of media stories where a firm is mentioned, yet is independent of how the focal firm is portrayed relative to the content. The study used a content analysis of The New York ...

This study examines the agenda-setting function of televised political advertisements during the 2004 US presidential election. Adding to the growing research on second-level agenda setting, we examined how the advertising agendas of the Bush and Kerry campaigns may have impacted the public evaluations of the two candidates. Our results provide support for the agenda-setting hypothesis as well as mixed support for the second-level hypothesis. Research findings are discussed in terms of the larger context of agenda-setting research ...

This volume examines agenda-setting theory as it applies to the news media's influence on corporate reputation. It presents interdisciplinary, international, and empirical investigations examining the relationship between corporate reputation and the news media throughout the world. Providing coverage of more than 25 countries, contributors write about their local media and business communities, representing developed, emerging, and frontier markets' including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Germany, Greece, Japan, Nigeria, Spain, and ...

This study examines the role of Iberdrola and Scottish Power press releases in shaping the media agenda of Expansión and Financial Times. The transfer of salience between agendas have been analyzed from 195 press releases and 278 news articles retrieved from the online press releases archive and databases for the period of time between 2006 and 2011.
In particular, guided by the literature from (a) the energy industry, (b) corporate communication, and (c) agenda-setting theory and second level or framing approaches, the dissertation tested hypotheses about the relationships among press releases coverage of certain issues, media salience and the strength and tone of each issue´s attributes.
Findings from SPSS analysis showed positive correlations between the issues addressed by the press releases and those that appeared in the news articles, namely 4 Ps and intangibility, CSR, issue arena and license to operate. Furthermore, cognitive and affective attributes of the issues were also analysed, being found that there is a transfer of salience between agendas for the affective attributes but none for the cognitive attributes. Further findings and limitations from the study are also discussed.

For several decades, media scholars have attempted to identify the key variables that shape the complicated international news selection process. At the heart of the research lies the question of
what make a nation or an international event newsworthy? Research findings point to several key determinants of international news coverage including deviance, relevance, cultural affinity and location in the hierarchy of nations. The current study suggests that the newsworthiness of international events may result from an inter-media agenda-setting process. The current analysis points to significant correlations between the international news agenda of the morning New York Times and the international news agendas of three evening television news programs. The current study argues that inter-media agenda setting should be considered in future studies on the international news selection process.