Agenda-setting is the process by which some issues come to occupy public and official attention while others do not. In media research the term comes from Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw’s 1972 study, which argued that news coverage shapes which issues the public considers important. In politics more broadly, controlling the agenda (which questions are asked, in what order, and which are left out) shapes what can be decided.
Definition
Agenda-setting has two related meanings.
- Media agenda-setting is the transfer of importance from the news to the public. McCombs and Shaw wrote that readers “learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue” from the amount of information in a news story and its position, and that “in reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues”.1
- Political agenda control is the power to decide which questions reach a decision and in what form. Social choice theory treats it formally: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that some aggregation rules are “potentially vulnerable to strategic voting and/or strategic agenda setting”.2
Both meanings concern the same thing: a decision is shaped before anyone votes, by what is on the list.
Origin and history
McCombs and Shaw’s article, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1972.1 Researchers later tracked public salience over time with the “most important problem” question; Christopher Wlezien notes that scholars “turned to aggregate MIP responses to characterize the broader public salience of issues over time,” citing McCombs and Shaw among the early examples.3
The formal side is older. Condorcet’s paradox shows that “majority preferences can be ‘irrational’ (specifically, intransitive) even when individual preferences are ‘rational’”,2 and once majorities can cycle, the order in which alternatives are compared can determine the winner. Whoever sets the order holds power over the result.
How agenda-setting is measured and used
Media agenda-setting is measured by comparing the prominence of issues in news coverage with the share of the public naming them as important, often across time to see which moves first. Political agenda control is studied by examining who drafts questions, who schedules votes, and which proposals never reach a vote.
Survey design is a small-scale version of the same problem. Pew Research Center reports that when the economy was offered as an explicit answer in 2008, 58% chose it, while only 35% volunteered it in an open question.4 In January 2002, when asked whether President Bush should focus on domestic or foreign policy, 52% chose domestic policy; when “foreign policy” was narrowed to “the war on terrorism,” 52% chose that option and 33% chose domestic policy.4 The person who writes the list sets part of the agenda.
Common confusions and neighboring terms
- Agenda-setting vs. salience. Salience is the prominence an issue has; agenda-setting is the process that produces it.
- Agenda-setting vs. persuasion. Agenda-setting is about what people think about, not what position they take. A story can raise an issue’s importance without changing anyone’s opinion on it.
- Agenda-setting vs. framing. Framing is about how an issue is presented (which aspects are emphasized). The two often travel together.
- Agenda-setting vs. priority. A priority is a person’s judgment; agenda-setting is one of the forces that shapes it.
How My Vote Forward uses the term
My Vote Forward treats agenda-setting as a risk to its own design. A priorities list is an agenda: subjects left off cannot be ranked. The framework therefore requires that the list of subjects, its order, and who chose it be disclosed, and it separates priorities from opinions so that the list of subjects does not dictate policy positions. See Question design and Priorities. Who writes the questions is also a governance question; see Governance.
What My Vote Forward can and cannot do here
My Vote Forward can disclose its lists and wording, rotate or randomize order where appropriate, and allow participants to suggest missing subjects. It cannot remove agenda effects entirely, because any list is a choice. It cannot control which issues the news makes prominent, and its results may reflect that coverage.
Unresolved questions
- Who should decide the subject list for a jurisdiction, and how can that choice be challenged?
- Should priority results be shown next to measures of news coverage so readers can see possible media effects?
- How often should the list change, given that changing it breaks comparisons over time?
Sources
- Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36(2), 1972, pp. 176 to 187. academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/36/2/176/1853331
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Social Choice Theory,” first published December 18, 2013, substantive revision October 14, 2022. plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-choice
- Christopher Wlezien, “On the Salience of Political Issues,” Nuffield College Politics Working Paper 2003-W10, University of Oxford. nuff.ox.ac.uk/…
- Pew Research Center, “Writing Survey Questions.” pewresearch.org/writing-survey-questions
