Journalism 614: Agenda Setting and Framing

1. Journalism 614:Agenda Setting and Framing

2. Categories of Effects: • 1. Agenda Setting • 2. Priming • 3. Cueing • 4. Framing

3. Agenda Setting is • …the process by which problems and alternative solutions gain or lose public and elite attention. • …a fierce competition because we cannot consider every issue at once because the public’s “carrying capacity” is too small

4. Why is Agenda Setting Important? • E. E. Schattschneider: ‘The definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power” • Control over agenda means control over outcomes • Agenda setting is therefore about getting on the agenda, and about keeping things off of it.

5. The Foundations of a Paradigm • Rejection of persuasion • Focus on cognitive processes • Rediscovery of powerful effects • Response against the limited effects paradigm • Interest in media--politics interface and conditions under which effects occur

6. Agenda Setting • Agenda-setting • “telling us what to think about” (Cohen) • Identified with McCombs & Shaw (1972) • Emphasis on how the media shapes public opinion concerning the relative importance of issues • Indicators of media emphasis • Attention (frequency and length of stories) • Placement (top story, “above the fold”) • Content cues (headlines, photos, tone) • Number of sources / Number of outlets • Others?

7. Four Phases of Research • Hundreds of published studies • First phase - publication of McCombs & Shaw’s original research - coin the term • Second phase - follow-up to confirm the effect and discover contingencies • Third phase - new domains - agenda of candidate character and personal concerns • Fourth phase - attention to the sources of the media agenda - inter-media effects

8. How Issues Reach the Agenda • Group conflict • Leadership activity • Protest movements • Media coverage or activity • Changes in indicators • Political changes • Crises and Focusing Events

9. Special Role of Focusing Events • “a rare, sudden, well-known, actually or potentially harmful event.” • Mass Shooting, Earthquake, Govt Shutdown… • Tend to induce sudden attention to issues • Can trigger intensive group interest/activity • Focusing events can fade fast off agenda

10. Studying Agenda Setting • Time-order is key • Media shape public agenda? • Media follow public agenda? • Both respond to something else • Institutional prompting • Objective reality • Studies show that there is a time-ordered connection between media and public agenda • Cross-lagged correlations - arbitrary time lag • More sophisticated studies improve early methods

11. Major Questions • Who sets the public agenda, and under what conditions is this effect likely to occur? • Who sets the media agenda, and which media direct the agenda-setting process? • Who sets the agendas of interest groups, leaders, and policy makers?

12. Contingent conditions • Need for cognition/orientation • Increases agenda setting through media surveillance • Political involvement/interest • Increases agenda setting through news use • Issue abstraction • More pronounced for abstract issues • Personal viewpoints • Increases when consistent with personal orientation • Interpersonal discussion • Reduces media dependence for agenda development

13. Setting the media agenda • Intermedia agenda setting - influence that agendas of different media have on each other • Political advertising — and political elites — drive the agenda of all news organization • National news agencies have been found to drive the agenda of local news agencies • National newspaper have been found to drive the agenda of television networks and digital outlets

14. Setting the elite agenda • Reciprocal causation between journalists and policy makers - both have influence • Media coverage can help shape the agenda of policy-makers • However, these effects do not appear to ultimately affect policy making itself • Elites pay attention to the public agenda that the media helps to establish

15. Problems with Agenda Setting • Trouble linking evidence to key theories of society, news work, and human psychology • Often focused on aggregate level effects – shift in issue priorities across the population – and rely on incomplete psychological explanations • Failure to fully integrate content and effects in coherent studies of media effects • Limited experimental evidence

16. Questions about Digital Media • May lessen the agenda-setting effects • More content choice • More control over content • More outlets and opinions • Blogs, in particular, rely on media agenda • This may strengthen agenda setting effects

17. Priming (Iyengar & Kinder) • Drawing attention to an issue can change the criteria used to evaluate political leaders • Issues high on the public agenda serve as basis for judging the success or failure of elites • Short-term effect or long-term effect? • Priming in politics may have profound effects • E.g., Media attention to Persian Gulf war primes positive evaluation of Bush Presidency which reversed when focus was shifted back to the economy (Krosnick)

18. Priming Issues • Increasing attention to effects of priming on other issues through the “spread of activation” • Encountering moral-ethical issues changes how people understand other issues they encounter • Come to understand other issues in ethical terms • Can also prime particular candidate characteristics • Focus on issues can prime judgments of competency or integrity, depending on the issue

19. Second Level Agenda-Setting • Revised version of the theory • Media tell us how and what to think • Attention to particular attributes • Sounds like framing • “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communication text” - Entman

20. Framing • Two broad traditions • Sociological - Outcome of news work • The process of news production • Psychological - Categories of the mind • The process of audience consumption

21. Framing and Cueing • The power of language to shape thought • Frames - broad organizing principles • Idea used to structure a news story • Journalistic decision • Cues - labels and categories • Word or phrase with rhetorical value • Contested by elites

22. Framing and Cueing • Episodic vs. Thematic frames • Strategy vs. Policy frames • Ethical vs. Material frames • Individual vs. Societal frames • Pro-life vs. anti-abortion • Estate tax vs. death tax • Terrorists vs. insurgents

23. Episodic vs. Thematic • Iyengar, 1991 • Media tend to present social problems in episodic terms (individual, short-term) instead of thematic terms (collective, long-term) • This patterns encourages audiences to attribute responsibility for solving the problem to the individual instead of the collective

24. Strategy vs. Policy • News coverage tends to focus on the game of politics, and the competition between players, instead of the features of policy • Particularly true during elections • Leads to audience cynicism and may contribute to the erosion of efficacy

25. Ethical vs. Material • News media tend to construct issues in terms of opposing rights / moral principles, as opposed to economics or pragmatics • Encourages simplified electoral decision making and character attributions

26. Individual vs. Societal • News media tend to frame issues at the individual level, as opposed to the societal level, due to dominant news values • This frame distinction interacts with other coverage elements to influence the complexity of thought, tolerance judgments

27. News Norms and Frame Effects • These dominant news norm of focusing on specific episodes over broader themes, political strategy over policy, matters of principle over pragmatics, and individuals over groups all reduce citizen competence • What does this say about the work of journalists? How might they change?

28. Frames and Cognitive Processing • Message frames interact with: • Audience predispositions and knowledge • Framing effects are not uniform • Different for different people • Cognitive structures (schemas): • Constellations of knowledge used to organize processing of new info (e.g., news stories) • Organized into associated networks of information • Developed through past experiences, information exposure, and social interactions

29. Associative Networks • Networks of interrelated constructs • Frames/cues activate mental constructs • Construct activation from interconnected network • Spread of activation through associated nodes • Complexity of activated thoughts • Concerned with form, as opposed to content, of memory • Complexity as an indicator of political sophistication?

30. Model of Framing Effects

31. Source and Language Cues • Source cues - who is making the comment? • Conservative or Liberal • Black or White • Different leaders • Language cues - what labels are used? • Urban sprawl vs. Suburban development • Pro-Choice vs. Abortion Advocates • Insurgent vs. Terrorists • Alt-Right vs. White Supremacist

32. Powerful Cues Recast Debates • Get in Groups of three to four: • Pick a set of cues that has defined the debate about a specific policy or product • Pick a policy debate or product category and discuss how the cues have defined this choice • Ex. Partial Birth Abortion vs. Late Term Abortion

33. Frames and Cues Interact • Organizing devices and source or language cues work together to influence judgment • Tolerance judgments affected by individual frame combined with “othering” cues • How might they work together to influence tolerance and the desire to speak out? • Get Back in Groups: Come up with an example of how a news frame and elite cue might work together to sway opinion in particular ways. • Can stick to the cue you had in mind or pick new one