ABSTRACT
In the nine years since McCombs and Shaw (1972) published the results of their research on mass media agenda-setting, communications researchers have employed a plethora of conceptual and operational definitions in their attempts to “replicate” McCombs and Shaw’s 1972 findings. The majority of those replications have compared the importance assigned to issues and personalities in the media (media agenda) with subsequent public salience of those issues and personalities (public agenda). Agenda-setting research has involved the construction of media and public measures, with extensive content analyses used to determine the former, while survey techniques have assessed the latter.
