Feeling the Elephant: Some Observations on Agenda-Setting Research

In the mass communication research literature, the term agenda- setting is most often associated with the various lines of work based on McCombs and Shaw’s (1972) agenda-setting hypothesis concerning how the prominence that news media give to an issue affects the public’s perception of the issue’s importance. Rogers and Dearing survey a wider terrain, encompassing not only studies of media effects on individuals’ agendas but also the extent to which public policy responds to media and individuals’ agendas.