International Applications of Agenda-Setting Theory’s Acapulco Typology Maxwell E. McCombs, University of Texas–Austin, Salma Ghanem, Central Michigan University, Federico Rey Lennon, Catholic University, Argentina, R. Warwick Blood, University of Canberra, Australia, Yi-Ning (Katherine) Chen, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, and Hyun Ban, University of Incheon

doi:10.4324/9780203938669-33

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International Applications of Agenda-Setting Theory’s Acapulco Typology Maxwell E. McCombs, University of Texas–Austin, Salma Ghanem, Central Michigan University, Federico Rey Lennon, Catholic University, Argentina, R. Warwick Blood, University of Canberra, Australia, Yi-Ning (Katherine) Chen, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, and Hyun Ban, University of Incheon

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ABSTRACT

The Chapel Hill study is well known as both the theoretical and empirical origin of agenda-setting theory. To a considerable degree, however, this study conducted by McCombs and Shaw (1972) during the 1968 U.S. presidential election also set the methodological agenda for a significant proportion of the hundreds of empirical studies that have followed. Although the Chapel Hill study

design was not the first mass communication research study to use content analysis and survey research in tandem, it was the study that brought this combination of research methods to center stage in investigating cognitive effects.