ABSTRACT
Introduction Public issues exhibit a wide variety of characteristics within the various domains in which they are active-domains such as public opinion, policy attention and action, public discourse and news media, and others. The salience of an issue within a given domain is an important issue characteristic. And since these domains cannot operate in unique vacuums but rather interact and affect one another in complex ways, the manner in which the saliencies of public issues are shaped by interactions between and among these domains becomes an important concern. This is the focus of agenda-setting research, a good share of which has been directed toward understanding the forces that shape environmental issues. We assume that readers have a good general familiarity with agenda setting overall. Thus we will turn directly to an examination of the studies that have applied agenda setting in the context of environmental issues. This material is organized to highlight the various environmental issues that have been examined, the disciplinary and international perspectives that have been involved, the approaches used, and the findings across the range of this body of work. Our hope is to provide an organized treatment of this work that may provide a roadmap to experienced researchers and a point of entry for those interested in joining this inquiry.
