American Association for Public Opinion Research The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media Author(s): Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw Source: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Summer, 1972), pp. 176-187 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2747787 . Accessed: 08/02/2011 09:41 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aapor. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. American Association for Public Opinion Research and Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Public Opinion Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org

THE AGENDA-SETTING FUNCTION OF MASS MEDIA* BY MAXWELL E. McCOMBS AND DONALD L. SHAW In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In re- flecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues-that is, the media may set the "agenda" of the campaign. The authors are associate professors of journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. IN OUR DAY, more than ever before, candidates go before the peo- ple through the mass media rather than in person.' The informa- tion in the mass media becomes the only contact many have with politics. The pledges, promises, and rhetoric encapsulated in news stories, columns, and editorials constitute much of the information upon which a voting decision has to be made. Most of what people know comes to them "second" or "third" hand from the mass media or from other people.2 Although the evidence that mass media deeply change attitudes in a campaign is far from conclusive,3 the evidence is much stronger that voters learn from the immense quantity of information available dur- ing each campaign.4 People, of course, vary greatly in their attention to mass media political information. Some, normally the better edu- cated and most politically interested (and those least likely to change * This study was partially supported by a grant from the National Association of Broadcasters. Additional support was provided by the UNC Institute for Research in Social Science and the School of Journalism Foundation of North Carolina. 1 See Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1954, p. 234. Of course to some degree candi- dates have always depended upon the mass media, but radio and television brought a new intimacy into politics. 2 Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang, "The Mass Media and Voting," in Bernard Berelson and Morris Janowitz, eds., Reader in Public Opinion and Communication, 2d ed., New York, Free Press, 1966, p. 466. 8 See Berelson et al., op. cit., p. 223 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice, New York, Columbia University Press, 1948, p. xx and Joseph Trenaman and Denis McQuail, Television and the Political Image, London, Methuen and Co., 1961, pp. 147, 191. 4 See Bernard C. Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy, Princeton, Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1963, p. 20o.