The Fifty-Year Legacy of Agenda-Setting: Storied Past, Complex Conundrums, Future Possibilities

Abstract

A half-century has elapsed since the publication of McCombs and Shaw’s seminal study. This paper provides a distinctive historical review of agenda-setting, interviewing leading scholars, combing the vast literature, and reviewing critical phases in the agenda-setting story to showcase the human, as well as conceptual, dimensions of the agenda-setting trajectory. Dividing the paper into six parts, I describe how agenda-setting was built, broadened, extended, challenged, and adapted to the present milieu, concluding with critical directions for how to meld the concept to the turbulent political communication scene.