THE STRUGGLE FOR THE AGENDA

Abstract

Recent studies of American elections have shown that, to a significant extent, the mass media set the agenda for the election campaigns. The priorities of the news media become the priorities of the voters. But the priorities of the voters may be based on sources other than the news media. The aim of this report is to study the role of the mass media in the agenda setting process by examining one of the factors that may be important to both the priorities of the news media and those of the voters—the political parties. The correspondence between the agendas of the parties, the news media, and the voters is calculated with the aid of a new measure—the matching index. The result indicates that the news media are more powerful as agenda setters for the voters than are the parties. It appears that the large differences that exist at the party level are evened out on their way down to the level of the voters through the mediation of the mass media.

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