Agenda Cueing Effects of News and Social Media

Abstract

Agenda cues, in which individuals perceive that media has frequently covered a problem regardless of actual exposure to that coverage, have initially been shown to produce powerful agenda setting effects (Pingree and Stoycheff, 2013). This study uses two experiments to test the presence and prominence cueing effects across a variety of issues and whether the cue originates from traditional news or Twitter users. Agenda cues produced significant effects on five of six issues studied for news and four of six for Twitter. For one issue (gun control/rights), both types of agenda cues produced effect sizes rivaling those of the strongest effects found in Iyengar and Kinder’s (News That Matters: Television and American Opinion, University of Chicago Press, 1987) classic agenda setting experiments. On average, news agenda cues were stronger than Twitter agenda cues, and were about 78% as strong as classic news agenda setting effects, suggesting that cueing may be the dominant mechanism driving agenda setting effects. The role of gatekeeping trust as a moderator of agenda cueing was only inconsistently replicated.s

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