Political agenda setting by the mass media: ten years of research, 2005–2015

Abstract

Does the mass media exert an influence on the political agenda? Or, in other words, does news coverage lead to more subsequent political attention for the issues that were covered? This is the basic question guiding this chapter. Since the 1970s it has inspired an increasing group of scholars interested in the influence of the media on politics. During the last ten years (2005–2015), the number of studies on the media and the political agenda has expanded considerably; we can identify more than thirty studies during this time period that deal with the media’s political agenda-setting power. Based on a review of these studies we conclude that there is now ample and recent evidence that the media does affect the political agenda in many countries. There is more research in more countries, the data used are richer, and more contingencies have been investigated in greater detail.

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