Political agenda setting

2007 ◽  
pp. 125-150
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-226
Author(s):  
Soner Tauscher

Avrupa ülkelerinin alışık olduğu düzenli işçi göçü ve kontrollü sığınmacı alımı Suriye iç savaşının üst düzeye ulaştığı 2013/2014 yılından itibaren önemli bir değişim göstermektedir. Avrupa Birliği, kuruluşundan bu yana en yoğun mülteci göçüyle karşılaşmaktadır. Yaşanan bu kontrolsüz ve zorunlu göçe Avrupa toplumları ve devletleri hazırlıksız yakalanmıştır. Mülteci krizini ekonomik olarak fırsata çevirmek isteyen Almanya ise göçmenler için 2015 yazından itibaren açık kapı politikası uygulamaya başlamıştır. Ancak uygulanan açık kapı politikası Alman toplumunun azımsanmayacak bir kesiminde mültecilere ve Müslümanlara yönelik ağır ve şiddetli bir karşı kampanya ortaya çıkardı. Mülteciler ve Müslümanlar aşırı sağ toplumsal hareketlerin gösterilerinde “tecavüzcü”, “işgalci”, “kriminal dolandırıcılar” vb. sıfatlar ile birlikte anılmakta, medya da bu söylemlerin taşıyıcılığını yaparak kamusallaşmasını sağlamaktadır. Böylece aşırı sağı desteklemeyen, apolitik, ya da sığınmacılara karşı hoşgörülü davranan toplum kesimlerinde kamuoyu oluşturularak sığınmacı ve göçmenlere karşı olumsuz algı gündemde tutulmakta, politik olanın merkezine yerleştirilmektedir. Bu çalışmada öncelikle göçmenlere karşı aşırı sağ toplumsal hareketlerin oluşturduğu olumsuz söylemin McCombs ve Shaw’un Gündem Belirleme Kuramı (Agenda Setting Function) bağlamında medya tarafından siyasetin merkezine nasıl oturtulduğu tartışılacaktır. Ayrıca gündemde tutulan mültecilere yönelik olumsuz söylemin gerçeği yansıtıp yansıtmadığı, göçmenlerin ve sığınmacıların biyolojik Almanlardan daha çok suça meyilli olup olmadığı oluşturulan soyut söylemlerden ziyade Almanya İçişleri Bakanlığı’nın yıllık olarak yayınladığı Emniyet Suç İstatistikleri temel alınarak incelenecektir.ABSTRACT IN ENGLISHFar right movements in Germany and evaluation of media discourse of criminal immigrant in the light of official documentsFlows of regular worker migration and regular asylum seekers, of whom European countries are familiar, have significantly changed since 2013/2014 when the civil war of Syria reached its peak. The European Union face probably the most intensive refugee migration since its establishment. European societies and states have not been prepared for this uncontrolled and compulsory immigration. Germany seem to want to turn the refugee crisis into an economic opportunity as evident in their open door policy since the summer of 2015. However, implementation of open-door policy has led a substantial part of German society to a strong campaign against the refugees and Muslims. Refugees and Muslims are referred to as “rapists”, “invaders”, “criminal fraudsters”, and so on in demonstrations of far right movements and media has helped disseminating these discourses. Hence, this manipulated and hateful discourse tries to gain support from the segment of society wh normally does not support far right and often apolitical, or tolerant towards asylum seekers. In this study, the ways in which the negative discourse of far right social movements against immigrants is brought to the centre of the political agenda by media is analysed using the agenda setting framework by McCombs and Shaw. Then, the claims that immigrants are involved in crime, or they are prone to be criminals are analysed and contrasted with the data obtained from the annual Crime and Safety Reports of the German Ministry of the Interior.


1985 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Armstrong ◽  
Barbara J. Nelson

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Sevenans

While political agenda-setting scholars agree that the news media matter when it comes to agenda setting, surprisingly, there is no consensus on the exact role these media play in the agenda-setting process. In particular, causal interpretations of the media’s role are diverse. This contribution focuses on this ambiguity in the agenda-setting field. First, it outlines the main reasons for the disagreement, both on a theoretical and on an empirical level. Second, it develops a theoretical model that helps to specify what role the news media play under various circumstances. Overall, the paper strongly encourages scholars to reflect more on causal mechanisms in political agenda-setting work, and makes a first attempt at facilitating the interpretation of extant and future findings.


Author(s):  
Marcus Maurer

Political agenda setting is the part of agenda-setting research that refers to the influence of the media agenda on the agenda of political actors. More precisely, the central question of political agenda-setting research is whether political actors adopt the issue agenda of the news media in various aspects ranging from communicating about issues that are prominently discussed in the news media to prioritizing issues from the news media agenda in political decision making. Although such effects have been studied under different labels (agenda building, policy agenda setting) for several decades, research in this field has recently increased significantly based on a new theoretical model introducing the term political agenda setting. Studies based on that model usually find effects of media coverage on the attention political actors pay to various issues, but at the same time point to a number of contingent conditions. First, as found in research on public agenda setting, there is an influence of characteristics of news media (e.g., television news vs. print media) and issues (e.g., obtrusive vs. unobtrusive issues). Second, there is an influence of characteristics of the political context (e.g., government vs. oppositional parties) and characteristics of individual politicians (e.g., generalists vs. specialists). Third, the findings of studies on the political agenda-setting effect differ, depending on which aspects of the political agenda are under examination (e.g., social media messages vs. political decision making).


2019 ◽  
pp. 271-281
Author(s):  
Rens Vliegenthart ◽  
Stefaan Walgrave

This chapter discusses what role the media agenda has played in (comparative) agenda research. Studies into the characteristics of the media agenda demonstrate that, compared to other agendas, the media agenda is characterized by high levels of responsiveness and volatility and that various outlets that jointly constitute the agenda strongly influence each other. In recent years, a vast amount of research has considered the impact of the media agenda on the parliamentary agenda (political agenda-setting) and how the size of this impact depends on a wide variety of contingent factors. Our empirical example uncovers considerable overlap in media agendas across various Western European countries, reflecting the importance of the international context in the construction of news.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Lewandowsky ◽  
Michael Jetter ◽  
Ullrich K. H. Ecker

Abstract Social media has arguably shifted political agenda-setting power away from mainstream media onto politicians. Current U.S. President Trump’s reliance on Twitter is unprecedented, but the underlying implications for agenda setting are poorly understood. Using the president as a case study, we present evidence suggesting that President Trump’s use of Twitter diverts crucial media (The New York Times and ABC News) from topics that are potentially harmful to him. We find that increased media coverage of the Mueller investigation is immediately followed by Trump tweeting increasingly about unrelated issues. This increased activity, in turn, is followed by a reduction in coverage of the Mueller investigation—a finding that is consistent with the hypothesis that President Trump’s tweets may also successfully divert the media from topics that he considers threatening. The pattern is absent in placebo analyses involving Brexit coverage and several other topics that do not present a political risk to the president. Our results are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables and examination of several alternative explanations, although the generality of the successful diversion must be established by further investigation.


Author(s):  
Yuan Yuan

In order to understand the contradiction of freedom versus control regarding the internet use in an authoritarian rule, this study is designed to explore a gradual political effect by investigating the agenda-setting effect of internet activism on government political agenda in China from 1994 to 2011. In total, 144 internet activism cases and 526 articles from official newspapers are collected for the analysis and discussion. The results suggest a bottom-up agenda-setting effect from online activism on political agenda, and this agenda-setting effect includes a potential transition from issue level to attribute level. This study also finds that the development of online activism itself obtained a stronger attention from official media, and the continuous growth of activism in forms and scopes generated constant pressure that finally gradually brought about the change of government behavior and strategy.


2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin V. Melosi

The emergence of the environmental justice movement in the 1980s has stimulated much debate on the extent to which race and class have been or should become central concerns of modern environmentalism. Leaders in the environmental justice movement have charged that mainstream environmental organizations and, in turn, environmental policy have demonstrated a greater concern for preserving wilderness and animal habitats than addressing health hazards of humans, especially those living in cities; have embraced a “Save the Earth” perspective at the expense of saving people's lives and protecting their homes and backyards. Some advocates of environmental justice have gone so far as to dissociate their movement from American environmentalism altogether, rather identifying with a broader social justice heritage as imbedded in civil rights activities of the 1950s and 1960s.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
José Santana-Pereira

Abstract This article reports a comparative analysis of the media’s political agenda setting capacity in 27 European media systems, aimed at testing the hypothesis that the magnitude of this phenomenon is moderated by factors such as development of the press markets, journalist professionalization, strength of public television or political pluralism. The empirical analysis relies on data collected by the expert survey European Media Systems Survey, the World Association of Newspapers, the European Audiovisual Observatory, and the research project Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union (PIREDEU). Results show that political agenda setting is perceived as more common in press markets in which newspapers work as means of horizontal communication (and are, as subsystem, politically imbalanced), but that journalist professionalization and strength of public broadcasting systems foster political agenda setting effects.


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