What changed public opinion on the same-sex marriage issue? New implications of attribute measures and attribute priming in media agenda setting

This study explores the attribute agenda-setting effects and attribute priming effects of news coverage on the issue of same-sex marriage. The affective attribute salience of news coverage on the same-sex marriage issue is stronger when related to public opinion than the substantive attribute salience of the news coverage. News coverage on the issue is strongly associated with audience attitudes about controversial issues. Last, on controversial issues, news media have long-term, rather than short-term, effects on public opinion.

Attribute-Priming Effects on Presidential Approval: The Role of Risk Perception and Trust in Government Regulation

Combining data from a content analysis of leading newspapers, a random-sampled national survey ([Formula: see text]), and a semantic network analysis of Facebook postings, this study applies Network Agenda Setting and attribute-priming effects to examine how perceptions of risks, benefits, and trust in government regulation influenced the public’s evaluation of the Presidential performance in the 2012 controversy over imports of American beef in Taiwan. The results show that only perceived risks to health directly affected the public’s evaluation of the President; other types of risks damaged the public’s trust in government regulation, which consequently harmed their evaluation of the President’s performance.

Agenda-Setting Theory

This chapter discusses contemporary directions of agenda-setting research. It reviews the basic concept of agenda setting, the transfer of salience from the media agenda to the public agenda as a key step in the formation of public opinion, the concept of need for orientation as a determinant of issue salience, the ways people learn the media agenda, attribute agenda setting, and the consequences of agenda setting that result from priming and attribute priming. Across the theoretical areas found in the agenda-setting tradition, future studies can contribute to the role of news in media effects by showing how agenda setting evolves in the new and expanding media landscape as well as continuing to refine agenda setting’s core concepts.

The Tiger Woods Scandal in the Media: Measuring Attribute Effects on the Public

This case study examines the Tiger Woods sex scandal using second-level agenda setting and attribute priming as its theoretical structures. It approaches the case through the compelling-arguments hypothesis to explain the transfer of salience from the media agenda to the public agenda. A content analysis of print and broadcast media is employed to determine the dominance of scandal stories in general, and the “sex/adultery” attribute in particular, on the media agenda. This study also uses attribute priming to measure the presence of opinion and its direction in the public, after exposure to the scandal stories. The data that form the public agenda come from a nationally representative survey of the American public, as well as online search queries on Google.