Citation

Smidt CD. Public Opin. Q. 2012; 76(1): 72-94.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/poq/nfr019

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Few studies examine whether the public agenda responds to different types of issue coverage in the same way. After outlining why such differences are likely, this study takes advantage of daily polling data and a rare sequence of news cycles surrounding the issue of gun control to compare how coverage of different political actors and events drives an issue's placement on the public agenda. Coverage generated by the citizen activist group, the Million Mom March, is estimated to have a greater influence on public opinion compared to coverage of a string of school shootings or, finally, President Clinton's campaign. Tests show that group or political biases do not drive these results but, along with evidence from the 2009 health care protests, coverage of citizen demonstrations consistently outperforms presidential news in its association with the mass public agenda. Although elected officials are granted greater access to news media coverage, the findings suggest that such access does not grant a corresponding influence on the public agenda. More generally, it demonstrates that news storyline content has measurable implications for news media agenda setting at the national level.

Language: en