Box 19.2 The agenda-setting hypothesis

• Public debate is represented by a set of salient issues (an agenda for action)

• The agenda originates from public opinion and the proposals of political elites

• Competing interests seek to promote the salience of 'their' issues

• Mass media news selects issues for more or less attention accord­ing to several pressures, especially those from interested elites, public opinion and real-world events

• The outcome in media (relative degree of prominence of issues) both gives public recognition to the current agenda and has further effects on opinion and the evaluation of the political scene

• Agenda effects are peripheral and short term

Effects on Public Opinion and Attitudes

Mass communication research began with the expectation of finding significant influences from mass media on public opinion and attitudes. The distinction between the various types of effect, especially information, behaviour, opinions and attitudes, mentioned in Chapter 17, is important and calls for some comment. The first two are least problematic in respect of conceptualiza­tion and observation. Opinion and attitude cannot be observed directly or defined precisely enough to allow unambiguous measurement. Attitudes are underlying dispositions or mental sets towards some object that are generally measured in terms of verbal responses to evaluative statements. These responses are typically converted into a scale showing an individual's direction and strength of leaning in respect of an object (for instance a political party or leader or issue). Attitudes towards different objects are thought to be related such that a person has a structure of more or less consistent attitudes. Attitudes are primarily valuations and attributions made by individuals, although it is possible to speak of 'public attitudes' as an assessment of the predominant tendency in a group or aggregate.

An opinion is a statement of preference for one side of an argument or choice presented. It is also as much cognitive as evaluative. It has a specific and provisional character and a person can have many opinions on different topics, without any necessary cohesion. Opinions vary in the strength to which they are held and in the degree to which they are based on correct information. Opinions are also individ­ual, although they can be aggregated to form something called public opinion, which is usually taken to mean the predominant leaning, or sum of views, of the population as a whole. Public opinion does however have a certain independence from the individuals contributing to it. This is evident by the fact that individuals have a perception, whether accurate or not, of public opinion as the prevailing view and the view of others. This perception can have effects, as shown below. Secondly, 'public opinion' acquires a certain independence when it is embodied in media accounts. It becomes an objective 'social fact' that has to be taken account of by political and other actors.

The relevance for ideas about media effects is as follows. The media are expected to have considerable potential for influence on the opinions of individ­uals, although mostly without intention, by providing the information that issues exist and indicating the options. By publishing opinion poll results or by stating editorially what the public view is on a given topic, they add another element of potential influence. Media are much less likely to influence attitudes than opinions, even when they bring new and relevant evaluative information. Attitudes only change slowly and are resistant. They are anchored by each other in a larger outlook on the world.

One basic principle of organization of both attitude and opinion is their ground­ing in membership of social groups and the influence of the social milieu in which we move. A second principle is that of consistency or balance. We are more com­fortable when our various likes and dislikes and our opinions are compatible with each other. This is expressed in the idea of 'cognitive consistency'. The theory of cog­nitive dissonance (the reverse condition) predicts that we will tend to look for infor­mation or ideas that maintain consistency and avoid the discomfort of incompatible opinions (Festinger, 1957). This also means that new information can unsettle exist­ing attitudes and lead to realignments. This is one reason why the established learn­ing or informational effects of mass media are more important in the longer term.

Expectations of finding proof of causal connections between media and opin­ions and attitudes are much lower than in earlier days. Some of the reasons for this shift are summarized in Box 19.3.