Studying influences on media content beyond processes and effects analyzing media content patterns of media content influences on content from individual media workers influence of media routines organizational influences on content influences on content from outside of media organizations the influence of ideology linking influences on content to the effects of content building a theory of news content.

Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content

Understanding the processes of influence in societies has intrigued generations of scholars. One method of studying such influence in modern democracy is to investigate mass media, public, and policy agendas, defined as issues or events that are viewed at a point in time as ranked in a hierarchy of importance. Research by communication scholars and other social scientists has typically conceptualized either the mass media agenda, the public agenda, or the policy agenda as a dependent variable in order to explain how it is influenced by other factors. This chapter (1) analyzes past research on agenda-setting in order to learn where this research literature is deficient and where it is sufficient and (2) synthesizes this research literature with a view toward learning important theoretical and methodological lessons for future agenda-setting research.

Agenda-Setting Research: Where Has It Been, Where Is It Going?

This two-part study integrates a quantitative review of one year of US newspaper coverage of climate science with a qualitative, comparative analysis of media-created themes and frames using a social constructivist approach. In addition to an examination of newspaper articles, this paper includes a reflexive comparison with attendant wire stories and scientific texts. Special attention is given to articles constructed with and framed by rhetoric emphasising uncertainty, controversy, and climate scepticism.

http://climateknowledge.org/figures/Rood_Climate_Change_AOSS480_Documents/Antilla_Climate_Skeptics_GlobEnvirChange_2005.pdf

Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change

Destination image repair during crisis: Attracting tourism during the Arab Spring uprisings

Research within the agenda-setting framework has generally ignored the potential influence of purposive efforts by external actors (those outside the political system) to manipulate media coverage related to their interests. The present study uses interrupted time-series analysis to examine one such set of manipulative efforts, those undertaken by professional public relations consultants to influence the images of foreign nations as portrayed in the United States press. Data represent New York Times coverage of six nations that signed public relations contracts with American firms during the period from 1974 to 1978, and one nation that expressly rejected such a contract. The analysis identifies consistent patterns of improvement along two primary dimensions of national image, visibility and valence, which are associated in time with the public relations contracts.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1961834.pdf

Changing National Images: International Public Relations and Media Agenda Setting

b Analysts of public policy-making have identified two distinct levels of agendasetting that influence, or are influenced by, the news media. The first, termed the formal agenda, refers to that set of issues and options that are actually under consideration by policy-makers. Most of these arise from a variety of internal (governmental) mechanisms which are seldom directly and heavily influenced by news coverage per se. The items on this agenda are relatively explicit, often narrowly defined and generally well-documented by non-media sources. They become the objects of legislative or administrative action which is in turn reported in the press and may thus enter upon the second, or public, agenda. This latter set of concerns tends to be more ambiguously stated, more broadly defined and less well-documented than the former, and the public agenda itself usually assumes its greatest importance not in the actual making of policy, but a t the front end of the decision-making process (through the articulation and organization of political demands) and at the tail end (in the generation of publicacceptance of policies once adopted). Here the media play a

News of Rhodesia: The Impact of a Public Relations Campaign.

Ample evidence exists to link public opinion and public policy in regard to health issues and abortion in the US. In order to determine the impact of policies (which reflect public preferences) on citizen behavior research was undertaken to test the following hypotheses: 1) in the presence of public support for abortion policy-makers will impose fewer restrictions; 2) in the presence of public support for abortion and fewer restrictions access will be greater; 3) in the presence of public support fewer restrictions and improved access more abortions will occur; and 4) the impact of public preferences on policies will retain its significance when controls are applied to socioeconomic (and metropolitan) and religious variables. Data were analyzed from a 1993 abortion survey with the ratio of abortions/1000 live births in each state in 1992 serving as the dependent variable. State policies were ranked on a nine-point scale of restrictiveness. Public opinion was measured using 1988 and 1990 responses to National Election Series Senate Panel Studies. Access was measured according to the percentage of counties in a state with abortion providers in 1992. Regression analysis of the data resulted in qualified support of all four of the hypotheses. It was found that religious fundamentalism influences abortion attitudes whereas states with large Catholic populations show an influence of the church on public policy. Further research is warranted into the relationship which exists among public preferences public policy and corresponding public behavior.

Effects of public opinion on abortion policies and use in the American states.

Welfare policy in the United States is strongly influenced by intergovernmental factors. This analysis traces the effects of federalfinancial incentives on state welfare policy decisions across programs and examines how changes in federal incentives affect state policy choices over time. The data indicate that higher levels of federal participation are associated with substantial reductions in variance of welfare grants among the states and with higher levels of interstate equity. These findings imply that significant shifts in welfare outputs would result from a devolution of responsibility for welfare to the states.

Robert B. Albritton

Papers

Changing National Images: International Public Relations and Media Agenda Setting

News of Rhodesia: The Impact of a Public Relations Campaign.

Effects of public opinion on abortion policies and use in the American states.

Impacts of Intergovernmental Financial Incentives on State Welfare Policymaking and Interstate Equity

Culture, region, and Thai political diversity