传播学经典导读教材-10 麦克姆斯《议程设置》.docVIP

10 The Agenda-setting Function of Mass Media Maxwell E.McCombs and Donald L.Shaw In “Public Opinion Quarterly”, 1972, 2 In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues—that is, the media may set the agenda of the campaign. ? In our day, more than ever before, candidates go before the people through the mass media rather than in person. The information in the mass media becomes the only contact many have with politics. The pledges, promises, and rhetoric encapsulated in news stories, columns, and editorials constitute much of the information upon which a voting decision has to be made. Most of what people know comes to them second or third hand from the mass media or from other people. Although the evidence that mass media deeply change attitudes in a campaign is far from conclusive, the evidence is much stronger that voters learn from the immense quantity of information available during each campaign. People, of course, vary greatly in their attention to mass media political information. Some, normally the better educated and most politically interested (and those least likely to change political beliefs), actively seek information; but most seem to acquire it, if at all, without much effort. It just comes in. As Berelson succinctly puts it: On any single subject many hear but few listen. But Berelson also found that those with the greatest mass media exposure are most likely to know where the candidates stand on different issues. Trenaman and McQuail found the same thing in a study of the 1959 General Election in England. Voters do learn. They apparently learn, furthermore, in direct proportion to the emphasis p