Running head: AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 1

Agenda Building in the New Media Age

Steve Earley

Elon University
AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 2

Abstract

This literature review explores ways new media such as Web sites, blogs and social

networks might be affecting the process by which issues become news and consequently

are placed on the public agenda. It focuses on agenda building and touches on agenda

setting to the extent new media may enable agenda builders to become agenda setters

themselves. Scholarly journal articles, trade press, newspaper articles, blog posts and

online reports inform the conclusion that new media are at once weakening,

strengthening and transforming traditional agenda building tenets, but that some

fundamental assumptions of the more than 30-year-old model, including the notion of a

shared public agenda, should be reevaluated. Obstacles to developing new models,

including the rapid pace of technological change and a lack of professional norms among

new media outlets, are also discussed. The paper highlights the need for more

quantitative research to evaluate new media's perceived effect on the agenda building

process.

Keywords: Agenda building, agenda setting, new media, blogs, social networks, news,

journalism, audience fragmentation.

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Agenda Building in the New Media Age

Introduction

Daily decisions by news producers about what to cover and by news consumers

about what to read, watch or listen to help determine what issues are valued and

discussed by the general public. New media such as Web sites, blogs and social networks

have expanded the universe of sources these groups can readily access, and, potentially,

are altering the processes by which these decisions are made.

With little indication that communications advancements are slowing down,

whether processes have changed, and, if so, to what degree, are questions worth asking

sooner rather than later. Understanding how issues reach the public agenda, defined as

"the list of current events and public issues which are viewed in a hierarchy of

importance at a particular point in time” (Brubaker, 2008), is central to the function of

journalists, those who seek to influence them, and, indeed, democratic society in general.

Traditional Theories

How issues become news and how news shapes public priorities are explained by

the agenda building and agenda setting theories, both developed in the 1970s. Relatively

young by academic standards, these foundational theories remain the preeminent models

on which new research in this area of communications is based. Downright ancient by

technological standards, they cannot possibly account for the full effects of the modern

media explosion.

Even while relying on these seminal works, researchers acknowledge their

limitations. One stated plainly: "Agenda-setting's assumption that people are receiving a

common agenda, and thus possessing a common public agenda, falls into question in a
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new media environment” (Brubaker, 2008).

Cobb and Elder's 1977 work establishing agenda building theory postulated that

media are influenced by outside institutions and forces when deciding what to cover and

tend to cover issues they perceive to have high visibility, to affect a lot of people and to

involve conflict (Cobb & Elder, 1977). Cobb and Elder considered the effects of new

technology, and, perhaps, by extension, the impermanence of their own theory, observing

that new communications forms lessened reliance on gatekeepers, and promoted more

personal communications (Cobb, 1977).

Agenda building can occur at any step in the news gathering or news production

process. It can occur when journalists are identifying, selecting and developing story

ideas and when they are weighing the importance of using facts, sources and background

research in a story (Len-Ríos et al., 2009).

Other journalists can be among the most influential agenda builders as they count

peers as among their closest friends, closely track syndicated news wires, consult

colleagues when judging newsworthiness and voraciously consume competing and elite

media (Len-Ríos et al., 2009). This phenomenon, easily overlooked, is significant,

especially as the population of persons that could be considered journalists grows.

McCombs and Shaw's 1972 study establishing agenda setting theory found a

strong link between voter attitudes and mainstream media coverage, suggesting that while

the media may not tell people what to think, they tell them what to think about

(McCombs & Shaw, 1972). McCombs and Shaw reviewed print and broadcast sources

within a media environment that did not include two of today's most influential media,

nationwide cable television and the World Wide Web. One of the researchers’ underlying
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assumptions is directly challenged by the proliferation of these and subsequent alternative

mediums:

"For most, mass media provide the best — and only — easily available

approximation of ever-changing political realities” (McCombs, 1972, p. 185).

Challenges in Developing New Models

At the current pace of technological change, it may be unreasonable to expect

scholars to hone in on new models. There are just too many parts moving too quickly.

Web video, led by YouTube, and social networking, led by Facebook, are two recent

examples of content areas to climb from obscurity to ubiquity virtually overnight.

Technology will always outpace academic research, especially the most influential peer-

reviewed kind. A 2007 conference paper on the meteoric rise — in number and influence

— of blogs, hinted at researchers' frustration:

"Weblogs' swift proliferation gives us little time to observe, interpret and

understand their multi-dimensional impacts” (Xie, 2007, p. 1).

Indeed, the same could be said today with regard to microcommunications. In 17

short months, Twitter went from a plaything for Web geeks — 533,000 users in Sept.

2007 (Nielsen Online, 2008) — to a household name — 7 million users in February 2009

(McGiboney, 2009).

The "new media environment," another scholar observed, "is anything but simple

with its mixture of traditional and new news media available twenty-four hours a day,

seven days a week” (Brubaker, 2008).

Further complicating the pursuit of a modern agenda building theory are new

media's decentralization and lack of professional norms. Bloggers, for one, do not always
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attribute their content (Messner & Distaso, 2008), making it difficult to track who builds

their agenda. The structure of comments, microcommunications and other less formal

content can be even more haphazard.

Surveying the New Media Landscape

Within closer reach is a survey of the current landscape to frame the pursuit of

new models, which this literature review aims to produce. This paper focuses on agenda

building but discusses agenda setting to the extent that modern technology may enable

traditional and emerging agenda builders to leapfrog the mainstream media and become

agenda setters themselves.

The following research question is paraphrased from an agenda building article in

last summer's Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly (Len-Ríos et al., 2009):

RQ: Are new technologies weakening, strengthening or transforming the

traditional agenda building process?

The sources evaluated suggested that all three are occurring.

The most dramatic way by which new media are weakening the traditional agenda

building model is by fragmenting audiences, challenging the notion of a shared public

agenda. When Cobb and Elder and McCombs and Shaw formed their agenda building

and agenda setting models, Americans by and large received their news from the three

broadcast television networks and their hometown newspaper. Supplementing — in some

respects, overtaking — those sources today are dozens of cable television channels and

thousands of Web sites, often oriented toward a particular political viewpoint.

The choice and customization offered by new technologies enables audiences to

craft an agenda that is relevant to them (Brubaker, 2008). Cognitive dissonance theory
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(Festinger, 1957), which states that inconsistencies make people uncomfortable, leading

them to gravitate toward information that reinforces their beliefs, suggests audiences will

become even more fragmented as communications become more personalized, as those

on tomorrow's mobile Web are forecasted to be (Kroski, 2008).

Nearly as disruptive, new media's rising stature, low barriers to entry (Song,

2007), audiences’ growing tolerance of — even demand for — unfiltered news (Killian,

interview, October 22, 2009) and the related decline of legacy news organizations enable

alternative sources to regularly bypass mainstream outlets and become agenda setters

themselves. This occurs frequently in coverage of politics, an area where the mainstream

media actively consult blogs (Messner, 2008). A prominent example from the early days

of blogs was when bloggers' coverage of controversial remarks by Trent Lott led the

Mississippi Republican to step down as Senate minority leader (Messner, 2008).

Traditional agenda setting theory assumes mainstream media play an offensive

role, that their coverage places an item on the public agenda. Today, it is not uncommon

for the mainstream media to be defensive and to be effectively forced to cover something

— or to cover it in a certain way (McLeary, 2007) — because new media placed it on the

agenda (Messner, 2008).

That the status quo is at least being challenged is evident among public relations

practitioners, whose craft revolves around agenda building. In a Public Relations

Quarterly opinion piece last year a 25-year industry veteran worried out loud that new

media's ability to microtarget audiences threatened the well being of his industry (Croft,

2008). Compounding the problem, some practitioners — including those within the

almighty agenda builder of government — have avoided social media out of fear they
AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 8

will lose control of their message, particularly in crisis-management situations (Sweetser,

Porter, Chung, & Kim, 2008).

At the same time, new media are amplifying the traditional agenda building

process by redistributing mainstream media content.

The common complaint bears weight. Many blogs do not do a lot of original

reporting. They are summarizing, analyzing and commenting on mainstream media

content, creating an echo chamber of sorts. As a result, they may be reinforcing topics

already on the media's agenda instead of adding new ones (Xie, 2007).

A content analysis of blog and major newspaper coverage from early this decade

demonstrated this and, in fact, found evidence of what is known as a source cycle, in

which "Weblogs and the traditional media may contribute to the power of each type of

medium through their use of each other as sources” (Messner, 2008, p. 459). Bloggers’

propensity to read and link to others’ blogs may further magnify this effect (Xie, 2007).

Users of newer tools such as microblogging service Twitter, where reposting

others' messages and, more recently, sharing lists of favorite users, are routine activities,

behave similarly.

Finally, new media are transforming the traditional agenda building process by

changing the way journalists gather and evaluate news.

Given their relative youth — less than a decade ago, few people had ever heard of

blogs; less than five years ago, even fewer had heard of microblogs — new media have

gained acceptance as legitimate story sources impressively quickly. A 2008 survey by

George Washington University and media research company Cision polling more than

12,000 journalists revealed that 90% of respondents considered the Web at large to be a
AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 9

primary source, with 79% using blogs, especially to track responses to stories, and 50%

using social media (Arno, 2009). The same year, a survey of U.S. business journalists

published in Public Relations Review found they were consulting several online sources,

using Web sites most heavily, followed by blogs, social media and message boards

(Larisey, Avery, Sweetser, & Howes, 2009). Social media, the newest among them, was

used by almost 20% of survey respondents not just as a supplementary resource but as a

starting point for stories.

Trends suggest that new media's traction among mainstream journalists should

rise. Journalism and public relations young professionals, the future leaders of their

industries, tend to be more receptive to using social media in their work than their current

bosses (Sweetser et al., 2008). George Washington University and Cision reported a

similar generation gap among the reporters and editors they queried (Arno, 2009).

Additionally, mainstream media have made blogs and social media prominent parts of

their own Web sites, suggesting they are receptive to new media.

Journalists cite or reference blogs and social media especially when covering

breaking news, particularly if access to the scene is restricted. Such alternative sources

heavily influenced coverage of several recent major news events including Hurricane

Katrina (Xie, 2007), the Mumbai terror attacks and the Iranian election protests (Heald,

2009). The latter two events served to elevate Twitter's profile, both among journalists

and the general public.

Hoping microcommunications' speed and reach turn up eyewitnesses canvassing

the scene would miss, news organizations have taken to blasting "Were you there?" social

network alerts as soon as they learn a significant event has occurred. Following a
AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 10

construction site accident last spring, The New York Times posted on Twitter simply,

"Seeking any eyewitnesses to Lower Manhattan building collapse” (Farhi, 2009, p. 28).

Like acts of God or man-made disasters, viral news stories can seemingly come

out of nowhere. Often, the social media buzz itself becomes a news story, allowing the

message generating it to hijack its way onto the agenda or to a higher place on it. For

example, last summer a graphic car crash dramatization recorded by a small police

department in Wales to discourage texting while driving attracted millions of online

views. The immense popularity of the video became an international news story,

prompting closer scrutiny by journalists and citizens of the public safety issue at hand

(Clifford, 2009).

Discussion

Agenda building scholars should be prepared to abandon some fundamental

assumptions, starting with that the media and the audience are each monolithic entities

(Song, 2007). As an increase in user-generated content and citizen journalism blurs the

line between news producers and consumers, observers should also be careful about

pigeonholing players into one group or the other. Suspect too, as already mentioned, is

the notion of a common agenda. What is popularly considered the public agenda may be

more accurately conceived as the points where fragmented audiences' myriad agendas

overlap.

It may be helpful to imagine a news ecosystem. It has absorbed some new species,

affecting other species and processes in complex ways. To understand what is happening,

focus less on the individual organisms and more on the relationships between them and

the byproducts their interactions produce.

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Furthermore, it is important to focus on actual relationships and not merely

theoretical ones. This means appreciating the nomadic tendencies of new media (Xie,

2007). Consider the blogosphere. Blog directory Tehnoroti catalogs millions of U.S.-

based blogs (McLean, 2009). By comparison, even at their medium’s height, there were

only some 1,800 American daily newspapers (Newspaper Association of America, 2009).

Realistically, only a small fraction of bloggers can influence the public agenda at any

given time. Who comprises that fraction is constantly shifting depending on the nature

and location of current events. For instance, as a product of the intense health care debate

in the U.S. Congress, blogs focusing on medicine and insurance likely hold greater sway

this year than, say, three years ago. As highlighted previously, New Orleans area blogs

enjoyed greater-than-normal pull in the weeks and months following Hurricane Katrina.

The viral behavior of certain new media messages, illustrated by the police text

messaging PSA mentioned earlier, further supports the idea of nomadic influencers. An

especially spreadable message can elevate an outlet or individual from obscurity, to

which it will usually return as soon as the buzz has passed.

A case study that illustrates how interrelationships among legacy media, new

media and audiences can shape the public agenda is liberal blog Talking Points Memo's

leadership on one of the biggest political stories of President Bush’s second term

(McLeary, 2007). TPM got credit for linking the dismissals of eight U.S. Attorneys, a

boon for its own brand and that of the blog medium. But what got the blog started was

noticing patterns among firings reported in local newspapers from around the

country. TPM advanced the story by combining uniquely new media tactics like

crowdsourcing reader tips and old-fashioned journalism gruntwork, like pounding the
AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 12

phones — but, importantly, consulting sources the mainstream media ignored.

After the blog connected the dots, mainstream news organizations put their

considerably greater resources and louder megaphone behind the story, going on the earn

the rest of the scoops and glory. This was fine by editor Josh Marshall, whose blog

scrutinized the big boys' coverage every step of the way. He told the Columbia

Journalism Review he was content with his role in the modern agenda building process

(McLeary, 2007).

Suggestions For Further Research

Several sources cited in this report discussed perfectly plausible ways that new

media could function as agenda builders but did not support their points with any kind of

observation or survey. Other researchers should seek to quantify new media's influence.

Are professionals acting upon these perceptions? Are tools having their anticipated

effect? Is it all a lot of hype?

One of my sources that did survey professionals concluded that "journalists

embrace the concept of social media more than they enact the practices” (Larisey et al.,

2009, p. 316), going on to suggest that tools' learning curves might be partially to blame.

According to another, public relations professionals and press kits remain dominant

sources for stories, with certain newer media, especially podcasts, catching on slowly, if

at all (Arno, 2009).

Scholars are urged not to underestimate the effects of an active audience. Citizens

are traditionally treated as passive actors who do not powerfully shape agendas (Len-

Ríos et al., 2009). Until recently, direct interaction between publishers and audiences was

scarce (Donsbach, 2004). Blogs and social networks are changing that, however (Heald,
AGENDA BUILDING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 13

2009). Some argue that when journalists consider their own interests when evaluating

story ideas they are in actuality guessing what the audience wants (Len-Ríos et al., 2009).

If this is true, now they may not have to guess as much.

Another concern, though one only tangentially related to the focus of this paper, is

that to the extent new media are empowering new groups of people, who, if anyone, are

they disempowering? As already suggested, the degree and manner of new media's

impact on the public agenda probably will not be quickly determined. However, based on

this literature review alone, it is difficult to conclude that they are not having at least

some effect. New media users are not representative of the broader population — the

heaviest users tend to be younger, richer, more educated and live in more densely

populated areas (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009) — and mainstream media

are likewise more likely to engage new media than the population at large (Messner,

2008). Knowledge gap theory suggests that those without the tools required to influence

and understand the modern public agenda, many due to socioeconomic disadvantages,

will fall even further behind (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1970).
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