Agenda building and setting in a referendum campaign: Investigating the flow of arguments among campaigners, the media, and the public

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 87, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 328-345

  Wirth, Werner ^a   Matthes, Jörg ^a   Schemer, Christian ^a   Wettstein, Martin ^a   Friemel, Thomas ^a   Hänggli, Regula ^a   Siegert, Gabriele ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BUILDING; MEDIA ROLE;

EID: 77957158649     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769901008700207     Document Type: Article

References (65)

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3. But see Yue Tan and David H. Weaver, "Agenda-Setting Effects among the Media, the Public, and Congress, 1946-2004," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 84 (winter 2007): 729-744
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19. Wanta and Hu, "The Effects of Credibility, Reliance and Exposure on Media Agenda Setting.
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21. for framing, see Jörg Matthes, "What's in a Frame? A Content Analysis of Media-Framing Studies in the World's Leading Communication Journals, 1990-2005," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 86 (summer 2009): 349-67;
22. Jörg Matthes and Matthias Kohring, "The Content Analysis of Media Frames: Toward Improving Reliability and Validity," Journal of Communication 58 (June 2008): 258-279
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36. David H. Weaver, Maxwell McCombs, and Donald Shaw, "Agenda-Setting Research: Issues, Attributes, and Influences," in Handbook of Political Communication Research, ed. Lynda Lee Kaid (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., 2004), 257-282
37. Judy Van Slyke Turk, "Public Relations' Influence on the News," Newspaper Research Journal 4 (summer 1986): 15-28.
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43. Tan and Weaver, "Agenda-Setting Effects.
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46. Claes de Vreese, "When Referendum Campaigns Matter - and Why" (paper presented at the 57th conference of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, May 2007), 2.
47. De Vreese, "When Referendum Campaigns Matter.
48. McCombs and Ghanem, "The Convergence of Agenda Setting and Framing"
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50. Since we have not measured attitudes toward the asylum issue, one could argue that we have done a first- rather than second-level agenda setting study. However, we have not measured the agendas on the issue level, but on the issue-attribute level. The debate arguments used here touch the question of how to think about the asylum issue. Thus, they are cognitive issue attributes. For instance, when arguments in favor of a tightening of the asylum policy are made salient, one frames this issue in terms of asylum abuse and misconduct. This view is in line with McCombs' understanding of framing: "people also frame objects, placing varying degrees of emphasis on the attributes of [⋯] public issues or other objects when they think or talk about them" (Maxwell McCombs, Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion [Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2004], 87).
51. Hanspeter Kriesi, Laurent Bernhard, and Regula Hanggli, "Coalition Formation in Direct-Democratic Campaigns: A Case Study of the Vote on the Swiss Asylum Law," National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Working Paper No.12 (February 2008).
52. The contra camp included the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Forum for the Integration of Migrants, the Solidarité sans frontières, the Swiss Aid for Refugees, the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions, Amnesty International, the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, the Swiss Red Cross, the Young Socialists, and others. On the other side, the pro camp gathered organizations such as all political parties of the moderate (FDP, CVP) and the populist right (SVP), the Federal Ministry of Justice and Police (EJPD), the Federal Office of Migration (BFM), the Swiss Employers' Association, the Association of Small Businesses and Trade, the Association for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland, the Liberal Party, and others;
53. see Kriesi, Bernhard, and Hänggli, " Coalition Formation."
54. Kriesi, Bernhard, and Hänggli, "Coalition Formation.
55. The TV formats included Tagesschau, Arena, Le journal (19.30), SF Rundschau, TSR Infrarouge. The investigated newspapers included: Blick, Sonntagsblick, Neue Ziircher Zeitung, NZZ am Sonntag, Tagesanzeiger, Sonntagszeitung, 20 Minuten, Aargauer Zeitung, Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung, Neue Luzerner Zeitung, Die Sudostschweiz, St. Galler Tagblatt, Le Matin, Le Temps, Tribune de Geneve, 24 heures, 20 minutes.
56. Scotts pi, a more conservative coefficient than Holsti's R, is .78 for argument 1, .76 for argument 2, .83 for argument 3, .89 for argument 4, .80 for argument 5, .79 for argument 6, and .85 for argument 7. There is no difference between media content data and campaign materials.
57. Though this measure seems somehow related to need for orientation, it refers to reliance on specific media sources, and not a general need to stay informed about an issue; see Matthes, "The Need for Orientation towards News Media.
58. However, for the low media reliance group, there are correlations of .64 with the arguments of the contra camp. These comparatively high correlations seem to be surprising given the non-significant media effects for the low media reliance group and the failure of the contra camp to communicate its agenda. However, since they are not statistically significant, we do not interpret these correlations. Without significance testing, there are no established standards for considering a rank-order correlation as "high" thus, we would have no justification whatsoever about the relative importance of those correlations. Rank order correlations are a rather weak test of statistical relationship. Thus, we preferred to be conservative in interpreting them.
59. Kriesi, Bernhard, and Hänggli, "Coalition Formation.
60. Similar results had been obtained in early persuasion studies on the effects of one-sided versus two-sided communication and refuta-tional versus non-refutational appeals. See Carl I. Hovland, Irving L Janis, and Harold H. Kelley, Communication and Persuasion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953);
61. for positive/negative emphasis of arguments, see also affective second-level agenda setting: e.g., McCombs and Ghanem, "The Convergence of Agenda Setting and Framing."
62. See also Young Jun Son and David H. Weaver, "Another Look at What Moves Public Opinion: Media Agenda Setting and Polls in the 2000 U.S. Election," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 18 (summer 2006): 174-197
63. There is also support for significance testing with apparent samples in the methodological literature. The key argument is that even apparent populations cannot be interpreted as deterministic, error-free data. Thus, significance testing may still be justified: see Kenneth A. Bollen, "Apparent and Nonapparent Significance Tests," Sociological Methodology 25 (1995): 459-468
64. e.g., Marc Benton and P. Kean Frazier, "The Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media at Three Levels of 'Information Holding,'" Communication Research 3 (3, 1976): 261-74;
65. William F. DeGeorge, "Conceptualization and Measurement of Audience Agenda," in Mass Communication Review, vol.2, ed. G. Cleveland Wilhoit and Harold DeBock (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), 219-224