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McCombs, Maxwell E.
Agenda-Setting Research; A Bibliographic Essay.

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Bibliographies; Literature Reviews; * edia Research;*News Media; Newspapers; Political Attitudes;*Political Socialization; Television; Voting*Agenda Setting

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ABSTRACT

Studies of agenda setting, which asserts thataudiences note what is emphasized in the news media and incorporate asimilar set of emphases into their_personal agendas, are reviewed inthis essay. Separate sections consider early empirical evidence insupport of the concept; contingent conditions; differing effects ofnewspapers and television; models of the process; salience of
attributes of a topic, issue, or person; domains for research; theory
construction and testing; and appropriate research strategies.
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Agenda-Setting Hosea ch
A bibliographic essay

Maxwell E. McCombs
Communication Research Center
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication
Syracuse University-PERMISSI N TO REPRODUCE THIS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED ey

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Agcndas etting asserts that audiences take note of the saliences of t
news

din, note what is empha ized, what receives heavy play, and incorporatea similar set of weights Into their persoanl agendas.

While the production ofthese saliences is largely a by-product of journalism practice and tradition,
they nevertheless are attributes of the messages transmitted to the audience.

And, asserts the idea of agendasetting, they are among the most import nt
messagi attributes transmitted to the audience.
This l_tion of an,nda-s-tting function omass media is a .relational

concept spectfyng a st :ongpos tive relationship between the emphases of masscommunicat on and the salience of these topics to the individuals in the audience.
This c-n _.pt is stated in causal terms,

the mass media influences
the public.

.

:reascd salience of a topic or is uees) the salience of that topic or issue among

Not only does the press bring these issues to a level of political-enecs among the public.

Agenda-setting asserts that the priorities of thepress to some degree become the priorities of the public.

What the press empha-

sizes is 'in turn emphasized privately and publicly by the audiences of the press.

Empirical Evidence of Agenda-Setting
Many have asserted an agenda-setting function of thess.

In his bookPublic Opinion, Walter Lippmann (1922) long ago eloquently described the necessaryconnection between mass communication and individual political cognitions.

But

2.

75 and human behavior, it was not put

like much of our folk wisdom about polit

to empirical test for over half a century.

The first attempt at empirical verification of agenda-set ing was carriedby McCombs and Shaw (1972) during the 1968 U. S. Presidential election.

Among

undecided voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina there were sub tantial correla-tions between the political issues emphasized in the news media and what the
Voters regarded as the key issues in that election.

Tnteres ingly, the voters'

beliefs about what were the major issues facing the country reflected the corit

posite of the press coverage, even though the three Pres'dential contenders in1968 placed widely divergent emphas s on the issues.
at least

This suggests that vos--undecided voters--pay some attention to all the political news in thepress regardless of whether it is about, or originated with)a favored candidate.
In fact, further analysis of the 1968 Chapel Hill survey showed thatamong those undecided voters with leanings toward one of the three candidates,
there was less agreement- with the news agenda based on their preferred candidate's

statements than with the news agenda based on all three candidates.

Although the 1968 Chapel Hill study was the first empirIcal investigation
couched specifically in termsof agenda-setting, there is other empirical evidence

in the mass eominunicacn/political behavior literature which can be interpreted
in agenda- etting terms.

Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee (1954) found that Elmira

voters with minimal interpersonal contacts were more in line with the national
tr-id toward Truman that occurred and was reported in 'the news during the 1948
presidential campaign.

In a study of an Iowa reapportionment referendum Arnold

and Gold (1964) found their hypothesis that counties would vote their self-interest(a strong corre ation between county population and proportion of votes for reappor-

4,;

tionment) was most strongly supported where agenda-setting agencieslocal news-

papers and organized committees supporting reapportionmenthad made the issue
salient to voters.

A similar necessary condition role for agenda-setting was foundin Donohue, Tichenor, and Olien's (1975) study of the distribution of knowledge

mong populations whe e there was a monotonic relationship between mass media
coverage of issue- and the strength of the education/knowledge correlation.

Nor

is the role of the press in these various agenda-setting situations li -ted tothat of a conduit for the interests and assertions of news sources.

Funkhouser's(1973) study of the major issues of the 1960s found a strong correlation between

press coverage and national public opinion, but little correlation between eitherof these agendas and objective indicators of the actual situations.

Both press

coverage and public concern about Vietnam, campus unrest, and urban riots, forexample, peaked a year or two earlier than did the actual situations th m elves.

Organiz ng the Studies

Beyond establishing an empirical link betweeD the day-to-day coverage ofthe mass media and what individuals consider important, the prolifer tion ofrecent research also has introduced important new conceptual dist nctions andattacked key methodological problems.

To achieve an overview of these advances

this review o- the literature has been organized under seven broad headingS

4

ContinCOnditNo one contends that ;igendasett ing is an influence process )poratin

all times and all places on all people.

One psychological concept which begins

to explain individual variation in attention to mass communication is need fororientation (McCombs, 1967), a psychological variable postulating an inherent
cur osity about the surrounding environment.

Using data collected from a large sample of Charlotte, North Carolina
voters during the 1972 Presidential campaign, McCombs and W iver (1973) andWeaver (1976), found that extensive use of mass communication to follow the
The greater the needcampaign inereased with the strength of need for orientation.
for-it.it ion, the gr ater use made of mass communication to

campaign, candidates, and issues.

1n about the

Similarly, the higher the need for orientation,

the higher the correlati n between the voters' agenda of key, issues and the television agenda of public issues.

Tracing the effect of extensive media Watergate coverage from October 1972
until May 1973, Weaver, McCombs, and Spellman (1975) also feund the major impactof this coverage among Charlotte voters with a high need for orientation.

For:voters exposure to the heavy media coverage of Watergate led both to theincreased- ._._iencetif Watergate and increased interpersonal discussion.

of interpersonal discussion itself mediates agenda-setting influence.
the evidence is contradictory.

Frequency
Mowever,

McCombs, Shaw, and Shaw (1972) found that theagendasetting relation hip was strongest among Durham, North Carolina voterswith a low.level of interpersonal communication, while Mullins (1973) found thatthe agenda-setting relationship was strongest among college students wilevel of interpersonal discussion of politics.

a highAnother con ingent condition for the appearance of agenda-serting is
Since the concept of agenda-setting as-

high exposure to the mass media.

individuals learn agendas from the mass media, it is reasonable to hypothesize
better learning among those most exposed.

Several small-scale studies conductedby McCombs, Shaw, and Shaw (1972) in North Ca olina documented a positive relationship between amount of exposure to a news medium and the level of agreement
its agenda of public issues.

withThis relationship has been_replicated by Agnir

976) using data from the Syracuse Sophomore Survey.

Causal Effects Across Time
Beyond specifying some of the conditions on which the appearance of agenda-

setting is contingent, what evidence is there of a direct causal link between press
coverage of issue._ -nd the public's agenda of issues?

Tipton, Haney and Baschart's(1_975) failure to find this causal evidence with a cross-lagged correlation analysis

of panel data from a Kentucky gubernatorial campaign may well have resulted fromof an inappropriate time lag.

To determine the appropriate time lag nnd the cumulative impact of the pressa,,:ross ti e Stone (1976; also

McCombs and Schulte, 1975;:cobs, Becker andWeaver, 1975) content analys d media agendas for the six months prior to the fieldwork of two public op nion surveys.

When the media agendas arc systematicallycorrelated with personal agendas, a striking pattern emerges.

In general, thecorrelations rapidly rise was we move hack in time from the intervie ing dates toa period about two months earlier.

Then from month two to month six prior to theinterviewing there is only a slight increase in the colations.

Beyond six

months prior to the interviewing, there is little correlation between press andpersonal agendas.

7

emulation
Using this knowled e of the time lag (and amount of(1976) examinedapparently involved in the agenda-setting process, McCombs

North Carolina
the agenda-setting effects of the mass media on Charlotte,

voters during thc 1972 presidential campaign.

Using a panel design andtime on voter
cross-lagged correlation, he consistently found effects acrossagendas by newspapers.

Ilowever, there was no evidence of a television effectmedia medium used for public affairs
a'ross time, suggesting that the massinformation may be an ther major contingent condition for the appearanceof agendasetting.
Newspapers Vs. Te -vision

One of the especially intriguing
setting resCRrCh is thequestions arising from agenda-

c1utVe efficacy of television and newsp,pers

in influencing personal agendas.

The original McCombs and Shaw study foundthe infl ence of television and newsl I_ s.
no significant differeices between
Shaw (1972)
But several later small-scale studies reported by VcCombs, Shaw, andsuggest that there may be differences under some condit ons.

In many instances,

correlathere were no differences at all in the strength of the ngenda-setting
tions.

'enever there were cliff°. ences, almost wIthout exception, thecorrelations with voters' agendas were higher for newsp,pers than for teleVisiOn.

These findings were replicated in the 1972 Charlottc Voter Study
where McCombs (1976) found strong effects acrost-Cme for the local news
papersbut not for network television.

The match between the tiowspaper

agenda and voters' agenda also was stronger du ing the early part of theHowever, I el cvi si on showed a hett or match

campaign.

I he voters' agenda

From thik evidence McCombs concluded that newspope__ -nd televisionin October.

play distinct roles in the shaping of the public agenda.
initial lead.

Newspapers take theBut in the latter stages of public opinion formation newspapers

share the stage, and television with its wide appeal seems to dominate.

Thislatter stage of agenda-setting is clearly one of sharing rather than reinforcement, noted McCombs.

His findings fro- the 1972 Presidential election essential

ly replicate those of the Tipton, Haney and Basehart (1975) study o_ a Kentucky
gubernatorial campaign.

While their evidence for the direction of effect wasquite mixed, there were consis ent strong correlations between the newspaper
agendas and personal agendas.

How ver, the correlat ons both across time andsyn ironouslybetween television agendas and personal agendas were w qk or evennegative.

This was the case even when the analysi

carried out separately

for survey respondents - o said they depended mainly on television for theirpolitical information.

Similar findings of an agenda-setting effect for newspapers, but not t

7_vision, have been reported by McClure and Patterson (1974 and 1976) from th
study of voters in Syracuse, New York during the 1972 Presidential campaign; byMinns (1973) from his study of young voters on the Unive--ity of No th Carolina
campus during the 1972 election; by Agnir (1976) from his study of Syracuse
sophomores; and by Wil_ia(1975) study of Tallahassee broadcast audiences

There are at least three potential explanation's for these preliminary

findings (McCombs and Boo1976):The uneven nature of the media compet tion in the city studied.
Demographic differences in the audiences for television and newspapers.
The nature of the medium itself.

8.

Agenda-Set-ing Models

There are many ways to describe the agenda-setting process.
version is the 0/1 or awareness model.
ness versus ignorance.

The simplest

Here the question is simply one of aware-This basic, primitive notion of agenda-setting is a truism.

If the media tell us nothing about a topic or event, then in most cases it simply
wi I not exist on our personal agendas or in our life space.

But the concept of agenda-setting--especially as empirically developed-urges a more detailed model: 0/1/2...N, namely that among the many topics ort ibutes transmitted by the media, the same basic distinctions as to priorities
will be transferred from the media agenda to the individual's agenda.
t amounts to this.

More simply

we judge as important what the media judge important.

media's priorities become our own.

This bolder hypothe

IN

The

!O one emphasized

in most of thc res arch to date.

Th_ e is, of course, a very finite limit to how far this prioriti s model
can be extended.

Somewhere around five, six, or seven is the likely cutoff point

for this 0/1/2. .N model of agenda-setting.

It is the magic number Seven plus orminus two revisited (Miller, 1956).
lnte medi te between the 0/I awareness and the 0/1/2...N priorities modelis an agenda-setting effect we might label salience.

This is the 0/1/2 model.

:

Heavy media emphasis on an issue or topic can move it into-the, top ranks of thepersonal agendas of the audience.
emphasized in the media.

This occurs only for a few items-constantly

A diSerimination is made by the audience as- tp high.and

low importance items, but the exact priorities of the media are.nart reprodUcedwl hin
personal agendas.
flmpirical comparisons of the salience and priorities mod l.s Imdicate that,.

overall, the more radical priorities model better describes the'litimetween voter
agendas and prass agendas °McCombs, 1976, using dati_lrom the 1972iCharlotte voter

study) and that the appropriate agenda-setting model for data analysis appears(Agnir, 1976) to interact with other theoretical variables, suchas the distinction between intra-personal and inter-personal agendas.

Personal Agendas

The influence process described by the agenda-setting function can beconceptualized in either
and Byrnes, 1974).

-tra-personal or inter-personal terms (McLeod, Becker

The intra-personal agenda consists of those issues that each

person considerspersonally most important while the inter-p rsonal agenda consistofthose issues that:ch person disc _ses most frequently with others.

A com-

parison of the two agendas shows considerable, but far from perfect, overlap in
the two agendas (McCombs, 1974)..

Agnir (1976) also found that the priorities

model of agenda-setting held only for interpersonal agendas -hile the saliencmodel correctly described both types of personal agendas.

The exact fit of eachtype of personal agenda to tle analysis models, medium used for public affairs
information, etc. are major questions for future11

earch.

10.

Objects and Attributes
In addition to thealiencc of a topic, issue, or person

the salience of their many attributes.

there is also

To what extent _s Our view of a stimulus
Consid-shaped or i-tluenced bythoseattributes which the media deem newsworthy?

eration of agenda-setting in terms of the corresponding saliences.of both 'epics
and attributes allows the concept to subsume similar ideas presented in the past.

The concepts of status-conferral, stereotyping, and image-making all deal withthe salience of stimuli and their attributes.

(See McCoinbs and Shaw, 1974; McCombs

and Bowers, 1976)

Two recent studies have documented the agenda-setting influence of thepress on the perc ived attributes of public issues as well as on the overall setof issues that are salient to voters.

Cohen (1975) exa '--d the attributes of a

local erivironmental issue in Indiana

while Benton and Frazier (1975) studied thesalient attributes of a national issue, the economy, among Minneapolis resid nts.

Specifically comparing the agenda-setting ineluence of television andnewspapers, Benton and Frazier (1975) conceptualized tl .ee levels of ,genda-setting.
At level one where most agenda-setting research h..

focused is a set of broad iss-es.

Levels two and three concern the attributes of this issue.

The second level con-si its of sub-issues, including specific problems, causes, and proposed solutions.

At level three is specif c information about these sub-such as If_

and conarguments for the proposed solutions or people and groups con'nected with the proposed solutions.

At both levels of the

ributes of a major public issue, the economy, the_newspaper sets the agenda for newspaper readers-._ Televislon did not ipfluencethe-salience of attributes of the economic issue _among.television. respondents,
aga n.po nting up the need-for comparative media rose rch on .the lea n. ng process

11.

involVed. in agenda-setting.

To date the research also has concentrated on public issues with little
distinction among different types of issues.

Agendas usually have been consideredButsolely in terms of the "major" issues of the moment regardless of content.

local versus national,

public issues can be arrayed along numerous dimensions:the personally-close versus thedistant, emotional versus abstract, etc.

It

not likely that the agenda-setting funct on of the mass media is concerned equallywith all types of issues c.etoris paribus.
.

The sal ence of some types of issues on

personal agendas are likely to show significant me ia influence while others show
little or no such influ nce.

Furthermore, InteraLtions between types of. issues,-and other agenda-setting variables are highly likely.

A promIsing start in thisdirection is Sanders and Atwood's (1975) examination.of changes in Illinois voters'
cognitive maps during the 1972 campaign.

Even a cursory cxiinintion of the ebb and flow of dlffLrcnct public opinion
items in our recent history reveals great varrition in the natural 'history of issues,

Public concern over Vietnam built slowly over many years.

WatLrgite took ever six

Months to establish itself as a matter of great concern.

Other issuos like theonergy crisis appear.luite vickly on agendas.
.sues

Distinctions nthong-the ty0es

and especiaily how.publIc affairs topics come to he perceived as "isilics"_

are key, forspelling.out the agenda-setting function of the mass)media.
ey, 1 76)

(See -

12.

Domains for Research
Agenda-setting resea ch, _ike political communica ion research general
has concentrated on presidential elections.

However, the e are studies inother political communication areas which at least demonstrate the potential

value of the agenda-setting concept in those settings.

Tipton, Haney and Baschart(1975) have the only voter study not focusing on the national elections.

Whilefocusing his attention on the national elections, Bowers (1973 and 1976; also
see Shaw and Bowers, 1973 and McCombs and Rowe,1976) iv- concentrated On theagenda-setting infl Aloe of political advertising.

Several of the other studies cited Above have used the agend--serting
concept for non-election studies of public opinion: Benton and Frazier's (1975)
study of the economic issue; Cohem's (1975) study of.a local environmental controversy; Martin's (1976) study of opinions toward Vietnam, drugs, and student

unrest; and Mullins' (1973) study of public opinion aftiong college students.

In

yet another political communicat_on setting, Gormley (1975) examined the influence -of newspaper agendas,on North Carolina legislators; and in a qualitative

fashion Cohen (1963) examined

the reciprocal agenda-setting influence of key

new makers and journalists in Washington.

Finally, McCombs and Schult(1975)

have extended the concept to a number of international communication topics.

13.
Concepand Theories

Tn the four years since publ ca_ion of the original McCombs and Shaw
(1972) study there has been a proliferation of research.

The basic relation-

ship asserted by the concept of agenda-setting has been frequently replicated,
and a host of new related concepts have been added to the political communication literature.

I would term this the copc_spt construction and tosting

phase of agenda-setting research.

New concepts relevant to the basic idea ofagenda-setting have been put forth and initial empirical evidence reported demostrating their ability todiscriminate patterns of human behavior.

For exaMple,

McCombs and Weaver (1973) conceptually linked psychological need for orientation
to the agenda-setting process and demonstrated significant differences in media
use and, to a lesser degree, agenda-sett.ing,influence of the media among votersdiffering in need fo- orientation.

Like the vast majority of social science re-search the hard evidenco remains at the level of bivariate statements.

We canspeculate about the existence of this theoretical sequence of variables:

Need forUse ofMatch between

Orientation

Mass MediaMedia & Personal Agendas.

But the evidence-to' date does not empirically asse t this sequence.

studies can be designed to yield three-variable statements.

Of course,

14.

Rut even th- --variable st _ements fall short of moving us from concept conction and testiga.

struction and testing into full-fledged theory c_ns

Thedistinct difference between the two can be succinctly described by the analogy
of a jigsaw puzzle.

Concepts represent the discrete pieces of the puzzle; bi-variate and limited multi-variatc statements are equivalent to a few pieces
linked together.

At hest, scattered pieces hint at interesting patt 'Its, but

are far less than the full picture.

A theory is the full picture, or at least

the major portions of such a picture.

At the present time we clearly remain in the concept construction
ing phase of agenda-setting research.

Thts is not so surprising.

is a very new concept in a young field of scholarship.

and test-

Agenda-setting

Considering the shortof concepts
span of time involved, therelm b--n a rich and rapid aec-mulationand empirical evidence.

Fu the -ore, socIal scIence generally has not moved

into the theory phase.

These are only a handful of,comprehensive behavioral

theories in the literature wIth strong empirical backing.

However, agenda-

ing research promises to yield theoretical payoffs.

Research Strategies.

In moving toward the theory construction and testing phase of agenda-setting

esearch two very different strategies will prove to-be important.
strategies are:Matrix building approachando -Hypothetico-Deduc

These researchWhile the hypothet

o-deduve :ippro:ich is the textbook mod-0, t he matrix-build-ing approach is the medal behavioral pattern in social science rcscarch.
Cont nuing our earli"need for orientation" example, imagine a 6 X 6 mat ix

defined by these six variables:level of need for oentation; level of mass com-munication exposure; nature of the personal agenda; intra/inter-personal; andmass medilm used; television or newspapers.

While the original example encompassed

only three bivartate statements of relationship, our larger matrix incorporating
the conceptual contributions reviewed above now encorporates 15 bivariate statements of relationship.

For at least six of the bivariate statements specified by

the matrix there is no empirical data at alli

None of the multi-va

to state-

ments specified by the matrix have been examined empirically.
Since a theoretical description of the agenda-settIng process
theory of agenda-setting as contrasted

hat i_

to the concept of agenda-setting) should

encompass the full scope of concepts or variables defining the matrix and incorporate the significant relationships specified within the matrix
empi ical work remains to be done.

considerable

Even at the bivariate level many of thelationships remain empirIcally unspecified, much less replicated.

From the con-cepts and variables in the literature review above one could easily d aw up a
10 X 10 matrix of the agenda-setting process.

That would be 45 cells or pigeon-holes to be filled in by empirical investigations.

To date there are large

numbers of empty cells or cells where only a single study can be cited as evidence.

16.

A

Given the large number of yet empty cells (read "- search opportunities"
many scholars at varying levels of sophistication and with vastly different rerch interests can profitably add to the array of evidence on agenda-setting.
It especially means an opportunity for young scholars with limited financial_ources to contribute major piec-- of empirical evidence.
=

By zeroing in on

single unexplored cell, a'tightly designed survey, for ex mple, could mapthat cell with only a handful of questions.

Matrix building, the slow accretion of empirical evidence by numerous investigators in the modal pattern of mass communication research.
to whom the slowness of this strategy in

But for thoseriving at a real theory of agenda-

setting is frustrating, the classical hypothetico-deductive approach is recommende
this strategy the scholar assumes--on the basis of intuition, informed

speculation about likely relationships, creative insight, or whatever-7the basic
outlines of a theory.

The hypothetical relationships believed to be most impor-tant arc asserted and put to empirical test.

On a smaller scale the assertionand testing of bivariate hypotheses follows,this sanie stra egy.

But many bivari-11

ate investigations do not (or can not) hypoth size precise relationships and.
settle for simply mapping what turns up.
.

While matrix building and the hypothetico-deductive method are similar (andperhaps identical in outcome) at the concept construction:arWtesting phase, they.are quite different in theory construction and testing.

alb it systematic, expiorat on of the matrix

place_of-the slow,

the hypothetico-deductive appioach

17.

ively and insightfully sp cd up the appearance of useful, comprehensive the_ry by spotlighting and gambling, if you will, on a few key elements.

Mat ix building is a cons_ Native, but sure, strategy that will pay

time if enough scholars persIst.

The alternative is a venturesome strategy

that runs the risk of very small dividends on the Investment made, but offers
the excitement and allure of major breakthroughs

Re_--ences

AGNIR, F.

(1976) "Testing new approaches to agenda-setting:extension," in McCOMBS, M. and G. STONE (cdsa replication andStudies in Agenda-setting.

Newhouse Communications Research Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse.

ARNOLD, D. and D. GOLD (1964) "The facilitation effect of social environment."
Publ c Opinion Quarterly 28, 3:513-516.

BENTON, M. and P. S. FRAZIER (1975) "The agenda-setting function of the mass media
at three levels of info mation-holding."

Presented tei the Association for

Education in lournalis-_, Ottawa, Canada.

LAZARSFELD, and W. McPHEE -(1954 ) Voting. -Chicago:

BERELSON, B.,

University of

Chicago Press.

BOWERS, T. A. (1973) "Newspaper political advertising and the agenda-setting function."

BOWERS

Journalism Quarterly 50:552-556.

T. A. (1976) "Candidate advertising, or The agenda is the message," in

SHAW, DL

and M. E. McCOMBS (eds.)-The Emergence ofTublic issues (book inprogress).

COHEN, B. C. (1963) The Press, the Public and Foreign Policy.

Princeton:

ton University Press.

COD. (1975) "A report on a non-election agends7setting study.

the Associa ion for Education in Journalism Ottawa, Canada.

Prince-References - 2

DONOUUE, F. A., P. J. TICI1EN0R and C. N. °LIMN (1975) "Mass media and the kn. legegap:

considered."a hypothesis

FUNKUOUSER, G. R.

(1973) "The issues of the sixties:

23.

an exploratory.-study in

Public Opinion Quarterly 37:62-75.

the dynamics of public opinion."

FUNKHOUSER, G. R.

Communication Research 2.

(1973) "Trends in media cov-rage of the issues of the sixties."

Journalism Quarterly 50:533-538.

GORMLEY, W. T.

(1975) "Newspaper agendas and political elis.'Journalism Quar-

terly 52:304-308.

LIPPMANN, W. (1922) Public Opinion.

New York:

Macmillan.

MARTIN, S. A. (1976 ) "Youth unrest on the national agenda:

studyIng a decade Of

public opinion," in McCOMBS, M. and G. STONE (EDS.) Studies in Agenda-setting.'
Newhou3e Comm nicat ons Research Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse.

MeCLURE, R. D. and T. E. PATTERSON (1974) "Agenda-setting:paper and television network news.

comparison of news-

Presented to the conference on The

Agenda-setting Function of ManS Communications, Syracuse University

New Yorlu.

(aisoseePATrF.RSON and McCLURE, 1976.)

McCOMBS, M. E. (1967) "Editorial endorsements:

a study of influence."

Journalism

Quarterly 44:549-548.

McCOMBS, M. E. (1974) "A comparison of in ra-personal and inter-personal agendas
public issues."

Presented to the International Communication Association

New Orleans, Louisiana.

References -McCOMBS, M. E. (1976) "Mass communication effects across time" in SHAW, D.

and M. E. McCOMBS

L.

(eds.) The Emergence of Public Issues (book in progress

McCOMBS, M. E., L. BECKER, and D. WEAVER (1975) "Measuring the cumulative agendasetting influence of the mass media."Posented to the Mass. communication

Aivision, Speech Communication Association, Houston, Texas.

McCOMBS, M. E. apd T. BOWERS (1976) "Television and decisionmaking about potitics
and purchases" in COMSTOCK,t al. (eds.) The Fifth Season:sion Influences Human Behavior.

Santa Monica, Calif.:

How Televi-

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