Agenda-setting hypotheses inform political communications studies of media influence
(public agenda-setting), as well as examinations of the policymaking process (policy agenda-setting).
In both cases, studies concentrate on the salience of issues on actors' agendas, and
the dynamic process through which these agendas change and effect each other. The results,
narrowly conceived, offer a means of observing media effects or the policy process. Broadly
conceived, agenda-setting analyses speak to the nature of relationships between major actors
in a political system.
This study differs from most past agenda-setting research in several ways. First, this project
draws together public and policy agenda-setting work to build a more comprehensive model
of the expanded agenda-setting process. Secondly, the modeling makes no assumptions
about the directions of causal influence - econometric methods are used to establish
causality, allowing for a more nuanced and accurate model of issue dynamics.
Quantitative evidence is derived from a longitudinal dataset (1985-1995) including the
following: a content analysis of Canadian newspapers (media agenda), 'most important
problem' results from all available commercial polls (public agenda), and measures of
attention to issues in Question Period, committees, Throne Speeches, government spending,
and legislative initiatives (policy agenda). Data is collected for eight issues: AIDS, crime,
debt/deficit, environment, inflation, national unity, taxation, and unemployment. The present
study, then, is well situated to add unique information to several ongoing debates in agenda-setting
studies, and provide a bird's eye view of the media-public-policy dynamics in
Canadian politics.
Many hypotheses are introduced and tested. Major findings include: (1) there is a Canadian
national media agenda; (2) the salience of issues tends to rise and fall simultaneously across
Canada, although regional variation exists based on audience attributes and issue
obtrusiveness; (3) there is no adequate single measure of the policy agenda - government
attention to issues must be measured at several points, and these tend to be only loosely
related; (4) the agenda-setting dynamics of individual issues are directly and systematically
related to attributes such as prominence and duration; (5) Canadian media and public agendas
can be affected by the US media agenda.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11201 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Soroka, Stuart Neil |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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