Suchergebnisse

Erste Ergebnisse einer Untersuchung zur Themenstrukturierungswirkung der Massenmedien werden dargestellt. Die Daten stammen aus einer Panelbefragung der Wahlbevölkerung zur ersten Direktwahl des Europäischen Parlaments 1979. Die Umfrage ist Teil einer international vergleichend angelegten Multi-Methoden-Studie. In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland wurden 459 Wahlberechtigte Personen dreimal zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten vor und nach der Wahl interviewt. Ziel des Projektes war es, die Rolle der Medien in einer weitgehend umstrukturierten politischen Situation zu untersuchen. Als besonders wichtige Ergebnisse werden herausgehoben: Die individuelle Ordnung der Themen nach der persönlichen Betroffenheit wird offenbar durch massenmediale Information mittlerer Komplexität verändert. Der Umfang der Mediennutzung hängt mit den Themeneinstufungen deutlich stärker zusammen als etwa das Alter, die Schulbildung oder Grad des politischen Interesses. (BO)

Zunächst werden die Wirkungsannahmen herausgearbeit, die mit der Agenda-Setting-Hypothese verknüpft sind. Es handelt sich dabei um ein kausales, medienzentriertes Wirkungskonzept, das voll in der Tradition der klassischen Medienwirkungsforschung steht. Es unterstellt, daß die Selektionsprozesse in den Massenmedien die Umweltwahrnehmung der Mediennutzer steuern. Das Problem der empirischen Überprüfung dieser Annahmen wird kurz behandelt. Die Kritik des Agenda-Setting-Konzepts wird an der Stelle vertieft, an der es um die Frage geht, welche Bedeutung das Medienpublikum für das Eintreten oder Ausbleiben des Medieneffektes hat. Die Tragfähigkeit der Hypothese wird vor dem Hintergrund ihrer Rezeption im deutschsprachigen Raum, insbesondere im Kontext der Schweigespiralen-Hypothese, erörtert. (BO2)

Three factors lead to the hypothesis that agenda-setting should be weaker at the local political level compared to the national level: (1) the more directly observable nature of local political problems, (2) the nature and strength of local interpersonal political communication networks, and (3) the relatively heavier media coverage of national political issues. This hypothesis was supported with data from respondents assigned at random to either local or national issue conditions and from a content analysis of television and newspaper coverage in Toledo, Ohio, of local and national issues. Contrary to the findings of certain previous studies, network television was found to exercise a stronger agenda-setting influence than newspapers at the national level. Newspapers, on the other hand, were the dominant agenda-setter at the local level. The relative agenda-setting influences of television versus newspapers are consistent with other data from this study concerning the relative strengths of the various media as sources of issue information.

A comparison of front page New York Times content & national PO from 1954 to 1976 showed strong agenda-setting effects for the civil rights issue. The optimal effect span was the 4- to 6-week period immediately prior to fieldwork. These data contradict previous findings & assertions about cumulative media effect over a longer period of time. 1 Table. AA.

While the MM are probably not instrumental in changing pol'al att's during a campaign, voters do learn from the information available in the media. It is hyp'ed that in providing pol'al information the MM set the agenda for the campaign, influencing the salience of att's toward the pol'al issues. 100 voters who initially told interviewers they had not yet definitely decided how to vote in the upcoming 1968 Presidential election were interviewed. Their response to open ended questions asking each R to outline the key campaign issues as he saw them, were coded into 15 categories representing the key issues & other kinds of campaign news. Concurrently, those media known to provide most MM pol'al information to these voters were content analyzed using the same categories. While less than perfect, there is a high degree of consensus among media about the signif issues of the campaign. The rank-order r between the emphasis on the campaign issues by the composite of the media & voters' independent judgments of what were the more important issues was +.967. Judgments of voters who had a preference for one party but did not feel fully committed usually show a higher r with issues reflected in all news than with issues reflected only in news of their party, casting doubt on the process of selective perception. R's whose judgments on important issues show high salience of affect (that is, a strong feeling of liking or disliking), are not likely to recall acquiring recent pol'al information, esp if they have high pol'al interest; but people with high pol'al interest & low salience of affect towards issues did recall acquiring pol'al information. AA.

"The author argues that after a decade of empirical studies on media agenda-setting, debate is centered not so much on whether there is media influence on public agendas (there seems to be considerable support for such an influence, at least at the group level), but rather on the contingent conditions that make for more or less of this influence. The evidence from several recent studies is reviewed in light of three emerging positions on agenda-setting: (1) The media are both necessary and sufficient in setting public agendas. (2) The media are necesaary, but not sufficient, in setting public agendas. (3) The media are neither necessary nor sufficient in setting public agendas. It is argued that there is much support from the recent research for the position that the media are often both necessary and sufficient for increasing the salience of just-emerging, largely unobtrusive issues for certain groups of the general public; some support for the position that the media are necessary, if not sufficient, in generating new issues; and least support for the position that the media are neither necessary nor sufficient in setting public agendas." (author's abstract)

Voters probably do not take a series of relevant issues into consideration but rather vote on the basis of the few issues that happen to be on their minds at the moment of the decision. Issue salience, i.e. the availability of issue-schema's, is to a certain extent determined by the political communication during the election campaign. A content analysis of the debates during the 1991 campaign shows that the socio-economic issues, the ethnic issue and the immigrant issue were on top of the agenda. A similar analysis of the party political broadcasts and the ads in the national newspapers indicates that the parties tried to focus the campaign on the socio-economie issues (christian-democrats, socialists), the functioning of the political system (socialists, liberals) and to a much lesser extent on the environmental issue (greens) and the communal issue (left-wing and right-wing Flemish nationalists). Only the latter nationalist party attempted to prime the immigrant issue. Survey data show that this issue was exceptionally salient in the electorate, as were the ethnic issue and the political system issue.