Who Sets the Agenda? Parties and Media Competing for the Electorate's Main Topic of Political Discussion.

According to the thesis of the agenda setting function, both the media and the political parties influence what people think about, if not what they think. Newspaper and television editors make judgements of news priorities, the judgements of one editor influence the views of another, and the result is a media consensus that affects the public's sense of the importance of various issues. Parties' formulation of preferences and priorities through their manifestos aims at promoting each party's proprietary issues and downgrading other issues; this clearly turns the electorate's attention to specific topics. This paper explores the extent to which voters, political parties, and media in Britain share the same issue concerns and reveals which of the two--parties or media--is better at influencing what the public is talking about. Content analyses of party manifestos and press coverage of the 2001 election campaign identify the issues most strongly emphasized by the parties and the press, respectively. Analysis of survey data from the British Election Study 2001/2002 identifies the issues voters are mostly concerned with and enables public opinion's issue concerns to be related to both party manifestos and the press coverage of the campaign. The paper also tests whether the political priorities of British parties are adopted by their own supporters, it explores the extent to which voters are concerned with issues that are not emphasized by the party they vote for, and finally, it explores which party's issues dominated the public agenda in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]