Agenda Setting Online: Interaction of Newspaper Content and User Feedback.

This paper investigates how newspaper web site feedback interacts with the media agenda, and the role that this form of public response plays in the agenda-setting process. By examining how media and public agendas interact through Internet feedback opportunities over a two-week period, this paper looks at the gap in knowledge about online agenda setting after media agendas are built but before long-term agenda-setting effects take hold.Results indicate that media demonstrated a powerful and immediate influence on the public from day to day. On a consistent daily basis, stories presented as important in both the print and online editions of the paper corresponded with stories on which web site users offered the most comments. Yet the dynamic between media and public agendas yielded more complicated and less consistent results over time. These findings provide a preliminary step toward a better understanding of how media and public agendas develop and interact online. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]