A test of media-centered agenda setting: newspaper content and public interests in a presidential election

Research findings refute the common view that the media set election agendas. Researchers examined the issues which candidates in the 1992 presidential election wanted to raise, and they looked at how public interests affected this planned agenda. Newspapers are important intermediaries in this process, but analysis of US newspapers from the time of the election indicated that the messages of all the candidates were well-represented, and that coverage was not dictated by editorial endorsements. Election agenda-setting may, instead, be a process involving transaction between all interested parties.