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Agenda Setting in a 2.0World: New Agendas inCommunicationGuy J. Golanaa S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications atSyracuse UniversityPublished online: 10 Sep 2014.

To cite this article: Guy J. Golan (2014) Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World: New Agendasin Communication, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 58:3, 476-477, DOI:10.1080/08838151.2014.935946

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2014.935946

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Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World: NewAgendas in Communication

Guy J. Golan

Johnson, T. J. (2013). Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World: New Agendas inCommunication. New York, NY: Routledge. 289 pages.

Four decades of agenda setting scholarship have yielded hundreds of empirical

studies that tested and supported the transfer of issue salience from the media

to the public agenda as predicted by the original McCombs and Shaw (1972)

study. Over the years, agenda setting scholarship evolved into five main areas

of investigation: the original hypothesis, attribute agenda setting, its contingent

conditions, the sources of the media agenda, and its consequences (McCombs,

2005). Recently, some scholars have argued that the diffusion of online and social

media platforms may necessitate a reexamination of the basic nature of agenda

setting in the modern era.

Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World, edited by University of Texas professor Thomas

Johnson, includes a dozen chapters written by a relatively new generation of agenda

setting researchers, including widely published scholars such as Sebastian Valen-

zuela, Sharon Meraz, and Matthew Ragas. As noted by the editor, the content of

the book was gathered from a 2011 agenda setting conference that was held at the

University of Texas in honor of Professor Max McCombs.

The rationale for the book is to provide a much needed examination of the agenda

setting process in response to the new media environment that potentially reshaped

the mediaaudience relationship. As noted by Johnson in the introduction and later

by Tran (chapter 10), there is a growing body of literature that examines agenda

setting and the Internet. Several of the contributors argued for the need to examine

the influence of social media and the Internet on the agenda setting process along

with the modern online media ecology.

As noted by Johnson, the book focuses on six different areas including social

media and Web sites, the contingent conditions of agenda setting, agenda setting

Guy J. Golan (Ph.D., University of Florida) is associate professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of PublicCommunications at Syracuse University. His research focuses on international and political communications.

2014 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 58(3), 2014, pp. 476477DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2014.935946 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online

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Golan/BOOK REVIEW: AGENDA SETTING IN A 2.0 WORLD 477

outside of political communications, the different levels of agenda setting, issue

salience, and behavioral consequences. As such, most book chapters have little in

common with one another beyond the inclusion of the agenda setting concept and

the Internet case studies. Collectively, the book lacks a comprehensive theoretical

focus. This key limitation is common to many edited volumes in the field of mass

communication.

Regardless, I found the research outlined in the book to be interesting. For ex-

ample, building upon his previous scholarship, Valenzuelas chapter provides an

important discussion of the psychological processes that impact the transfer of

salience between the news media and the public agenda.

Additionally, Lei Guos chapter discusses the so-called third-level of agenda

setting. Based on a network analysis perspective, the chapter identifies a combined

object-attribute saliency transfer to the public agenda that differs from the linear first

and second level saliency transfer model. Adding to a limited number of published

studies on the third-level of agenda setting, Guos chapter provides an important

contribution to theory building in the field.

As the field of agenda setting research moves ahead, scholars must tackle some of

its key limitations. Trans chapter provides an important discussion of the suggested

causation (the transfer of issue salience from the media to the public agenda) based

on simple correlational tests. The authors call for time-series and experimental

design was well argued and supported by his review of existing literature. Missing

from the book (with the exception of Guos chapter) was an in-depth discussion of

the potential use of network analysis as a key method for agenda setting research

in a 2.0 media landscape.

Overall, Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World provides a fresh discussion of significant

research issues and opportunities that face modern agenda setting scholarship. This

book is recommended to graduate students who would like to explore the various

facets of agenda setting research and to mass communication scholars at large.

References

McCombs, M. (2005). A look at agenda-setting: Past, present and future. Journalism Studies,6, 543557.

McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. PublicOpinion Quarterly, 36, 176187.

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