Most research on Agenda Setting in the Media has focused on traditional print, so how does this all fit in with on-line viewing of the mass media.
It is fairly obvious when reading a paper what the prominent and frequently covered articles are. Those in the first section of the paper, bold headlines and stories stemming from these. With on-line news sites this is not the case. The stories are there but due to space constraints and organisation of issues into interest groups they do not always jump out at the reader.
Therefore the First Level of Agenda Setting of what the public should focus on or issue salience is brought into question. The research by Scott L Althaus and David Tewksbury, Agenda Setting and the “New” News, 2002 states, "Our findings confirm that online news media facilitate greater individual control over news exposure and that this greater control leads online readers to focus on different kinds of information and to develop different perceptions of important problems than audiences of printed newspapers."
Agenda Setting and the "New" News
So where does this leave the future of Agenda Setting in the media? As Toshio Takeshita in his research, Current Critical Problems in Agenda-Setting Research, 2005 says, "..., if more and more people quit reading the print version and switch to online news, the agenda-setting power of the press will gradually wither." and further weaknesses will have to be added to the theory.
Current Critical Problems in Agenda-Setting Research
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