2000/08/01 by Dietram A. Scheufele · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Climate Change Communication and Perception #Social Media and Politics #Media Studies and Communication
paper · doi:10.1207/s15327825mcs0323_07
openalex publication_date 2000/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Agenda-setting, priming, and framing research generally has been examined under the broad category of cognitive media effects. As a result, studies often either examine all 3 approaches in a single study or employ very similar research designs, paying little attention to conceptual differences or differences in the levels of analysis under which each approach is operating. In this article, I revisit agenda-setting, priming, and framing as distinctively different approaches to effects of political communication. Specifically, I argue against more recent attempts to subsume all 3 approaches under the broad concept of agenda-setting and for a more careful explication of the concepts and of their theoretical premises and roots in social psychology and political psychology. Consequently, it calls for a reformulation of relevant research questions and a systematic categorization of research on agenda-setting, priming, and framing. An analytic model is developed that should serve as a guideline for future research in these areas.