Agenda-setting research produced contradictory cross-sectional findings about media influence

Evidence

In a pioneering study that others quickly copied, McCombs and Shaw (1972) found that the political problems voters thought most important were indeed those given greatest attention in their media. This apparently successful demonstration, based on a cross-sectional comparison between the media’s priorities and the aggregated priorities of uncommitted voters in one community, set off a torrent of research. The cumulative result has been considerable confusion. Opinion divides over whether media effects have been demonstrated at all; over the relative power of television versus newspapers in setting the public’s agenda; and over the causal direction of the relation between the public’s judgments and the media’s priorities. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1443

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why would cross-sectional agenda-setting studies produce context-dependent and contradictory results — what methodological or theoretical assumptions were at stake?