Media agenda setting works through covert evaluation, not information recall

Evidence

To summarize, agenda setting is strengthened to the degree audience members fail to counterargue. Agenda setting appears to be mediated, not by the information viewers recall, but by the covert evaluations triggered by the news presentations. Those with little political information to begin with are most vulnerable to agenda setting. The well informed resist agenda setting through effective counterarguing, a maneuver not so available to the less informed. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1493

Categorization

• XREF: Extends elaboration-likelihood and cognitive-response models of persuasion to agenda setting, and connects to the differential vulnerability of low-knowledge audiences in the knowledge gap hypothesis literature. — connects to: Information acquisition and covert evaluation are competing mediators of agenda setting. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 1449
• SEED: An essay angle: the counterarguing asymmetry as a mechanism of political inequality — the well-informed actively resist media frames while the naive absorb them, meaning media effects are regressive, concentrating influence among the already vulnerable.