International Communication Gazette 2010 Lee 759 76
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International Communication
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DOI: 10.1177/1748048510380814
2010 72: 759International Communication GazetteGunho Lee
effects on primingWho let priming out? Analysis of first- and second-level agenda setting
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Article
Who let priming out?Analysis of first- andsecond-level agendasetting effects onpriming
Gunho LeeEwha Womans University, Korea
AbstractThis study examines the first- and second-level agenda setting process and primingeffects in the same experimental setting. Specifically, it explores the association betweenthe two levels of agenda setting effects and priming effects. The main purpose of thestudy is to determine which of the two agenda setting effects better explains primingeffects by using the global warming issue as the target object. By exposing three groupsof subjects, respectively, to three kinds of pseudo online newspaper (High, Medium andNo Exposure) stimuli, the experiment found that even if there were two levels of agendasetting and priming effects detected, second-level agenda setting effects were moreclosely connected to priming effects. With regard to the relationship between agendasetting and priming effects, it is recommended that various issues beyond the environ-ment issue, which this study took, and their attributes should be tested in order to fur-ther understand media effects.
Keywordsagenda setting, attribute, first level, framing, global warming, issue, media effects, priming,second level
Corresponding author:
Gunho Lee, #612 Ewha-Posco B/D, Division of Media Studies, College of Social Sciences, Ewha Womans
University, 11-1 Daehyun-Dong, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul, 120-750, Korea
Email: [email protected]
the InternationalCommunication Gazette
72(8) 759–776ª The Author(s) 2010
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Introduction
Since the seminal agenda setting effects research of McCombs and Shaw (1972), the
agenda setting theory has evolved through methodological challenges and theoretical
convergence (Takeshita, 2005). Among such challenges and convergence, the introduc-
tion of priming effects into the agenda setting realm was believed to be a prominent
opportunity to broaden its theoretical boundary (McCombs, 2004). McCombs argued
that priming effects shed light on the hidden values of the agenda setting theory, which
originally focused on the cognitive aspects of the media’s influence on the public
agenda. With priming effects, he insisted that the agenda setting theory can explain how
people form their opinions about certain issues.
Initially, priming effects were considered to be linked to first-level agenda setting
effects, which dealt with the salience transfer of issues or objects from the media to the
public (Iyengar and Kinder, 1987). Iyengar and Kinder’s work, which was believed to
illuminate the relationship between agenda setting and priming, highlighted the role
of selected information in influencing people’s judgement standards. While the agenda
setting theory evolved, another element caught scholars’ attention — salience transfer of
attributes. Attributes refer to the particular characteristics of issues or objects (Ghanem,
1997; Kiousis et al., 1999; McCombs et al., 2000). The salience transfer of attributes
from the media to the public was conceptualized as second-level agenda setting
effects. While it has been studied for its theoretical and conceptual validation (Price and
Tewksbury, 1997; Scheufele, 2000), its relationship with priming effects has also been
explored (Kim et al., 2002). The role of priming in association with the two levels of
agenda setting effects was synthesized as the function of shaping the strength and the
direction of public opinion (McCombs, 2004).
McCombs’ typology for agenda setting and priming associates the first level with
opinion strength, and the second level with opinion direction. However, the explanation
of the connection seems to be mixed in with some complicated ideas. According to his
typology, although opinion formation is a synthetic work of strength and direction, these
seem to work independently. When the typology explains the media’s role in shaping
opinion strength, it seems to disregard the direction of opinion and vice versa. It may
be right ‘abstractly’, but it is dubious if we can distinguish strength from direction with
regard to priming theory. In the discipline of psychology, the strength and direction of
opinion are not usually distinguished (Goethals and Nelson, 1973; Hilmert et al.,
2006; Jones and Gerard, 1967; Suls et al., 2000). Opinion is supposed to have direction,
and the strength of an opinion can be measured by how far the opinion goes in a certain
direction. In other words, the strength of an opinion is innately involved with its direc-
tion, or simply put, its strength cannot be thought of without considering its direction
(Johnson, 2003; Zimmerman and Kitsantas, 2002).
As explained in McCombs’ typology, opinion formation can consist of strength and
direction. Strength and direction, however, may not be independent of each other as
McCombs argued, but are instead interdependent with regard to priming effects. The fol-
lowing question then arises: if strength and direction work interdependently, which of
the first- and second-level agenda setting effects has a closer relationship with priming
effects indicating the media’s influence on people’s opinion? To answer this question,
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this article explores the links between first-level agenda and priming effects and between
second-level agenda and priming effects together in an experimental setting in order to
determine which of the two levels induce priming effects. For the experimental approach
that this article undertook, pseudo online newspapers were used. The author hopes that
the simultaneous examination of the three kinds of media effects in an experiment, which
is a rare case, will help understand the media function.
Theoretical background
Agenda setting effects
In the years after the Chapel Hill study (McCombs and Shaw, 1972), the core agenda
setting literature focused on the fundamental maxim, ‘Elements prominent in the mass
media’s picture of the world influence the prominence of those elements in the audi-
ence’s picture’ (McCombs et al., 2000: 77). This was simply called ‘salience transfer’.
Throughout the development of the theory, the elements have been mainly summarized
into two categories – the first level (focusing on issues or objects) and the second level
(focusing on issue attributes).
First-level agenda setting proposes that if the media give importance to certain
issues in their reporting, then the audience will perceive these issues as important too.
First-level agenda setting effects are originally focused on political issues. In relation
to this, McCombs and Shaw’s (1972) seminal study examined the correlation between
the 1968 presidential election news coverage and the voters’ thinking, and several sub-
sequent studies followed a similar track (Shaw and McCombs, 1977; Weaver et al.,
1981). Even adopting more complicated concepts and methods, many other agenda set-
ting studies dealt with political events (Ansolabehre et al., 1993; Harrison et al., 1991;
King, 1997). The theory, however, made a huge leap in explaining media effects when
the research topic was diversified into various issues. Examining non-political issues like
living costs, unemployment and so on, Zucker (1978) argued that agenda setting effects
could not take place everywhere, but that the effects would depend on the degree of the
issue’s obtrusiveness. Yagade and Dozier (1990) insisted that the abstractness influenced
the size of agenda setting effects. A piece of research dealing with the civil rights issue
boosted the studies on the time lag of agenda setting effects (Winter and Eyal, 1981),
while a crime issue study pointed out the difference between reality and media presenta-
tion (Ghanem, 1996).
With the first-level study being the initial point of agenda setting research, the second-
level study on attributes had been there as the seed for its theoretical development (Shaw
and McCombs, 1977). Second-level agenda setting came to light when scholars began to
ask how the various attributes of an issue can be transferred from the media to the public
(Golan and Wanta, 2001; Kim et al., 2002; Kiousis et al., 1999; McCombs et al., 2000).
In agenda setting theory, attributes are defined as ‘characteristics and traits that fill out
the picture of each object’ (McCombs et al., 2000: 78). Regarding media messages, attri-
butes are also referred as ‘the set of perspectives or frames that journalists and the public
employ to think about each object’ (Ghanem, 1997: 5). In short, attributes are certain fea-
tures of objects or issues. Second-level agenda setting suggests that certain attributes
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depicted in the media message are accentuated over other elements, and in turn, the
attributes depicted in the media influence the public’s perception of issues.
Taking attributes into its realm of theory, agenda setting was able to explain media
effects as not only telling people what to think but also telling them how to think. In par-
ticular, the introduction of the substantive and affective dimensions of attributes to
second-level agenda setting studies helped theories explain in detail how people perceive
issues (McCombs et al., 2000). Although there are other arguments urging the further
development of the dimensions of attributes (Ghanem, 1997), these two main dimen-
sions were discussed as the fundamental aspects of attributes (Kiousis et al., 1999). The
substantive dimension is defined as ‘the characteristics of news that help us cognitively
structure news and discern among various topics’ (Kiousis et al., 1999: 417). Meanwhile,
affective attributes are the factors drawing emotional responses from the audience
(Kiousis et al., 1999; McCombs et al., 2000). These two dimensions are believed to
involve people’s opinion direction (McCombs, 2004). Additionally, the idea to tell how
to think about widened the range of theoretical explanation from agenda setting into the
territory of priming, which proposes the media’s influence on the audience’s evaluative
dimension in connection with the world outside (Kim et al., 2002).
Priming in conjunction with agenda setting effects
Priming refers to ‘the process in which the media attend to some issues and not others
and thereby alter the standards by which people evaluate’ objects in the real world
(Severin and Tankard, 2001: 226). This concept shares some aspects with those of
agenda setting theory. Priming focuses on some issues, not others, selected by the media,
as does agenda setting theory. However, priming goes one step further. Not staying at the
level of salience transfer, it scrutinizes the media’s role in influencing the audience’s
evaluative dimension (Kim et al., 2002). Iyengar et al. (1982) found that the media set
the criteria by which people could assess presidential candidates’ ability, and Iyengar
and Kinder (1987) formalized this process as priming effects, which set the guidelines
that people use for shaping their opinions. Linked together with the human information
processing structure, while the agenda setting effects explain salience transfer, the
priming function seems to elucidate the media’s role as opinion organizers.
Iyengar and Kinder (1987) specifically supported the linkage between issue agenda
setting effects and the priming function. They pointed out that salience transfer from the
media to the public (agenda setting function) became the creative basis of the evaluative
dimension (priming function). However, from the initial stages of priming studies and as
such seeking the opinion formation function from the issues presented in the media, it
has been continuously questioned as to how people form their opinions on such issues
(Kim et al., 2002). This kind of question seems to ask more about the fundamental
reasons for the formation of opinions. In the last 15 years or so, a few studies on
second-level agenda setting and priming effects opened the way to answer such ques-
tions (Iyengar and Simon, 1993; Kim et al., 2002). Iyengar and Simon’s (1993) study
revealed that TV audiences who were heavily exposed to news with a military approach
as a solution to the Gulf crisis favoured a military solution over diplomatic options. Kim
et al.’s (2002) study on the city of Ithaca, New York, found a significant role played by
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the attributes of an issue in setting audiences’ opinions about an issue. With these
scholars’ efforts based on considerable first- and second-level agenda setting studies,
McCombs (2004) referred the priming function to a consequence of agenda setting
effects and put the priming function under the wide umbrella of agenda setting theory.
He argued that opinion formation is not only a matter of building opinion strength, which
can be associated with first-level agenda setting effects, but also a matter of building
opinion direction, which can be associated with second-level agenda setting effects.
McCombs’ typology, however, can be refined by stressing second-level agenda
setting effects further than the first level in influencing priming effects. In psychology,
opinions are believed to involve beliefs and values (Goethals and Nelson, 1973; Jones
and Gerard, 1967). Beliefs are related to the degree of truthfulness or credibility of facts,
and values are related to the degree of preference (Hilmert et al., 2006). Questions
regarding beliefs are generally about whether some facts are true and correct or not, and
questions regarding values are about the degree of liking something (Suls et al., 2000).
These characteristics of opinion seem to be related more to second-level agenda setting
effects, which deal with the substantive and affective perceptions influenced by media
presentation. Truthfulness is related to the substantive dimension of attributes in
second-level agenda setting effects (Lee and Yoo, 2004). Furthermore, the degree of
perceiving truthfulness somewhat decides the degree of preference. The better the cred-
ibility is, the greater the positive preference in opinion is (Johnson, 2003; Zimmerman
and Kitsantas, 2002). The degree of preference is related to the attributes’ affective
dimension of second-level agenda setting effects, which indicates emotional tone (i.e.
positive, neutral and negative). Then as truthfulness is connected with preference, affec-
tive attributes hinge on substantive attributes (Lee and Yoo, 2004). Therefore, the ques-
tions regarding opinion studies are closely related to attribute salience transfer. In short,
priming effects are more likely related to second-level agenda setting effects, which can
answer why opinion formation occurs, than first-level agenda setting effects, which
mainly show the facts of importance transfer.
To empirically test the argument mentioned so far, the current study first investigates
first- and second-level agenda setting and priming effects together. Then the study scru-
tinizes whether first-level and/or second-level agenda setting effects have a relationship
with priming effects. The global warming issue was chosen as the object for the study.
Issue and attributes
The environment is described in some earlier studies as an issue that the media can make
salient in the public’s thinking through their news reporting relatively easier than other
issues (Soroka, 2002a, 2002b; Xu and Bengston, 1997; Yagage and Dozier, 1990;
Zucker, 1978). Global warming has been one of the highly debated environmental issues
in recent years. Specifically, the issue gradually became prominent with several interna-
tional events, including the 1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. In partic-
ular, the Kyoto Protocol linked economic aspects clearly to this issue when it tried to
regulate individual countries’ industrial activities, which are alleged to cause emissions
and thus creating great quantities of greenhouse gases. In addition to the attributes of
economics, those of natural disasters, energy policy and regional conflict have been
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largely reported in news articles in relation to global warming effects. The change in
ecosystems is another factor that is believed to be an effect of global warming. In view
of this, this study employs the global warming issue as a target object and its attributes as
target attributes in order to explore first- and second-level agenda setting effects
together. The major purpose of this study is to investigate the association between the
two kinds of agenda setting effects and priming effects, so determining such effects
is a necessary condition. The environment issue, which was believed to be easily trans-
ferable from the media to the public, would be a feasible selection to meet the study’s
final goal. In short, with an examination of the agenda setting effects of the issue and
attributes, the study measures whether such effects create an impact on shaping the
evaluative dimension relative to the global warming issue. Specifically, as noted earlier,
it is expected that first-level agenda setting effects do not have a clear association with
priming effects, but second-level agenda setting effects do.
For this study, a professional journalist who has been covering environmental issues
for more than two years was employed to select the attributes of the global warming
issue. Monitoring for two months an online news search engine, Google news, he chose
five attributes that were frequently reported in connection with the global warming issue
on the website. These are the ‘Crisis of Species (Ecosystem)’, ‘Increased Potential for
Flooding (Flood)’, ‘Impact on Industrial Business (Business)’, ‘Effects on the Energy
System (Energy)’ and ‘International and/or Provincial Conflict (Conflict)’. These attri-
butes were described in news presentations as traits reflecting the nature of global warm-
ing effects and/or the potential aftermaths of global warming effects. Specifically, the
ecosystem, flood and conflict were the negative consequences of global warming effects,
while business and energy were the neutral outcomes of the effects. That is, the attributes
of global warming effects in the experiment were chosen as somewhat skewed to nega-
tive aspects in order to explore second-level agenda setting and priming effects by
manipulating the tones of the attributes as such.
Hypotheses
This study’s explorative approach was made in line with the thinking that priming effects
are an extended function of agenda setting effects (McCombs, 2004). The general
assumption of agenda setting theory is that the more the exposure, the greater the effects.
That is, if the media present an issue and/or issue attributes more frequently than other
issues and/or issue attributes, the audience will perceive it (or them) as more important.
The strength of importance in audiences’ minds made by such exposure is conceptua-
lized as perceived importance or perceived salience (McCombs, 2004). In the current
study, following the basic assumption, the degree of exposure is the main stimulus for
examining first- and second-level agenda setting effects, and in turn, the priming effects
and the association between the two. For the study, the following hypotheses were
suggested:
H1: The global warming news presented by the media influences the audience’s
perceived salience of the global warming issue.
H2: The global warming news presented by the media influences the audience’s
perceived salience of global warming issue attributes.
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H3: The global warming news presented by the media influences the audience’s
evaluative dimension relevant to the global warming issue.
H4: The issue on the salience transfer of global warming news presented by the
media is not associated with the audience’s evaluative dimension relevant to the global
warming issue.
H5: The attribute on the salience transfer of global warming news presented by the
media is associated with the audience’s evaluative dimension relevant to the global
warming issue.
Method
An experiment with several stages was conducted to test the hypotheses. For the
three-week experiment period, the subjects were divided into three different groups,
namely, High Exposure, Medium Exposure and No Exposure to the global warming
issue and its attributes. This study’s experimental design featured a controlled indepen-
dent variable (High Exposure vs Medium Exposure vs No Exposure condition) with pre-
and post-experimental measures for detecting issue salience transfer, attribute salience
transfer and priming effects.
Stimulus materials
This study employed a simple form of online newspaper. These online papers were
delivered to the subjects, who were divided into three groups (High vs Medium vs No
Exposure), via email every week during the three-week experiment period. Each subject
had three online newspapers, and in each online paper, 10 news links were attached
through which the subjects in the study were guided in reading the actual news stories.
A critical feature of the experiment was the selection of news articles reflecting the global
warming issue and its five different attributes. The same professional journalist chose the
stories. He retrieved 60 news stories from an online news search engine, Google news.
Half of the stories were about the global warming issue and its attributes, while the other
half were stories about random issues other than the global warming issue. They were
selected from news stories in Google news a week prior to each experimental session.
Based on the selected news articles, three different kinds of online newspaper (High
vs Medium vs No Exposure) were prepared, and the groups, who received these papers
respectively, were labelled accordingly. All online newspapers had the same format with
10 hyperlinks, but had different mixtures of stories. The High Exposure newspaper con-
tained only stories about the global warming issue and its five attributes. Half of the stor-
ies in the Medium Exposure newspaper were about the global warming issue and its five
attributes, and the other half were about random issues other than the global warming
issue. The No Exposure newspaper had only random stories other than global warming
stories. Each of the three kinds of online paper (High, Medium and No Exposure) was
delivered once a week for the three-week period to the subjects in the respective groups.
Thus, an individual subject received three online newspapers of the same kind, but the
contents of the first, second and third papers were different from one another. The
subjects received the paper every Wednesday for three weeks.
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Additionally, to explore the hypotheses, the number of stories related to the individual
attributes was manipulated. For instance, over the three exposure times, the subjects in
the High Exposure group had a total of 10 stories about the Ecosystem attribute, 8 stories
about the Flood attribute, 6 stories about the Business attribute, 4 stories about the
Energy attribute and 2 stories about the Conflict attribute. This was executed in such
a way that the author could rank-order the attributes in terms of exposure frequency
to the subjects. Thus, over the three-week period, the respondents received 30 stories,
all of which were about the global warming issue and its attributes, but the number of
stories for each attribute was different from the others. For the same time period, the sub-
jects in the No Exposure group had 30 random stories, which were not relevant to the
global warming issue. The subjects in the Medium Exposure group had half the number
of stories with regard to each attribute of the global warming issue, compared to the High
Exposure group. That is, they had 5 stories about the Ecosystem attribute, 4 stories about
the Flood attribute, 3 stories about the Business attribute, 2 stories about the Energy attri-
bute and 1 story about the Conflict attribute. All stories on the global warming issue and
its attributes for the Medium Exposure group were included in those for the High Expo-
sure group. Fifteen other stories, which were the other half of the stories for the Medium
Exposure group, came from the random stories of the No Exposure group. The stories
containing the target issue and attributes were dispersed so that those stories for the same
attribute were not clustered together. The No Exposure group was not intended to have
the target issue and its attributes, so the dispersion of the stories was not considered.
Experimental procedures
The pre-experimental questionnaire was administered a week before the first experiment
as a form of online survey, and the post-experimental questionnaire was completed a
week after the third and final exposure. For the pre-experimental survey, 166 undergrad-
uates from a large US southwestern university were recruited by email to participate in
the study in order to earn extra course credit for the fall semester of 2004. They com-
pleted the questionnaire attached to the email, which asked about their perceived issue
and attribute salience of the global warming issue. For issue salience, they were asked
to mark the degree of their perceived importance of the issue. For attribute salience, they
were asked to rank-order the perceived importance of the attributes. The answers were
used to set the baseline figures to later test first- and second-level agenda setting effects.
In particular, the change in perceived importance of issue between the pre- and post-
experimental survey was used to test the relationship between first-level agenda setting
and priming effects. The questionnaire also asked the respondents’ opinions on the sup-
port for the reduction of global warming effects (i.e. judgement whether to support the
efforts to reduce global warming effects or not) in order to set the baseline figures to later
test priming effects. Finally, the questionnaire asked the respondents’ beliefs about the
attributes of the global warming issue (i.e. the likelihood of the five attributes’ being
affected by global warming effects) in order to set the baseline figures to later test the
relation between second-level agenda setting and priming effects.
For the three-week experimental procedure after the pre-experimental survey, the
subjects were asked to read every news story and write a one-sentence summary for each
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story. The goal of the task was to get the subjects to read the stories carefully. However,
during the three-week experimental procedure, 59 subjects were unable to complete
all the tasks.
A week after the final exposure, the 107 subjects who had completed the pre-survey
and the three experimental tasks were asked to complete the post-experimental survey.
Among the 107 participants, 12 provided incomplete data, which left 95 subjects in the
data pool. While the original participants had been assigned almost equally in terms of
number but randomly to each of the three conditions (High vs Medium vs No Exposure),
each group had a different number of participants left due to the dropouts and incomplete
data — High (30), Medium (34) and No Exposure (31). The ages of the subjects left in
the final data pool ranged from 17 to 27, with a mean age of 19. Eventually, 18 males and
77 females completed the post-survey, which consisted of the same questionnaire as in
the pre-survey.
Measure
Issue salience transfer. The current study measured subjects’ beliefs about the importance
of the global warming issue in pre- and post-experimental questionnaires. Four items
were borrowed from Iyengar and Kinder’s (1987) study. On both occasions, the subjects
assessed the following questions on nine-point Likert-type scales: ‘how important is the
global warming issue today?’ ‘how many news reports about the global warming issue
do you regularly pay attention to?’ ‘to what extent do you think the global warming issue
is deserving of additional government action?’ and ‘how often do you talk about the glo-
bal warming issue in your everyday conversation?’ The internal consistency reliability
for these four measures was satisfactory (Cronbach’s a ¼ .81), and the scales were
summed up to form an index score for issue importance. The difference in the subjects’
perceived importance between the pre- and post-experiment was then measured to test
first-level agenda setting effects.
Attribute salience transfer. The subjects were asked to rank-order the five different attri-
butes of the global warming issue according to their relative importance both before and
after the experiments. The question was, ‘Regarding the global warming issue, which do
you think is most important among the ecosystem, flood, industrial business, energy pol-
icy and regional conflict?’ Importance here refers to the significance or degree of chance
for each attribute’s reflection of the traits of global warming effects. The subjects were
asked to rank the attributes from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important). Then the rank-
order correlation between the frequency of attribute exposure and the subjects’ perceived
salience of the attributes, as expressed in their pre- and post-exposure survey response,
was determined.
Priming effects. For the subjects’ evaluative dimension on the global warming issue, the
current study measured the levels of support for the efforts to reduce global warming
effects. The author assessed possible support on a nine-point Likert-type scale anchored
by ‘extremely oppose’ and ‘extremely support’ by asking the subjects whether they per-
sonally support or oppose these efforts. The question was, ‘Do you support or oppose the
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efforts to reduce the global warming effects?’ The difference in the level of the subjects’
support between the pre- and post-experiment was measured to test priming effects.
Association between agenda setting and priming effects. To investigate first-level agenda set-
ting effects’ influence on priming effects, the change in perceived importance of issue
salience and the change in support level for reducing global warming effects between
the pre- and post-experimental survey were calculated. Regression analysis was then
conducted by using the change in perceived issue salience as the independent variable
and the change in support level as the dependent variable. To explore the influence of
attribute salience transfer on priming effects, the subjects answered additional questions
asking about their beliefs on each of the five attributes of the global warming issue. The
beliefs were measured on nine-point Likert-type scales anchored by ‘strongly disagree’
and ‘strongly agree’ as to ‘how likely it was for each attribute to happen as a conse-
quence of global warming effects’. The basic format of the questions followed Kim
et al.’s (2002) study. For determining the association between second-level agenda set-
ting and priming effects, the change in support level for reducing global warming effects
was used as a dependent variable and the changes in beliefs on each of the five attributes
were used as independent variables for regression analysis.
Results
Issue agenda setting
First-level agenda setting effects were investigated by a set of paired-samples t-tests.
Prior to conducting the t-tests, the author analysed the primary dependent variables to
descriptively examine the changes of means before and after the exposure. The direc-
tions of the changes in the first-level agenda setting effects for all three groups were pos-
itive. The mean of the High Exposure group moved from 20.77 to 25.10, the mean of the
Medium Exposure group moved from 19.47 to 25.35 and the mean of the No Exposure
group moved from 18.77 to 19.65. Despite the same directions of change, however, there
seemed to be differences among the groups. The amount of mean change of the Medium
Exposure (M ¼ 5.88, SD¼ 3.46) and High Exposure (M¼ 4.33, SD ¼ 3.97) groups was
larger than that of the No Exposure (M ¼ 0.87, SD ¼ 2.93) group. In addition, while the
standard deviations of both the High (from 5.92 to 5.40) and Medium (from 5.12 to 4.83)
groups decreased, that of the No Exposure group increased from 4.45 to 4.68. The results
seem to indicate that the subjects exposed to the global warming issue were more likely
to change their issue importance than those who were not. To determine whether such
indications are to be statistically supported, paired-samples t-tests were conducted for
each of the three groups, respectively, and the results are reported in Table 1.
The results showed the first-level agenda setting effects for the subjects who were
exposed to the global warming issue, while no such effects were detected for the subjects
who were not. Table 1 shows that there was a statistically significant change in the sub-
jects’ issue importance after high exposure, t(29)¼ 5.98, p < .01, and medium exposure,
t(33)¼ 9.91, p < .01, to the target issue in the online newspaper. However, the No Expo-
sure group did not demonstrate such effects, t(30) ¼ 1.66, p ¼ .11. The results showed
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that the subjects who were exposed to the global warming issue became more likely to
believe that the issue is important.
Attribute agenda setting
Table 2 shows two sets of results: (1) the subjects’ opinions on each of the five
attributes, which were measured for both pre- and post-surveys by rank-order from 1
(most important) to 5 (least important); (2) and the rank-order correlation between the
frequency of attributes exposed to the subjects and their perceived importance of the
attributes. The rankings for each of the attributes were simply added to reveal the over-
all opinions of the subjects in the individual groups. Thus, the smaller the number in the
table, the more important the subjects think the attribute is. The far left column in
the upper part of Table 2 contains the attributes in the order of their exposure frequency
to the subjects of the High and Medium groups.
As seen in the upper part of Table 2, the rank-orders of the five attributes in the pre-
survey are exactly the same among the three groups. In all groups, the ecosystem was
thought to be the most important attribute of the global warming issue; energy, the
Table 2. Ranks of attributes and rank-order correlation between the media presentation andsubjects’ perception for second-level agenda setting effects
High Exposure Medium Exposure No Exposure
Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post
Nc Rd N R N R N R N R N R
Aa Ecosystem 45 1 40 1 55 1 54 1 42 1 40 1Flood 95 3 78 2 111 3 91 2 91 3 94 3Business 100 4 116 4 119 4 127 4 118 4 122 5Energy 81 2 86 3 91 2 95 3 88 2 90 2Conflict 129 5 130 5 134 5 143 5 126 5 119 4
Bb rse .700 .900* .700 .900* .700 .500
a Ranks of subjects’ perceived importance of the attributes.b Rank-order correlation between the frequencies of the attributes exposed to the subjects and their per-ceived importance.c N ¼ Accumulated number of each attribute’s rank given by the subjects.d R ¼ Rank of importance based on N.e rs ¼ Spearman’s rho.* p < .05.
Table 1. Results of the paired t-tests on first-level agenda setting effects
M SD d.f. t
High Exposure Issue salience transfer 4.33 3.97 29 5.981**Medium Exposure 5.88 3.46 33 9.907**No Exposure 0.87 2.93 30 1.655
** p < .01.
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second most important; flood, the third; business, the fourth; and conflict, the fifth.
Additionally, before exposure to the stimuli, the rank-orders of the attributes in all three
groups were not significantly correlated to the rank-order of what would be the fre-
quency of the attributes’ exposure to the subjects. The lower part of Table 2 shows that
the rank-order correlation between the frequency of the attributes’ exposure to the sub-
jects through the experiments and the perceived importance of such attributes among the
subjects before the experiments was statistically insignificant, rs ¼ .70, p ¼ .19, N ¼ 5.
However, after exposure to the differentiated news contents, the subjects in all
groups changed their perceived importance of the attributes. Notably, the rank-order
of the High and Medium Exposure groups went in the same direction, but that of the
No Exposure group went a different way. More importantly, the rank-order correlation
between the frequency of attributes’ exposure and the perceived importance of the
attributes among the subjects in the High and Medium groups became statistically
significant, rs ¼ .90, p < .05, N ¼ 5, while that of the No Exposure group worsened,
rs¼ .50, p¼ .39, N¼ 5. The results of the rank-order correlation showed that the expo-
sure of the attributes of the global warming issue to the subjects led to attribute salience
transfer from the media to the audience.
Priming
The proposed hypothesis was examined by a set of paired-samples t-tests. Prior to
conducting the t-tests, the author analysed the primary dependent variables to descrip-
tively examine the changes of means before and after the exposure. The directions of
the changes in priming effects for all three groups were positive. The mean of the
High Exposure group moved from 7.70 to 8.33, the mean of the Medium Exposure
group moved from 7.56 to 8.41, and the mean of the No Exposure group moved from
7.19 to 7.45.
Although the groups moved in the same direction, there seemed to be differences
among them. While the amount of mean change of the Medium Exposure (M ¼ 0.85,
SD ¼ 1.16) group was greater than that of the High Exposure (M ¼ 0.63, SD ¼ 1.03)
group, both changes were greater than that of the No Exposure (M ¼ 0.26, SD ¼ 1.18)
group. In addition, while the standard deviations of both High (from 1.21 to 0.96) and
Medium (from 1.50 to 0.86) groups decreased, that of the No Exposure group increased
slightly from 1.35 to 1.36. The results seem to indicate that the subjects exposed to the tar-
get issue and its attributes were more likely to change their evaluative dimensions on the
issue than those who were not. To determine whether such indications are to be statistically
supported, paired-samples t-tests were conducted for the High, Medium and No Exposure
groups, respectively, and the results are reported in Table 3.
The results showed priming effects for the subjects who were exposed to the target
issue and its attributes, while no such effects were detected for the subjects who were
not. Table 3 shows that there was a statistically significant change in the subjects’
evaluative dimension after high exposure, t(29) ¼ 3.36, p < .01, and medium exposure,
t(33) ¼ 4.29, p < .01, to the target issue and its attributes in the online newspaper. How-
ever, the No Exposure group did not demonstrate such statistically significant effects,
t(30) ¼ 1.22, p ¼ .23. The results showed that the subjects who were exposed to the
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global warming issue and its attributes became more likely to judge that they should
support the efforts to reduce global warming effects.
Association between agenda setting and priming effects
Although the paired t-tests above showed priming effects for the High and Medium
Exposure groups, it was not clear whether these effects were from the influence of issue
salience transfer or attribute salience transfer. While the High and Medium Exposure
groups’ subjects were exposed to the five different attributes, the issue of global warming
itself was exposed simultaneously. Thus, the priming effects detected above may be the
results of issue salience transfer and/or attribute salience transfer. To determine if the
issue or attributes salient in the media play significant roles as determinants of issue eva-
luations, the author used two regression models. These models were applied to the two
groups – High and Medium – once combined and once separately. The results of the
regression tests are presented in Table 4. The No Exposure group did not show any
agenda setting and priming effects, so it was excluded from the regression analyses.
Issue agenda setting and priming. The regression model for the association between first-
level agenda setting and priming effects includes the subjects’ perceived issue impor-
tance change of the global warming issue before and after the experiments, in predicting
the degree of change for supporting the efforts to reduce global warming effects before
Table 4. Regression analysis of agenda setting effects predicting priming effects
High þ Medium (N ¼ 64) High (N ¼ 30) Medium (N ¼ 34)
Aa Issue importance .067 (.036) .078 (.047) .047 (.059)R2 .052 .090 .019
Bb Ecosystem .247* (.101) .076 (.141) .473** (.167)Flood .147y (.087) .235y (.122) .065 (.140)Business .132 (.094) .109 (.140) .054 (.163)Energy –.063 (.100) .055 (.131) –.091 (.182)Conflict –.103 (.069) –.157 (.123) –.067 (.087)R2 .220* .251 .328*
Note: The entries are unstandardized regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses.a Issue salience predicting support for the efforts to reduce global warming effects.b Attributes salience predicting support for the efforts to reduce global warming effects.y p < .1; * p < .05; ** p < .01.
Table 3. Results of the paired t-tests on priming effects
M SD d.f. t
High Exposure Priming effects .63 1.03 29 3.357**Medium Exposure .85 1.16 33 4.294**No Exposure .26 1.18 30 1.215
** p < .01.
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and after the experiments. As seen in the upper part of Table 4, the model does not
explain priming effects. None of the three cells show the statistically significant relation-
ship between first-level agenda setting and priming effects: for the combined group of
High and Medium Exposure, R2 ¼ .05, p ¼ .07; High Exposure, R2 ¼ .09, p ¼ .11; and
Medium Exposure, R2¼ .02, p¼ .43. Strictly speaking, first-level agenda setting effects
did not have an influence on priming effects.
Attribute agenda setting and priming. The regression model for the association between
second-level agenda setting and priming effects includes the subjects’ belief changes
on the five attributes of the global warming issue before and after the experiments, in
predicting the degree of change for supporting the efforts to reduce global warming
effects before and after the experiments. As seen in the lower part of Table 4, the model
efficiently explains priming effects for the combined group of High and Medium expo-
sures with R2 ¼ .22, p < .05. That is, the set of five attributes can predict the priming
effects for the two groups, and specifically among the subjects who were exposed to the
attributes, the Ecosystem attribute worked as a significant predictor in predicting support
for the efforts to reduce the effects of global warming, t¼ 2.45, p < .05. Additionally, the
Flood attribute worked as a marginally significant predictor for priming effects, t¼ 1.68,
p < .10. Thus, it can be concluded that attribute salience transfer is highly associated with
priming effects.
However, when the model was applied to the exposed groups separately, some com-
plicated results were found. As seen in the table, only the Medium group showed that the
model could explain priming effects efficiently, R2 ¼ .33, p < .05, and specifically, the
Ecosystem attribute worked as a significant predictor in predicting support for the efforts
to reduce global warming effects, t ¼ 2.83, p < .01. However, the model did not produce
clear support for the High group in the attributes’ predicting priming effects, R2 ¼ .25,
p ¼ .20. Even though the Flood attribute worked as a marginally significant predictor,
t ¼ 1.93, p < .10, it was not strongly meaningful because the model does not support the
overall relationship.
Table 4 seems to indicate that although attribute salience transfer influences priming
effects, there may be a difference as to the degree or range of the impact based on the
amount of exposure or the varied mixture of the news content.
Conclusions and discussions
The overall results of this study suggest that even if we can find first- and second-level
agenda setting effects and priming effects together, the priming effects were more likely
caused by second-level agenda setting effects than first-level agenda setting effects. That
is, the research findings support the idea that not the issue salience transfer but the attri-
bute salience transfer becomes a significant factor in determining issue evaluations
among the audience. However, beyond the argument of attribute salience transfer and
its influence on priming effects in the experiment, there are some aspects that need to
be discussed further.
First, the study began with a conceptualization of the opinion factor in priming effects
in relation with agenda setting effects. The current study tackled McCombs’ argument
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about the relationship between agenda setting and priming effects. In his typology, the
formation of opinion, which is the core part of priming effects (Iyengar and Kinder,
1987), resulted from the combination of first- and second-level agenda setting effects
(McCombs, 2004). Specifically, he insisted that the strength of an opinion has something
to do with first-level agenda setting effects, and its direction has something to do with
second-level agenda setting effects. He seemed to argue that strength and direction are
two different things. The current study, however, suggests another way of understanding
the opinion factor. That is, opinion direction innately has opinion strength. Although the
strength and direction of an opinion can be divided in an abstract way as McCombs
argued, it would not be meaningful to gauge the opinion’s strength without considering
its direction, especially when thinking of priming effects, which generally measure how
much to support or oppose something. Conclusively, opinion formation is rather a matter
of setting opinion direction, and the strength of an opinion can be measured by how far
the opinion goes to a certain direction.
Subsequently, another question arises. According to some psychologists, opinion
consists of beliefs and values (Goethals and Nelson, 1973; Jones and Gerard, 1967).
Applying their reasoning to the agenda setting propositions, both elements of opinion
seem to be closely related to the two dimensions of attributes — substantive and affec-
tive. What remains to be determined is which of the two attribute dimensions better
explains priming effects. Because the affective dimension is about the tone — positive,
neutral and negative — we would think it would be more closely related to priming
effects. However, as we saw in the experiment and some previous studies, the affective
dimension seemed to hinge on the substantive dimension (Lee and Yoo, 2004). Even
some psychologists believe that belief and value, or the degree of credibility and level
of preference, are very closely related to each other (Johnson, 2003; Zimmerman and
Kitsantas, 2002). Although this study is one of the few attempts to trace the real influen-
cing factor between first- and second-level agenda setting on priming effects, future
studies that explore the role of the substantive and affective dimensions of attributes
affecting priming effects are certainly recommended.
Second, although the study found second-level agenda setting effects’ influence on
priming effects, it did not explain all the complicated details of the impact. We would
think that the High Exposure group might exhibit greater priming effects and greater
influence of second-level agenda setting on priming effects based on common sense.
However, the study results showed the opposite, and unfortunately, these did not reveal
the concrete and specific reasons why such phenomena occurred; the results only showed
the observable facts.
As a matter of fact, this study’s experiment is not the only case to show such complex
results. McCombs et al.’s Spanish local election study also revealed that the participants
exposed to ‘some’ political information showed more affective attribute agenda setting
effects than those exposed to ‘all’ political information (McCombs, 2004). The results of
their study and this present experiment clearly distinguished the difference of agenda set-
ting effects between exposure and no exposure but showed complicated results between
High Exposure and Medium Exposure, so they seem to make an interesting suggestion:
agenda setting effects and related priming effects, especially in terms of the attribute
agenda, which is supposed to influence the audience’s substantive and affective
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perceptions, are not monotonously grounded in the simple frequency of exposure but
also on some other factors like the audience’s psychological status (Ha, 2004). However,
because just one or two studies can hardly explain all the aspects of complicated psycho-
logical or social phenomena, the factors discussed previously are worth being studied
further in the future. Specifically, such observations could direct some further studies
on this topic, including the need for orientation, which is believed to explain the psycho-
logical foundations of the agenda setting theory (Weaver, 1977, 1980). The convergence
of the second-level agenda setting study with the two traditional dimensions of the need
for orientation – relevance and uncertainty – may be a good research direction in order to
uncover the reasons for the differing influence of the attributes on priming effects.
Furthermore, the effort to discover such detailed aspects of agenda setting and prim-
ing effects can be incorporated with some other theoretical frameworks in communica-
tion studies including uses and gratification (Blumler and McQuail, 1969; Katz, 1996;
Katz et al., 1973; Zillmann and Bryant, 1985). The uses and gratification theory posits
people’s active learning from media content by seeking meaning for themselves, so the
convergence of agenda setting and the uses and gratification theory could expedite the
findings of the specific details of media effects, including the phenomena observed but
not explained clearly in the current study. Specifically, it would help scholars find some
intervening variables which were not identified in this study’s experiment showing some
complicated results. And such an approach would help further our understandings about
the relationship between the media exposure to a certain issue and/or its attributes and
audiences’ original perception about the issue and/or its attributes, which this experiment
might have missed. In sum, the results and discussions of this study would hopefully
direct future research to explore media effects further.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
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