Jessica Haney | March 11, 2010
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| Photo by Jessica Haney |
| Assistant professor Jae Kook Lee presented his work on political knowledge and agenda setting during a colloquium Wednesday. |
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When this information reaches audiences, they interpret and decide what the most pertinent issues are, although probably not solely based on news reception from the media. So, are people well informed?
“That’s an enduring question in political science,” said assistant professor Jae Kook Lee.
His presentation at Wednesday’s research colloquium, “The Role of Political Knowledge as a Measure of News Reception in Agenda Setting,” addressed the relationship between knowledge and agenda setting.
Lee set out to show that agenda setting is a learning process. He believes that knowledgeable people think about issues in the news before deciding what may be most important. In other words, “I don’t think agenda setting is a persuasion,” he said.
He said his research shows that knowledge and agenda setting have a positive relationship, implying that agenda setting is more than an automatic, mindless process, which some other researchers have argued. According to Lee’s conclusions, agenda setting requires thought and occurs through a mindful process.
Lee began his research with two hypotheses. First, he thought that people with more knowledge would seek more information from the media, and therefore show strong effects of agenda setting. The second hypothesis predicted that people with more knowledge would resist media coverage, fostering a weak agenda setting effect.
To conduct the research, he evaluated the frequency of exposure to different kinds of mainstream news sources—including television and newspapers —along with the key variables of knowledge and interest in the news or issues of a sample.
He then identified three main relationships: knowledge, which he assumes is indicative of news reception, leads to agenda setting; interest leads to agenda setting; and interest also leads to more news reception.
Yet at some point, the effect of knowledge on agenda setting levels off.
“It cannot work infinitely for this kind of relationship,” said Lee. Eventually, he found, people with more knowledge do resist the mainstream media. “There’s not much to resist at the level,” he said.
Journalism faculty attendees applauded Lee’s research, but also acknowledged the multiplicity of factors that could possibly affect agenda setting.
“It seems to me that there could be something going on besides knowledge,” said assistant professor Lesa Hatley Major.
For one, people don’t attach the same importance to all issues, which could affect their agenda. Also, the places where people consume their news, which is no longer simply limited to mainstream news, could affect agenda setting, said Roy W. Howard Professor David Weaver, who is a scholar in agenda setting.
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| Photo by Jessica Haney |
| Jae Kook Lee’s research shows that knowledge and agenda setting have a positive relationship, implying that agenda setting is more than an automatic, mindless process. |
“The media environment is really becoming more and more complicated,” said Weaver. In turn, research designs for these complicated issues are becoming harder to assess.
But Lee took the suggestions of his colleagues to modify his research, and in addition to frequency of media exposure in his method, he may measure audience attention as well.
The research colloquia started at the beginning of the year to give researchers a platform for presenting their work and getting feedback from colleagues. The next research colloquium features assistant professor Emily Metzgar presenting her work, “Discussing Public Diplomacy in the American Context.” at 4:30 p.m. March 24 in the Ernie Pyle lounge.
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