Application 6
What is the relationship between the Agenda Setting Model and the Priming Model?
The Agenda Setting Model
The news media do not persuade people, but inform them. In telling us what to think about, they tell us what issues are important for public debate. The idea behind agenda setting is: The media over time by focusing on some issues and some not at all, give us a sense of what issues are important (issue’s salience).
Priming
The priming effect is a close cousin of agenda setting, and it was described in the agenda-setting studies. The priming effect is the ability of news programs to affect the criteria of individuals to judge their political leaders. Researchers have found that the more important an issue is in national information, the greater its weight in making political judgments.