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Article published In:
The Agenda Setting Journal
Vol. 1:2 (2017) ► pp.158–179

News sources and the same sex marriage issue

Through the lens of the agenda-setting theory

| National Chung Cheng University
| The University of Texas at Austin

Using agenda-setting theory, this study explores the effects of news sources on public opinion on the issue of the same-sex marriage over 10 years. It examines immediate substantive salience, immediate affective salience, cumulative substantive salience and cumulative affective salience of the news sources cited in news articles from The New York Times from 2003 to 2013 and compares the coverage to public opinion polls. Four findings merit notice. First, news sources with a clear standpoint had counter effects on public opinion. Second, the salience of news sources is as influential as the affective attribute salience of news sources on public opinion. Official sources had the power to influence public opinion the most. Thirdly, the influence of the media is stronger than the influence of news sources on influencing public opinion. Fourth, LGBTQ sources were the least used sources in the same-sex marriage coverage.

Keywords: same-sex marriage, news sources, public opinion, affective attribute salience, agenda-setting theory
Article outline
  • Literature review
    • Influences of news sources
    • Importance of official sources
    • Agenda setting and sources
    • Sources and controversial issues
  • Method
    • News coverage of same-sex marriage
    • Coded variables
    • Public opinion data
  • Results
    • News sources: Trends within the 10-year period
  • Discussion
    • Non-neutral sources have a counter effect on public opinion
    • Official sources had the power to influence public opinion towards the same-sex marriage issue
    • The salience of news sources is as influential as the affective attribute salience of news sources on public opinion
    • The influence of media is stronger than the influence of news sources on moving public opinion
    • LGBTQ sources were the least quoted of all sources on the marriage issue
    • Limitations
  • References
Published online: 4 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.1.2.05che
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