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Article published In:
Fifty years of agenda-setting research: Volume II
Edited by Chris J. Vargo
[The Agenda Setting Journal 3:1] 2019
► pp. 63–81

Philosophical orientations and theoretical frameworks in media effects

Agenda setting, priming and their comparison with framing

| University of Regina
| The University of Texas at Austin

This paper explores the philosophical orientations within which agenda setting operates, and agenda setting’s place within the broader framework of the media effects tradition, specifically in comparison with framing and priming. It also responds to earlier criticisms of agenda setting for its supposed lack of theoretical richness and narrowly understood underlying mechanisms.

Both ontological and epistemological statuses of the agenda-setting theory are analyzed in order to place agenda setting into the communication discipline’s broader context. This paper demonstrates that the most important distinction between framing and agenda setting is that they are based on different ways of knowing. While the epistemological bases of priming are similar to the theory of agenda setting, the paper argues that further progress will depend not only on practical studies of different aspects of agenda setting, but also on theoretical and philosophical conceptualizations in the future.

Keywords: theory of communication, epistemology, ontology, agenda setting, framing, priming
Article outline
  • Assumptions underlying agenda setting
  • Agenda setting and ontological and epistemological aspects of its philosophical orientation
  • Agenda setting theory status
  • Agenda setting and framing
  • Priming
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 2 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.18016.che
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