The authors examine the role of media coverage of events in the process of public agenda setting. They define focusing events according to Kingdon (1995) as events that call attention to problems and issues. Scholars have introduced several typologies of media coverage in the long tradition of agenda-setting research. However, no previous work has examined the differing effects of news items exclusively in terms of (a) issues, (b) a focusing event, and (c) both an issue and a respective focusing event. Their research question is: “Does a focusing event strengthen the effect of a news item by setting the personal agendas of members of the public?” To answer the question, the authors chose the cognitive portrait research design and used individual data to study the issue (see the Acapulco typology, McCombs 2004) of Church property restitutions in the Czech Republic. Their focusing event is St. Vitus Cathedral trial. They use data from a weekly panel survey of the events deemed most important by respondents between April and May 2008. They combine these panel data with the results of a content analysis that monitored the total number of news items referring to Church restitutions and St. Vitus Cathedral trial (Vinopal 2009). Their results show that the coverage of a focusing event has a significant positive effect on setting the respective issue as a personal agenda, but the coverage of a focusing event is unable to influence the agenda-setting process on its own. A focusing event must be contextualized (i.e., mentioned in the same text as the issue) to affect a recipient’s personal agenda. The authors suggest carefully distinguishing between the coverage of mere issues and contextualized coverage of a respective focusing event in future agenda-setting research.
This article deals with the political problematisation of gender inequalities in the context of the European Union's gender equality policies on a supranational level. Based on the concept of transnational advocacy networks (TAN), the first part of the article presents the European Women's Lobby and units at the European Commission dealing with gender equality policies as two key actors in TAN that promote gender equality issues within the structures of the EU. The article then moves on to describe policy frame analysis as an approach to analysing the way in which the gender inequalities addressed by these actors are politically problematised in three policy documents connected to the European Commission's 'Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men 2006–2010'. The analysis focuses on the main frames in these documents that legitimise the existence of an independent policy field concerned with gender equality at the EU level and discusses the ramifications of these frames for the promotion of gender equality; for example, how certain policy measures might lead to different outcomes when promoted within different frames.
The study deals with issues of agenda setting and influence of media operating at the local level to serve the public agenda in both theoretical and empirical perspective. The focus is on media, political and public agenda as well as the development of ideas about them. The main goal of the authors was to test hypotheses regarding the ability of media in agenda setting and highlighting certain attributes that influence their interpretation in terms of the public, as well as whether these effects manifest themselves at the local level. As an example, the authors studied the city of Žiar nad Hronom, Slovak Republic, which is also the publisher of the weekly Mestské noviny. They were interested in the function of the local media, especially the periodical, in the process of agenda setting, and their ability to influence public opinion in specific areas. These referred mainly to current and attractive themes form the viewpoint of the public and politicians. Locally, regional media is an essential tool for political communication and public opinion formation in a geographically defined area, and this markedly affects the character of the public agenda in the area in which they operate. Therefore, the authors were more interested in the impacts on the functioning of the media and media production at the local level.
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