The Agenda-setting function of mass media.doc

The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media大众媒体的议程设置功能BY MAXWELL E. McCOMBS AND DONALD L. SHAW麦克斯韦尔E麦库姆斯 唐纳德L肖In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues-that is, the media may set the “agenda” of the campaign.通过选择和展示新闻，编辑、编辑部工作人员和广播工作者在塑造政治现实方面扮演了重要的角色。读者不仅仅了解到给定的新闻事件，而且了解新闻事件在众多新闻信息中的重要性及其所处位置。通过思考候选人在竞选中说的话，大众媒体来判断决定其重要性，也就是说，媒体在竞选中设置议程。媒体设置了竞选议程。The authors are associate professors of journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.作者是坐落在夏贝尔山的美国北卡罗来纳大学的新闻学副教授。In our day, more than ever before, candidates go before the people through the mass media rather than in person. The information in the mass media becomes the only contact many have with politics. The pledges, promises, and rhetoric encapsulated in news stories, columns, and editorials constitute much of the information upon which a voting decision has to be made. Most of what people know comes to them “second” or “third” hand from the mass media or from other people. 今日不同往时，竞选者不再亲自面对公众，而是借助于大众媒介出现在公众面前。大众媒介的信息成为大多数人接触政治的唯一途径。包装在新闻故事、专栏和新闻评论中的誓言、允诺和花言巧语建构起的信息作用于人们的投票决定。人们获取的大多数信息都是来自大众媒介或其他人的二手或三手信息。Although the evidence that mass media deeply changes attitudes in a campaign is far from conclusive, the evidence is much stronger that voters learn from the immense quantity of information available during each campaign. People, of course, vary greatly in their attention to mass media political information. Some, normally the better educated and most politically interested (and those least likely to change Political beliefs), actively seek information; but most seem to acquire it, if at all, without much effort. It just comes in. As Berelson succinctly puts it：“On any single subject many hear but few listen.” But Berelson also found that those with the greatest mass media exposure are most likely to know where the candidates stand on different issuses. Trenaman and McQuail found the same thing in a study of the 1959 General Election in England. Voters do learn.尽管大众媒介深刻改变人们的竞选态度尚没有足够证据，但是选民通过大众媒体获得大量的竞选信息却是不争的事实。当然，人们对大众媒体提供的政治信息的关注程度差异很大。通常，那些受到良好教育和对政治具有浓厚兴趣的人积极主动寻求信息，还有那些很难改变政治信仰的人；但是，如果某事真的发生的话，而大多数人不愿意费力去寻求信息。这才刚刚开始。正如贝雷尔森所说：对任何话题，大多数人仅仅是“听到”而已，只有少数人“留意”。但是，贝尔雷森也发现：那些最大限度接触大众媒介的人更加了解竞选者对不同议题的立场。特里纳曼和麦奎尔在1959年的英格兰普选研究项目中发现了同样的现象。选民的确从媒介获取信息。They apparently learn, furthermore, in direct proportion to the emphasis placed on the campaign issues by the mass media. Specifically focusing on the agenda-setting function of the media, Lang and Lang observe：特里纳曼和麦奎尔进一步了解到大众媒体通过直接的信息比例来强调竞选中的重要事件。聚焦在媒介的议程设置功能上，库尔特朗(Kurt Lang)和格拉迪斯恩格尔朗（Gladys Engel Lang）发现：The mass media force attention to certain issues. They build up public images of political figures. They are constantly presenting objects suggesting what individuals in the mass should think about, know about, have feeling about.大众媒介强制受众关注某些特定事件。它们建立起政治人物的公共形象。它们持续不断地提供目标议题，建议大众应该考虑什么、了解什么和感知什么。大众媒介迫使人们注意某些争议问题。它们树立政治人物的公共形象，它们不断地展示目标，向大众中的人们建议应该考虑、应该知道、应该感知的目标。（郭镇之：关于大众传播的议程设置功能J国际新闻界1997.3）Perhaps this hypothesized agenda-setting function of the mass media is most succinctly stated by Cohen, who noted that the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” While the mass media may have little influence on the direction or intensity of attitudes, it is hypothesized that the mass media set the agenda for each political campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues.可能，关于媒介的议程设置功能假说叙述最简洁的就是科恩了，他指出新闻界“或许在告知读者怎么想方面不怎么成功，但是在告诉读者想什么方面却异常成功。”然而，大众媒介在改变态度方面具有微小的直接作用和显著效果，假设大众媒介为每个政治活动设置议程，以此来影响人们对于特定政治事件的显著态度。METHOD方法To investigate the agenda-setting capacity of the mass media in the 1968 presidential campaign, this study attempted to match what Chapel Hill voters said were key issues of the campaign with the actual content of the mass media used by them during the campaign. Respondents were selected randomly from lists of registered voters in five Chapel Hill precincts economically, socially, and racially representative of the community. By restricting this study to one community, numerous other sources of variationfor example, regional differences or variations in media performancewere controlled.为了研究大众媒介的议程设置功能，针对1968年总统竞选，实施了一项关联度研究。该研究项目试图研究竞选中“夏贝尔山选民的关键性言论”和“大众媒介实际所选择的内容”之间的关联度。研究对象是从夏贝尔山周边的五个不同经济条件、不同社会背景和不同种族的社区的选民代表中随机选择的。对于每一个选定的社区来说，其它的变量都是被控制的。例如，地区不同或者是媒介表现的变化。Between September 18 and October 6, 100 interviews were completed. To select these 100 respondents a filter question was used to identify those who had not yet definitely decided how to votepresumably those most open or susceptible to campaign information. Only those not yet fully committed to a particular candidate were interviewed. Borrowing from the Trenaman and McQuail strategy, this study asked each respondent to outline the key issues as he saw them, regardless of what the candidates might be saying at the moment. Interviewers recorded the answers as exactly as possible.从9月18日到10月6日，100名采访者被选择出来。为了选择这100个研究对象，一个筛选问卷被用来识别哪些还没有明确决定投票意向的人。推测这些人可能是那些持开放态度或者易受竞选信息影响的人。只有那些还有完全明确倾向于哪一个竞选者的选民才能成为研究对象。借鉴特里纳曼和麦奎尔的研究策略，该项研究要求每一个被访者描述竞选的关键问题当他看到竞选者时，无论这个竞选者此刻正在说什么。研究者详细地记录被访者的回答。Concurrently with the voter interviews, the mass media serving these voters were collected and content analyzed. A pretest in spring 1968 found that for the Chapel Hill community almost all the mass media political information was provided by the following sources：Durham Morning Herald, Durham Sun, Raleigh News and Observer, Raleigh Times, New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and NBC and CBS evening new broadcasts.同时，大众媒介对于这些研究对象提供的信息服务也被收集提来，并做内容分析。1968年春天的研究实验表明：夏贝尔山社区所有的政治信息来自于以下几家媒体：达拉谟晨报、达拉谟太阳报、罗利新闻、观察者、罗利时报、纽约时报、时代杂志、新闻周刊、以及NBC和CBS的晚间新闻报道。The answers of respondents regarding major problems as they saw them and the news and editorial comment appearing between September 12 and October 6 in the sampled newspapers, magazines, and news broadcasts were coded into 15 categories representing the key issues and other kinds of campaign news. Media news content also was divided into “major” and “minor” levels to see whether there was any substantial difference in mass media emphasis across topics. For the print media, this major /minor division was in terms of space and position; for television, it was made in terms of position and time allowed. More specifically, major items were defined as follow：在9月12日到10月6日期间，研究对象关于重要问题的回应、样本报刊、杂志的新闻和评论和广播新闻被分成十五个代表关键问题的类别，还有其它种类的竞选新闻。为了研究大众媒介在强调较差主题时是否存在本质不同，大众媒介的信息也被分成“多数意见”和“少数意见”。对于印刷媒体，“多数意见”和“少数意见”的分类依据是空间和地理位置；对于电视媒体而言，则是按照地理位置和时间长度划分的。特别指出：major的定义如下：1.Television：Any story 45 seconds or more in length and/or one of the three lead stories.电视：任何长度达到或超过45秒，或者是前三条之一的新闻故事都属于major。电视：报道长度至少要45秒或更长，或者位于一次新闻报道的前三条。2.Newspapers：Any story which appeared as the lead on the front page or on any page under a three-column headline in which at least one-third of the story（a minimum of five paragraphs）was devoted to political news coverage.报纸：任何头版头条，或在其它版面具有三栏标题，且三分之一的新闻故事要包含五个新闻段落的主要致力于政治新闻报道的。报纸：出现在头版的，或在其它版面具有三栏大标题的新闻，并且这条新闻至少要有三分之一（不少于五段）涉及政治报道。3.News Magazines：Any story more than one column or any item which appeared in the lead at the beginning of the news section of the magazine.新闻杂志：任何占据通栏的新闻报道和任何在杂志的新闻专栏中占据主导位置的报道都属于major。报道量超过一栏，或在杂志的新闻专栏中居于头条。4.Editorial Page Coverage of Newspapers and Magazines：Any item in the lead editorial position （the top left corner of the editorial page）plus all item in which one-third （at least five paragraphs）of an editorial or columnist comment was devoted to political campaign coverage.报纸和杂志的社评专栏：任何出现在评论版面的主导位置（评论版的左上方），以及评论或专栏作家评论中有三分之一（至少五个段落）致力于政治竞选内容的。Minor items are those stories which are political in nature and included in the study but which are smaller in terms of space, time, or display than major items.Minor是指那些本质上属于政治新闻，包含在研究范围之内的，但是相比于，major，其所占版面较少，时长较短，展示时间较短。FINDINGS 发现The over-all major item emphasis of the selected mass media on different topics and candidates during the campaign is displayed in Table 1. It indicates that a considerable amount of campaign news was not devoted to discussion of the major political issues but rather to analysis of the campaign itself. This may give pause to those who think of campaign news as being primarily about the issues. Thirty-five percent of the major news coverage of Wallace was composed of this analysis （“Has he a chance to win or not?”）. For Humphrey and Nixon the figures were, respectively, 30 percent and 25 percent. At the same time, the table also shows the relative emphasis of candidates speaking about each other. For example, Agnew apparently spent more time attacking Humphrey （22 percent of the major news item about Agnew）than did Nixon（11 percent of the major news about Nixon）. The over-all minor item emphasis of the mass media on these political issues and topics closely paralleled that of major item emphasis.所有被选择的大众媒体强调的关于不同主题和候选人的major信息都被陈列在表格1中。这表明，大量的竞选新闻没有致力于讨论重要的政治议题，而是分析竞选活动本身。这使那些认为竞选新闻应强调重要的政治议题的选民更加犹豫不决。关于华莱士35%的主要新闻覆盖集中分析“它是否有机会在选举中胜出”。汉弗莱和尼克松分别是30%和25%。表格1也展现了候选人谈到彼此时的相关重点。例如，很显然，阿格纽花费更多的时间来批评汉弗莱（关于阿格纽的重要报道中22%是批评汉弗莱的）而不是尼克松（关于尼克松的重要报道中11%是指责汉弗莱的）。大众媒介关于这些政治议题和主题强调的minor和major是并列的。Table 1Major mass media report on candidates and issues, by candidatesTable 2 focuses on the relative emphasis of each party on the issues, as reflected in the mass media. The table shows that Humphrey / Muskie emphasized foreign policy far more than did Nixon / Agnew or Wallace / Lemay. In the case of the “law and order” issue, however, over half the Wallace / Lemay news was about this, while less than one-fourth of the Humphrey / Muskie news concentrated upon this topic. With Nixon / Agnew it was almost a third just behind the Republican emphasis on foreign policy. Humphrey of course spent considerable time justifying （or commenting upon） the Vietnam War; Nixon did not choose （or have） to do this.表格2集中反映各个政党关于选举议题的相关重点在大众媒体中的反映。表格显示：民主党的汉弗莱和马斯基比共和党的尼克松和阿格纽、第三党的华莱士和勒梅更强调国外政策。然而，在“法律与秩序”议题下，第三党的报道超过了半数，而民主党阵营集中于这一主题的报道不及四分之一。共和党阵营的尼克松和阿格纽用三分之一的报道量来强调外交政策。汉弗莱花费相当多的时间替越战辩护或评论越战，尼克松却没有这样做。Table 2Mass media report on issues, by partiesSome columns do not sum to 100% because of rounding.The media appear to have exerted a considerable impact on voters， judgments of what they considered the major issues of the campaign （even though the questionnaire specifically asked them to make judgments without regard to what politicians might be saying at the moment）. The correlation between the major item emphasis on the main campaign issues carried by the media and voters， independent judgments of what were the important issues was +.967. Between minor item emphasis on the main campaign issues and voters，judgments, the correlation was +.979. In short, the data suggest a very strong relationship between the emphasis placed on different campaign issues by the media （reflecting to a considerable degree the emphasis by candidates）and the judgments of voters as to the salience and importance of various campaign topics. 媒体似乎对选民的判断产生了相当大的影响，尤其是在“他们认为什么是竞选中最重要的议题”上。尽管问卷调查中特别强调，让他们在作出判断时不要考虑当下正在讨论的政治家。在媒体报道的关于竞选的最重要的议题和选民的独立判断之间的相关度达到+.967。而最不重要的议题的相关度达到+.979。简而言之，这些数据显示：媒体强调的竞选议题与选民对竞选议题的显著性和重要性的判断高度相关，媒体很大程度上反映了候选人的强调重点。媒体对于不同竞选议题的强调重点，在很大程度上反映了候选人的强调重点。But while the three presidential candidates placed widely different emphasis upon different issues, the judgments of the voters seem to reflect the composite of the mass media coverage. This suggests that voters pay some attention to all the political news regardless of whether it is from, or about, any particular favored candidate. Because the tables we have seen reflect the composite of all the respondents, it is possible that individual differences, reflected in party preferences and in a predisposition to look mainly at material favorable to one，s own party, are lost by lumping all the voters together in the analysis. Therefore, answers of respondents who indicated a preference (but not commitment) for one of the candidates during the September-October period studied (45 of the respondents; the others were undecided) were analyzed separately. Table 3 shows the results of this analysis for four selected media. 当三个总统候选阵营广泛地强调不同领域的不同重点时，选民的判断反映的是所有的媒介报道的总体倾向。这表明选民关注的是所有的新闻报道，不管媒体来源，也不论是否关于自己赞同的候选人。因为表格中反映的是研究对象的整体情况，把所有选民放在一起分析很可能失去对个体差异的观察，很难反映出由于个体的政党选择而倾向于选择那些对自己所属政党有利的材料的选民的情况。因此，对那些在九十月间明确表明自己喜欢（但没有承诺）某个候选人的研究对象进行单独分析，其中45名研究对象已经确定，其余的还没有决定最终的选择。表格3是针对四个媒介的分析结果。The table shows the frequency of important issues cited by respondents who favored Humphrey, Nixon, or Wallace correlated (a) with the frequency of all the major and minor issues carried by the media and (b) with the frequency of the major and minor issues oriented to each party（ stories with a particular party or candidate as a primary referent）carried by each of the four media. For example, the correlation is .89 between what Democrats see as the important issues and the New York Times，s emphasis on the issues in all its major news items. The correlation is .79 between the Democrats，emphasis on the issue and the emphasis of the New York Times as reflected only in items about the Democratic candidates.表格显示三者之间的相关性：重要议题被倾向于汉弗莱、尼克松、和华莱士的研究对象的引用频率，所有的“重要的”和“不重要的”议题的媒体传播频率，所有来自备选的四个媒体的倾向于单个政党的“重要的”或“不重要的”议题的传播频率（以某一个政党或某一个候选人为主要指向的故事）。例如，纽约时报重点强调的议题包括所有重要新闻项目。民主党的重点议题与纽约时报反映民族党候选人这一议题项目的强调重点的相关度是0.79。Table 3Inter-correlations of major and minor issue emphasis by selected media with voter issue emphasisIf one expected voters to pay more attention to the major and minor issues oriented to their own party-that is, to read or view selectively-the correlations between the voters and news / opinion about their own party should be strongest. This would be evidence of selective perception. If, on the other hand, the voters attend reasonably well to all the news, regardless of which candidate or party issue is stressed, the correlations between the voter and total media content would be strongest. This would be evidence of the agenda-setting function. The crucial question is which set of correlations is stronger.如果期望选民将更多的注意力投向他们自己所属的政党的所有报道议题，也就是说，有选择性的阅读和浏览，那么选民和与其所属相关的新闻或评论之间的相关度是最高的。这将成为选择性接触的证据。相反，如果选民理性的浏览所有的新闻，无论是哪个候选人或政党被重点报道，那么，选民与整体的媒介报道内容之间的相关度最高。这就是议程设置功能的证据。关键的问题是哪一种相关度更高。In general, Table 3 shows that voters who were not firmly committed early in the campaign attended well to all the news. For major news items, correlations were more often higher between voter judgments of important issues and the issues reflected in all the news（including of course news about their favored candidate / party）than were voter judgments of issues reflected in news only about their candidate / party. For minor news items, again voters more often correlated highest with the emphasis reflected in all the news than with the emphasis reflected in news about a favored candidate. Considering both major and minor item coverage, 18 of 24 possible comparisons show voters more in agreement with all the news rather than with news only about their own party /candidate preference. This finding is better explained by the agenda-setting function of the mass media than by selective perception.总之，表格3显示：那些没有坚定的明确选择对象的选民会很好的接触所有的新闻报道。对于重要的新闻项目来说，选民对议题重要性的判断与该议题在所有新闻（当然也包括他们喜欢的政党或获选人的新闻）中的反映的相关度要高于该议题仅反映在所属政党或候选人的新闻报道中。再次要新闻议题中，也是一样的。综合重要新闻议题和次要新闻议题，选民更加倾向接触所有的新闻，而不是仅仅关注所属政党的新闻的可能性是75%。这个发现更好的被大众媒介的议程设置功能解释而不是选择性接触理论。Although the data reported in Table3 generally show high agreement between voter and media evaluations of what the important issues were in 1968, the correlations are not uniform across the various media and all groups of voters. The variations across media are more clearly reflected in Table 4, which includes all survey respondents, not just those predisposed toward a candidate at the time of the survey. There also is a high degree of consensus among the news media about the significant issues of the campaign, but again there is not perfect agreement. 尽管在表格3中被报道的数据显示：在1968年选举中，选民判断与媒介评价的重要议程的一致性，但是这种相关度不是基于所有的媒体和所有的选民来做的。交叉媒体的变化在图表4中很清晰的表现出来，它包括所有的调查对象，而不仅仅是那些在调查中中持有既有倾向的选民。不同类型的新闻媒体关于竞选中的重大议题的报道上也具有高度的一致性，并且再一次显现出不完美的一面。Table 4Correlations of voter emphasis on issues with media coverageConsidering the news media as mediators between voters and the actual political arena, we might interpret the correlations in Table 5 as reliability coefficients, indicating the extent of agreement among the news media about what the important political events are. To the extent that the coefficients are less than perfect, the pseudo-environment reflected in the mass media is less than a perfect representation of the actual 1968 campaign.考虑到新闻媒体作为选民与实际的政治舞台之间的中介，我们可以解释图表5所显示的相关度，作为可靠性系数来表明新闻媒体对于政治性事件的重要性判断的一致性的程度。在很大程度上说，这些系数不够完美，大众媒介所反映的拟态环境并没有完美地反映1968年的总统竞选的实际情况。Two sets of factors, at least, reduce consensus among the news media. First, the basic characteristics of newspapers, television, and newsmagazines differ. Newspapers appear daily and have lots of space. Television is daily but has a severe time constraint. Newsmagazines appear weekly; news therefore cannot be as “timely”. Table 5 shows that the highest correlations tend to be among like media; the lowest correlations, between different media.至少存在两组因素降低了新闻媒体间的一致性。首先，新闻媒体的基本特征，电视和新闻杂志不同。报纸是日常的，具有较多的空间。电视也是日常的，但是有严格的时间限制。新闻杂志则是周刊，其新闻时效性较差。图表5显示：高相关度出现在同类媒体间，低相关度出现在不同媒体间。Table 5Inter-correlation of mass media presidential news coverage for major and minor itemsSec