The Power of Information Networks ─ New Directions for Agenda Setting

The news media have significant influence on the formation of public opinion. Called the agenda setting role of the media, this influence occurs at three levels. Focusing public attention on a select few issues or other topics at any moment is level one. Emphasizing specific attributes of those issues or topics is level two. The Power of Information Net/works: The Third Level of Agenda Settingintroduces the newest perspective on this influence. While levels one and two are concerned with the salience of discrete individual elements, the third level offers a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective to explain media effects in this evolving media landscape:is a comprehensive and integrated perspective on media effects, the ability of the news media to determine how the public associates the various elements in these media messages to create an integrated picture of public affairs. This is the first book to detail the theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and international empirical evidence for this new perspective. Cutting-edge communication analytics such as network analysis, Big Data and data visualization techniques are used to examine these third-level effects. Diverse applications of the theory are documented political communication, public relations, health communication, and social media research.

The Power of Information Net/works will interest scholars, students and practitioners concerned with the media and their social and cultural effects.

Maxwell McCombs is McCombs is the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin and has been a visiting professor annually at the University of Navarra in Spain since 1994. He also has been a visiting professor at the University of Vienna and at Catholic University and Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile. Professor McCombs is an internationally recognized for his research on the agenda-setting role of mass communication, the influence of the media on the focus of public attention. A past president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research and a fellow of the International Communication Association, McCombs has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Antwerp, the Paul J. Deutschmann Award for Excellence in Research from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and is the co-recipient with Donald Shaw of the Murray Edelman Award of the American Political Science Association.

Lei Guo is an assistant professor in the Emerging Media Studies Division of the College of Communication, Boston University. Guo’s research focuses mainly on agenda setting theory, alternative media, and international communication.