Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Agenda Setting and Issue Framing Dynamics on Front Page News

Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, University Park PA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation project seeks funding to examine agenda-setting and issue-framing dynamics in NYT front-page news. The co-PI offers a new theory of issue-framing dynamics and a design to test parallel hypotheses that both issue-framing and agenda-setting follow a pattern of disproportionate information processing (DIP), by which these processes should exhibit long periods of relative stasis punctuated by dramatic moments of change. The researcher will test hypotheses and create two original datasets, the first showing the rise and fall of different issues on the NYT front page over time, the second showing the rise and fall of different frames within each issue debate. In creating these datasets, she will refine innovative methods of textual analysis and borrow from Laver, Benoit, and Garry (2003) and Simon and Xenos (2004) and apply to her multi-issue study of agenda-setting and issue-framing over time. She will examine the NYT front page of every tenth day from 1960 through 2002 (N=1,532), coding each article by policy issue. She will use the resulting Issues Dataset of 11,000 articles to test the DIP hypothesis of agenda-setting. She will then employ word-frequency analysis to produce a Frames Dataset and test her theory that issue-framing is also governed by DIP. She will also use factor analysis to extract substantive interpretations of the changing frames within each issue debate. In this proposal, she offers evidence from a pilot study of these methods to validate her approach. One main contribution of the project lies in the theoretical and methodological contributions it makes to our understanding of agenda-setting and issue-framing, both of which are powerful political processes that limit and shape attention. The right changes in agenda setting and issue-framing can serve to inspire or inhibit political participation, justify or impugn acts of war, or legitimize or dismantle prejudices. The researchers examination of agenda-setting and issueframing dynamics will advance our knowledge of these mechanisms of influence. The data will offer insight into the political system that, beyond aiding academic research, will provide the general public with a more tangible understanding of how some concerns and viewpoints are paid media attention, while others are not. Such knowledge will be beneficial to many citizen coalitions and minority interest groups in particular.