IN THE NINE YEARS since McCombs and Shaw (1972) published the results of their research on mass media agenda-setting, communications researchers have employed a plethora of conceptual and operational definitions in their attempts to "replicate" McCombs and Shaw's 1972 findings. 1 The majority of those replications have compared the importance assigned to issues and personalities in the media (media agenda) with subsequent public salience of those issues and personalities (public agenda). Agenda-setting research has involved the construction of media and public measures, with extensive content analyses used to determine the former, while survey techniques have assessed the latter.An extensive review of more than 50 agenda-setting and related studies recently indicated several conceptual and methodological problems associated with research in this area. One of these problems concerns the varied and haphazard selection of time periods and related temporal variables under study (Eyal et ah, 1981).Since most of these studies measure and compare the media and public agendas over time, the temporal variable would appear to be crucial. However, as we will see from a review, this has not been the 1 For pertinent bibliographies, see Shaw and McCombs (1977), Myers (1979), Eyal et al. (1981.Abstract A comparison of front-page New York Times content and national public opinion from 1954 to 1976 showed strong agenda-setting effects for the civil rights issue. For this issue, the optimal effect span was the four-to six-week period immediately prior to field work. These findings contradict previous findings and assertions about a cumulative media effect over a longer period of time.James P. Winter is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University. Chaim H. Eyal is on the faculty of the Communications Institute

U n i v e r s i t y Carleton U n i v e r s i t y T h e conventional view o f t h e mass communications media i s t h a t t h e y a r e unaligned p r o t e c t o r s o f t h e p u b l i c interest:anti-establishment muckrakers who help t o maintain an open society.B y o f f e r i n g d i v e r s e and o f t e n antagonistic i n t e rpretations o f events, t h e media supposedly create a f r e e marketplace o f ideas. (Ref. 1) B u t in recent years social analysts have increasingly challenged t h i s b e l i e f --a r g u i n g t h a t t h e mass media, in fact, p r o t e c t p r i v i l e g e and constrain t h o u g h t and debate. These c r i t i c s a r g u e t h a t t h e media are owned by a corporate elite which employs them n o t o n l y t o make p r o f i t s , b u t also i n o r d e r t o maintain t h e ideology o f t h e system o n which i t s privileges r e s t . (Ref. 2) C l e m e n t C h a l l e n g e d P o r t e rI n an a u t h o r i t a t i v e s t u d y o f social class and power, John P o r t e r described t h e elite o f Canadian society as a s t r u c t u r e I n a more recent s t u d y , Wallace Clement challenged Porter's notion o f a p l u r a l i s t elite b y p r o v i d i n g evidence t h a t both business and media elites belong t o t h e same exclusive 'corporate elite'. Examining i n t e r l o c k i n g corporation and media d i r e c t o r s h i p s in Canada, Clement f o u n d t h a t 69 p e r c e n t o f t h e members o f t h e media elite simultaneously hold important corporate positions outside t h e media, and t h a t o v e r 70 p e r c e n t o f t h e total media elite are f r o m u p p e r class o r i g i n s . (Ref. 4) Clement t h u s p r o v i d e d s u p p o r t f o r t h e arguments o f Ralph Miliband and C. W. Mills, among others, t h a t society's elites use t h e media t o disseminate an ideology which is s u p p o r t i v e o f t h e e x i s t i n g p a t t e r n o f power and p r i v i l e g e .T h e more c r i t i c a l approach t o t h e media suggests t h a t t h e corporate s t r u c t u r e and economics o f t h e media determine, t o a l a r g e degree, t h e n a t u r e o f news content: t h a t it is elite values t h a t a r e f o u n d in t h e press, and these elite values a r e in e f f e c t t h e values o f t h e corporate community. T h i s p r i v a t e agenda o f t h e elite becomes, in effect, t h e agenda o f t h e mass media.Rather t h a n fulfilling t h e i r conventional r o l e as 'diverse and antagonistic voices' t h e media a r e alleged t o serve as appendages t o t h e elite, helping t o p r e s e r v e t h e conservative, f r e e e n t e r p r i s e system.T h e y

The Agenda-Setting hypothesis of mass media effects posits a direct, causal link between the issues and personalities emphasized in the communication media and public salience of those issues and personalities. While this broad statement has been useful for making general assertions to the effect that the media "tell us what to think about," it remains a general statement which must be further delineated (McCombs, 1977).A number of Agenda-Setting researchers have ignored the attempts at theory building in this area, choosing instead to test their own conceptual and operational parameters (c.f. Kaid, Hale and Williams, 1977;Sohn, 1978). However, some attempts have been made to refine the seemingly monolithic Agenda-Setting concept. Audience attributes such as the amount of media exposure, interpersonal discussion, and need for orientation have been examined (Weaver and McCombs, 1978; Weaver, 1977;Winter 1981a).Less attention has been paid to stimulus attributes such as the nature of the issue and the medium. With respect to the former, in fact, issues have almost consistently been treated in the aggregate (Atwood, Sohn

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Still, the literature on international news flow offers less information and insight than one might hope it would. Empirical data on press performance is still limited and largely descriptive. Moving from such descriptive content analysis studies, researchers have further sought to identify professional and system factors which might account for the particular patterns of foreign reporting thus documented. Yet while such studies have become quite sophisticated in their categories, they still tell us little about public behavior per se. Readership studies, on the other hand, have delved into public utilization of available news content, but have paid very little attention to foreign news as a discrete category and have seldom broken the category down any further.To help address this research gap, the project here reported combined the categories of news flow research with the objectives of readership studies, in a pilot field experiment in audience reaction to and interest in foreign news. In addition to providing more exact information about public news habits and interests, this approach can also provide an interesting check on the validity for the marketplace of news values which have been hypothesized through news flow research or identified in communicator studies. In the longer term, such a approach can provide helpful guidance to the press itself by way of suggesting how audience interest might be maximized for foreign affairs coverage.