This study examines agenda setting in the context of Greek politics while assessing constructs of salience evolving through new journalism trends and advances in digital media. Through an exploration of the rise of Alexis Tsipras and his party, SYRIZA, the authors investigate emerging indices of salience as predictors of public salience. Along with mainstream media salience and conventional public salience, the authors generate evidence on mediated trends and word-of-mouth salience. Although there is evidence of the evolving nature of salience derived from all indices under scrutiny, word-of-mouth salience registered as the most significant predictor of Tsipras’ public approval.

This project investigates the classic agenda-setting hypothesis in the context of the Greek cultural market. It is hypothesized that Greek museums with higher visibility in newspaper content are related to higher visitation than museums with lower media visibility. Because of the nature of the Greek cultural market-Greece receives more than 10 million tourists during the summer months-several variables are controlled for, such as the seasonality of visitation, the type of governance of the organization, one-time events, such as the Olympic Games, which took place in the summer of 2004, and promotion initiatives undertaken by museums. When controlling for such culturally specific variables, there is evidence supporting the agenda-setting hypothesis within the Greek cultural market.

This study examined the role of attribute salience in the agenda setting process. Two experiments were conducted to investigate how media emphasis on certain political candidate attributes would influence public perceptions of those politicians. Specifically, media portrayals of candidate personality and qualification traits were explored. Findings suggest that people's impressions of candidate personality traits mirror media portrayals of those traits. However, media portrayals of personality traits do not affect a candidate's overall salience. The data also indicate that candidate qualifications do influence affective perceptions of politicians. Finally, the authors consider the ramifications of these results on future scholarship.

This study examines students’ social media interactions in relation to their subcultural explorations of a conspiratorial nature. A sample of 476 students from four European universities participated in a survey about conspiracy theories in social media group discussions. In the survey, we examined various social and media factors in relation to students’ beliefs in conspiracy theories. The results of this exploratory study reveal that students treat social media as news sources; furthermore, they trust social media more than traditional mass media. The study reveals demographic, personal and technological factors that encourage a mediated conspiratorial discourse.

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