Agenda Setting in the Partisan TV News Context: Attribute Agenda Setting and Polarized Evaluation of Presidential Candidates Among Viewers of NBC, CNN, and Fox News
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
Published online on January 27, 2016
Abstract
This study examines the agenda setting of candidates’ attributes and its relationship with polarized candidate evaluation among TV news viewers. Content analyses of candidates’ affective attributes during the 2012 presidential election indicate partisan imbalance from CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox’s Special Report. NBC Nightly News was relatively balanced. Watching a particular program was positively associated with attribute agenda setting by each program. Also, agenda setting by the Fox program was positively related to viewers’ polarized candidate evaluations, whereas agenda setting by the NBC program was negatively associated. Implications of the partisan TV news context for agenda-setting theory are discussed.