Editing Agenda-setting theory (section)

=== Agenda-building ===
{{See also|Political agenda|Political ethics|Political warfare|Demagogue|Indoctrination|Sensationalism|Spin (propaganda)}}

The agenda-building perspective emphasizes the interplay between mass media, policymakers, and social processes, recognizing ongoing mass involvement's influence on the policy-making process. Cobb and Elder assert that while the public can influence the media agenda, they do not significantly shape it; instead, journalists anticipate audience needs when generating story ideas.

This idea of mass involvement has become more prominent with the rise of the Internet and its potential to make everyone a media content creator. Social media has changed the way people view and perceive things in today's world. Mass involvement within social media lets the general publics voices be heard.

Kim and Lee<ref name="Valenzuela-2019">{{cite book |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.777 |chapter=Agenda Setting and Journalism |title=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication |date=2019 |last1=Valenzuela |first1=Sebastián |isbn=978-0-19-022861-3 }}</ref> noted that the agenda-setting research on the Internet differs from traditional agenda-setting research with respect that the Internet is in competition with traditional media and has enormous capacity for contents' and users' interactivity.

According to Kim and Lee,<ref name="Valenzuela-2019" /> agenda-building through the Internet take the following three steps: 1) Internet-mediated agenda-rippling: an anonymous netizen's opinion spreads to the important agenda in the Internet through online main rippling channels such as blogs, personal homepages, and the Internet bulletin boards. 2) agenda diffusion in the Internet: online news or web-sites report the important agenda in the Internet that in turn leads to spreading the agenda to more online publics. 3) Internet-mediated reversed agenda-setting: traditional media report online agenda to the public so that the agenda spread to both offline and online publics.

Several studies provide evidence that the Internet-community, particularly bloggers, can push their own agenda into public agenda, then media agenda, and, eventually, into policy agenda. In the most comprehensive study to date, Wallsten tracked mainstream media coverage and blog discussion of 35 issues during the 2004 presidential campaign. Using [[time-series analysis]], Wallsten<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wallsten |first1=Kevin |title=Agenda Setting and the Blogosphere: An Analysis of the Relationship between Mainstream Media and Political Blogs |journal=Review of Policy Research |date=November 2007 |volume=24 |issue=6 |pages=567–587 |doi=10.1111/j.1541-1338.2007.00300.x }}</ref> found evidence that journalists discuss the issues that bloggers are blogging about. There are also anecdotal pieces of evidence suggesting bloggers exert an influence on the political agenda. For instance, in 2005 Eason Jordan, the chief news executive at CNN, abruptly resigned after being besieged by the online community after saying, according to various witnesses, that he believed the United States military had aimed at journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them.<ref>{{cite journal |title=CBS News/NEW YORK TIMES New York State Poll, February 2005: Archival Version |date=6 March 2006 |doi=10.3886/icpsr04317 }}</ref> Similarly, in 2002, [[Trent Lott]] had to resign as [[Party leaders of the United States Senate|Senate majority leader]] due to his inappropriate racist remarks that were widely discussed in the blogosphere.