DOES PERSONAL-EXPERIENCE IN A COMMUNITY INCREASE OR DECREASE NEWSPAPER READING

Many agenda-setting researchers argue that personal experience with is sues or events in a community diminishes use of mass media. This study challenges this notion and, drawing on the community attachment model , hypothesizes that personal experience normally will increase newspap er reading. Personal experience increases reading because rarely is if identical or isomorphic with news coverage, especially in pluralistic systems, and because, like social ties in general, personal experienc e open stimulates additional needs for information. Data support the k ey hypothesis when it comes to reading of the local community weekly a nd student newspapers, but not for the metropolitan newspaper.