AGENDA-SETTING AND POLITICAL ADVERTISING - ORIGINS OF THE NEWS AGENDA

The number of potential sources shaping the media's agenda is large, r anging from external sources in government and the private sector to t he idiosyncrasies of individual journalists. The focus in this study i s intermedia agenda setting. Commonly defined in terms of the influenc e that the news agendas of different news organizations have on each o ther, the concept of intermedia agenda setting is expanded to include another key element of mass communication: advertising. Advertising ag endas occasionally have been examined as an influence on the public ag enda, an alternative test of the basic, agenda-setting hypothesis. Her e, however, the advertising agenda established by political candidates through their television political commercials is added to the model of the agenda-setting process to answer more fully the question, who s ets the media's agenda? The study examines the direction of influence or intermedia convergence of issue agendas during the 1990 Texas guber natorial campaign. Content analysis was utilized to determine the issu e agendas of newspaper coverage, television coverage, and political ad vertising. By cross-lag analysis, the findings show a strong correlati on (+ .734) between the newspaper agenda at time 1 and the television agenda at time 2. A second influence on the television news agenda has been identified: televised political advertising (+ .524). The findin gs also show a strong correlation of the political advertising agenda at time 1 with the newspaper agenda at time 2 (+ .638).