KILLER AND VICTIM ISSUES - ISSUE COMPETITION IN THE AGENDA-SETTING PROCESS OF GERMAN TELEVISION

The capacity of the mass media to cover issues as well as the capacity of recipients to be concerned about issues is limited. The coverage o n and the concern about new issues will consequently remove old issues from the agenda of both the mass media and the general public. The pr esent study investigates two models of this process of issue competiti on. The equal-displacement model assumes that a rise of one issue in t he media by a given number of stories is matched by an equal fall in a ll other issues summing up to a similar number of issues. The restruct uring model assumes that unexpected, surprising or otherwise newsworth y events create killer issues that move several other issues completel y off the agenda and leave others untouched. A content analysis of all news shows of the two major TV stations in Germany and 53 weekly surv eys regarding 16 different issues covering the whole year I986 shows t hat-within the media agenda-there were no killer issues affecting the coverage of the TV stations. In the public agenda, however, some kille r issues could be identified. Coverage of these issues increased publi c concern about them and decreased concerns about other issues. Conseq uences of these results for agenda-setting theory and for politics are discussed.