A TEST OF MEDIA-CENTERED AGENDA-SETTING - NEWSPAPER CONTENT AND PUBLIC INTERESTS IN A PRESIDENTIAL-ELECTION

The conventional wisdom in political communications research is that t he media play a dominant role in defining the agenda of elections. In Bernard Cohen's words, the media do not tell us what to think, but the y tell us what to think about. The present article challenges this con clusion. We present data on media coverage of the 1992 presidential el ection from the first nationally representative sample of American new spapers and compare these to the issue interests of the American publi c. We conclude that past claims that the media control the agenda-sett ing process have been overstated. Candidates' messages are well repres ented in press coverage of the campaign, and coverage is even independ ent of a newspaper's editorial endorsement. We argue that agenda setti ng is a transaction process in which elites, the media, and the public converge to a common set of salient issues that define a campaign.