The Media’s Informational Function in Political Agenda-Setting Processes

Abstract

The political agenda-setting literature has extensively demonstrated that issues receiving more media attention rank higher on the political agenda as well. Scholars now try to get grip on the mechanisms underlying these findings. This paper focuses on the media’s informational function as a driver of political agenda-setting processes. It studies the extent to which politicians, when reacting to media information, really learn about the information from the media—as opposed to instances where the media function as an amplifier rather than as the true source of policy-relevant information. The matter is investigated by means of a survey with Members of Parliament (MPs) in Belgium, Canada, and Israel (N = 376). We confronted the MPs with news stories that had recently been in the media, asking them whether they undertook political action on the news story and whether they knew about the news story before it appeared in the media. We show that politicians mostly knew about the information before it appeared in the media—but that there is variation between politicians and types of action in this respect.