Description
Why do public issues like the environment rise and fall in importance
over time? To what extent can the trends in salience be explained by
real-world factors? To what degree are they the product of interactions
between media content, public opinion, and policymaking? This book
surveys the development of eight issues in Canada over a decade --
AIDS, crime, the debt/deficit, the environment, inflation, national
unity, taxes, and unemployment -- to explore how the salience of issues
changes over time, and to examine why these changes are important to
our understanding of everyday politics. Agenda-Setting Dynamics in
Canada offers one of the first empirical analyses of the
interaction of the media, the public, and policymakers in Canada and,
more generally, makes an important contribution to the study of
political communications and policymaking well beyond the Canadian
context.
Reviews
Soroka has produced by far the most detailed and sophisticated study to date of Canadian agenda setting ... his clear and concise discussion of the problematics and methods of studying agenda-setting has provided a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.
- Michael Howlett, Professor of Political Science, Simon Fraser University
[T]his concise and well-written book could certainly prove useful to scholars interested in agenda-setting, public opinion and policy studies ... this book may convince even the most skeptical students of politics to take agenda-setting seriously. Rating: *****
- Daniel Béland, University of Calgary
Soroka has produced by far the most detailed and sophisticated study to date of Canadian agenda setting… his clear and concise discussion of the problematics and methods of studying agenda-setting has provided a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.
In the vast literature on agenda setting, this book is destined to become one of the top five publications. It will be a "must read" for anyone involved in this line of research, or for general readers interested in the formation of public opinion and public policy.
- Maxwell McCombs, Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication, University of Texas at Austin