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Informative or Not? Media Coverage of Child Social Policy Issues.

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Book cover Indicators of Children's Well Being

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 27))

Abstract

It is well known that news coverage of a topic influences the public’s perception of the importance of that topic. This “agenda-setting effect” of the mass media (McCombs and Shaw, 1972; Rogers and Dearing, 1988) represents one of the key theories about how the news media affect public opinion. Agenda-setting influence occurs at two levels. The first involves the salience or prominence of a given issue on the public agenda, establishing for the public what is important to think about; while the second relates to the specific views or opinions the public holds on a topic, or more simply, what to think about issues that are deemed important to think about (McCombs and Reynolds, 2002).

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KUNKEL, D., SMITH, S., SUDING, P., BIELY, E. (2006). Informative or Not? Media Coverage of Child Social Policy Issues.. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Goerge, R.M. (eds) Indicators of Children's Well Being. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4242-6_13

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