Mediacracy

Agenda-setting refers to the ability of the media to affect the salience of issues on the public agenda. In short, the amount of attention paid to a certain issue will lead to audiences viewing that issue as more important. The theory of agenda-setting was formally developed by Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw in their study on the 1968 presidential election conducted at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.[3] McCombs and Shaw polled 100 residents of the Chapel Hill community and found a strong correlation between what those residents believed to be the most important election issue, and what local and national media outlets reported as the most important election issue.[3] This was a landmark study that displayed a link between an issue's salience in media content and the corresponding salience of that issue in voter's minds.[3]

As of 2005, over 400 studies have discussed the presence of agenda-setting, and the issue remains relevant to the study of the American political system.[4]

Priming, in a political context is a theory stating that the media draws attention to some issues as opposed to others, thereby altering the standards by which we judge candidates in elections. Priming is often used in concert with agenda setting in the media, and the two concepts taken together contribute to a full understanding of the level of influence that the mass media holds over the voting public. This theory on media originated from researchers Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder in their work Experimental Demonstrations of the "Not-So-Minimal" Consequences of Television News Programs published in the 1982 edition of The American Political Science Review.[5] Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder argue that due to media making certain issues more salient than others, they set the parameters of the political decisions made by the voting public.[5]

While priming is often unintentional, Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder's 1982 study examines how intentional priming can shape the public's evaluations of candidates and elected officials.[5] The researchers looked at how the salience of certain topics affected voters' evaluations of President Jimmy Carter, and found evidence to support the presence of both agenda setting and priming. Iyengar et al. first proved the effects of agenda setting by finding a correlation between the attention paid to certain political topics and those topics' importance with the voting public when evaluating the President.[5] The researchers then found evidence of priming by finding a link between those established standards, and voters' resulting evaluations of President Carter.[5]

Supporters of the mediacracy theory largely point to this joint phenomenon as evidence that the mass media holds a large amount of control over the voting population.

Over the course of the last half century, there have been a number of reforms that have led to a shift in control over candidate selection from party elites to the voting public. Thomas Patterson examines this shift, and its resulting correlation with rising political influence of the mass media, in his book Out of Order.[6] From 1960 to 1980, the number of bound or committed delegates in both parties more than doubled, going from 20% on the Democratic side and 35% on the Republican side to 71% and 69% for each respectively in 1980.[6] Also, from 1960 to 2004, the number of states holding primary contests (which favor party elites[7]) instead of caucuses (which favor populism) has more than doubled.[6] Patterson argues that this shift has indirectly strengthened the power of media outlets that have been shown to have much influence over citizens' evaluations of candidates, and as such the media holds much sway in the American political system, despite relatively low levels of political accountability.[6]