Foreign News and Public Opinion: Attribute Agenda-Setting Theory Revisited

This research found strong support for the attribute agenda-setting theory by examining media coverage of nine foreign countries in The New York Times and The Times. Media coverage and public opinion were strongly correlated. Specifically, negative coverage tends to have more agenda-setting effects than neutral and positive coverage. Also, media portray foreign countries stereotypically, by limiting the coverage around a few stories centered on a few issues. For example, coverage of the African continent constitutes only 5.6 percent of international news produced by US news media. This 5.6 percent offers for its intended audience little depth in the portrayal of an entire continent. Finally, the US and the UK media cover foreign nations very similarly.