Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

Rogers and Dearing’s agenda-setting model, 1987

A B C D E F G H I

JK

L M N O P R S T U V

XYZ

W

Communication, McQuail and Windähl, eds,

(Longman, 2nd edition, 1993), this development

by E.M. Rogers and J.W. Dearing of previ-

ous agenda-setting models is a welcome

acknowledgment of the competing agendas

in the public sphere. In their Yearbook article,

‘Agenda-setting, where has it been, where is

it going?’ the authors see the public agenda as

existing separately, though locked between,

the policy agenda, of the state, of government,

and the media, each subject to infl uence by the

others.

The triad of agendas is itself influenced by

a number of contextual factors ‘out there’, for

example spectacular news stories. There are

substantial factors that shape one, two or all

cultural, industrial – to which they belong;
and the overall social system. All of these are
in dynamic interaction, with messages fl owing
multi-directionally.
The mass media audience Riley and Riley
perceive as being neither impassive nor isolated
but ‘a composite of recipients who are related to
one another, and whose responses are patterned
in terms of these relationships’. See topic guide
under communication models.
RIPA See regulation of investigatory
powers act (ripa) (uk), 2000.
★Rogers and Dearing’s agenda-setting
model, 1987 Published in the Communica-
tion Yearbook 11 (Sage, 1987) and examined in
Communication Models for the Study of Mass

Rogers and Dearing’s agenda-setting model, 1987

Tripolar model of competing agendas