Research: Legacy media giants give way to new and partisan outlets in agenda-setting
When it comes to agenda-setting, it’s out with the old, in with the new media, researchers say.
For decades, two of America’s legacy media giants, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have had the biggest influence in setting the agenda for other news outlets. Journalists and bloggers around the country took their cues from the two outlets, creating a trickle-down effect in which content spread from these legacy media leaders toward smaller and newer publications.
However, this tradition no longer stands, according to a new paper led by CU Boulder, involving Boston University and recently published in the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.
“We really wanted to test this idea that elite media still control what’s in the news,” said Chris Vargo, lead author and assistant professor of advertising, public relations and media design, specializing in big data and analytics at CU Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information. “We suspected that this changed and I think our results really show that.”