The Agenda-setting and the Social Problems Theories: Models without Agents? Reflections from the Journalistic Field and the Problem of the 'Mad Cow' in France

The "mad cow" crisis that took place in France between the mid-1980s and the beginning of the 2000s are indicative of the social logics of the agenda-setting and the building of public problems, and particularly the role of the media in these processes. From 1985 to 1996, the “mad cow” problem occupies a very secondary position in France's media (but also political) agenda and is framed as an agricultural problem. In March 1996, the problem becomes a predominant part of the media agenda and is now framed as a public health problem. The place of this problem on the media agenda varies greatly in the following years, returning to the top at the end of 2000 with a framing characterized by scandalization. On the basis of this case, the Paper proposes to interrogate the models of the agenda-setting and the social problems. It is suggested that these models manage to describe symbolic goods (the public problems), but they show some weaknesses to explain sociologically their production. They function as models without agents, because they rely on a substantialist view of social groups and a reification of social spaces. To make this point, I will more particularly discuss the notion of “arena”, used in these two models. On the basis of the mad cow crisis, I will try to convince of the analytical added value of the concept of “field”: only the study of the relations between the agents of the journalistic field and between these agents and those of the political or administrative field can explain these processes. In particular, these relations systems refract the processes of agenda-setting and framing of the mad cow problem in other countries (mainly in Great Britain).