Projecting tomorrow's challenges: Towards a temporally nuanced framework for studying public agenda setting

The study of public agenda-setting has a long and rich tradition within communication research, focusing on problems that are being perceived as most important in the present moment and how the news may shape these perceptions. Concentrating on immediate concerns, public agenda-setting research so far focused on people’s perceptions of the "most important problems facing the country today", thereby ignoring issues on the agenda which, while important to the public, lack the sense of immediate urgency. Agenda-setting’s singular temporal focus on the immediately relevant is puzzling, considering that agendas, both on the individual but also the societal level, have many more temporal layers: while some issues are perceived as immediately pressing, others get postponed or procrastinated. This article sheds light on this temporal complexity of public agendas. It suggests a shift from a singular to a layered temporality by distinguishing between immediate and delayed agendas. While the immediate agenda focuses on people’s most important problems in the present moment, the delayed agenda addresses those issues that are perceived as most important in the future. The paper incorporates theoretical insights from psychological research on construal level theory (CLT), especially its notion of "psychological distance", and insights from classical agenda setting research on the notions of "obtrusiveness" and "abstractness" of agenda topics. Based on the literature, individuals are expected to put psychologically close topics on the immediate agenda and distant topics on the delayed agenda, while it is an open empirical question how people’s news media exposure to psychologically close or distant issues shapes the setting of immediate and delayed agendas. To investigate the hypothesis and research question, the paper draws upon original data from two case studies: the first study combines survey and media content-data through linkage analysis. A survey of French citizens, conducted during the 2022 election period (N=1,361; 19-24/04/2022), measures participants' immediate and delayed agendas. Participants’ exposure to specific news outlets was linked to a computational analysis of election coverage in these outlets (N=12,828; 05-25/04/2022). The second study, which draws on a survey of Israeli citizens (N=1,050; 19-24/10/2023), seeks to validate the findings from the French case study in a different national-topical context related to the ongoing war in Israel-Gaza. In addition, it aims to further explore the societal and psychological mechanisms behind the setting of immediate and delayed agendas. Analysis of the Israeli survey results is still in process. The French case study reveals participants assigning different temporal significance to diverse problems. The psychologically close issue of cost-of-living is more important on the immediate agenda, while the distant problem of the environment is prominent on the delayed agenda. Expanding public agendas with a future temporal layer uncovers additional agenda-setting effects by showing that news exposure enhances perceived topic salience while maintaining psychological distance toward it. In summary, the article contributes to existing scholarship on agenda-setting through the introduction of a new conceptual framework to study public agendas with more temporal nuance. Thereby it sheds light on thus far unexplored agenda-setting effects of the news media beyond the immediately relevant.