Managing Attention Towards Social Problems: A Theoretical Account of Public Agenda Dynamics

Several authors hesitate to call agenda setting a theory, but rather refer to it as an approach, a model, a hypothesis, or a metaphor. Furthermore, research interest in media agenda setting has stagnated over the last decades and innovations have become rare. The reason for both observations is a lack of theoretical underpinnings of the approach. Departing from a discussion of what requirements a theory needs to meet and what shortcomings characterize the agenda setting literature, this paper proposes a theory of attention management of the audience. The theory states that individuals and societies have evolved to direct their attention towards problems in order to cope with these environmental threats. However, many social problems in modern societies cannot be observed directly and cannot be solved individually. Citizens rely on a set of indicators to assess what covert problems exist and need collective attention – among them the media’s emphasis of different problems. The theory explains how widespread attention towards issues is generated. It takes into account the dynamics of public attention towards issues over time. ‘Biases’ in judging the urgency of problems are retrospectively (in the face of more substantive evidence) experienced as collective hysteria (e.g. following a media hype) or as apathy (e.g. following scarce media coverage). Such evaluations serve as feedback to adjust the individual and collective mechanisms of attention steering. I argue that the theory both accounts for empirical findings gathered in the past and allows for deriving new hypotheses that can be tested in the future.