Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 19

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

I

n 1422, Charles VI of France died, and Charles
VII ascended the throne moments later as,
according to tradition, the Duke of Uzès announced, “The King is dead, long live the King!”
(translated from French).1 Just as old kings die and are
replaced by new kings, institutions and social perspectives gain and lose favor over time, and sometimes
overnight. Traditional military tactical guidelines and
operational principles also evolve. Without change,
institutions weaken and atrophy.
In the U.S. Army, changes are necessary and inevitable. Changes to institutional policies and principles have to be communicated to soldiers in a way
that effectively alters their attitudes and behavior.
Institutional changes have to be communicated to the
general public as well. Therefore, to positively influence change, Army leaders must ensure their messages
are reaching their intended audiences while considering how messages from competing sources influence
those audiences.
One effective way to analyze the influence of
organizational messages is by applying the concepts
of agenda setting, media melding, and agendamelding.
Communication research into these concepts suggests
leaders can monitor organizational performance and
adjust communication approaches to responsibly influence institutional change.

Agenda Setting
What is agenda setting? Political scientist Bernard
Cohen in the early 1960s discovered that what people
knew about foreign affairs was closely related to the
editorial selection of items covered in the news media
they followed (i.e., media connect people and set a news
agenda). This correlation was relatively simple to establish in Cohen’s time because the dominant news media
comprised few television networks, radio stations, print
newspapers, and magazines. The topics featured in the
news among the handful of powerful media of the time
could be compared rather easily to surveys of public
awareness of issues.
Cohen’s research led him to argue that the press was
not especially effective in telling people what to think
but was exceptionally powerful in telling people what
to think—and talk— about.2 This, in a phrase, is agenda
setting: media frame and focus community interest on a
discrete set of issues by means of regular news coverage.
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

Since then, hundreds of media studies have confirmed the observation that news media influence
which issues and topics people consider most important and are worthy of thinking and talking about, to
the exclusion of other important issues and topics
of possible interest available.3 Therefore, in general,
though the media usually do not change people’s values
and attitudes by themselves, they do frame a picture of
the world at large for their audiences. This limits the
array of issues and topics about which public attitudes
and values are subsequently formed. Thus, the agendasetting function of the media has an immensely powerful indirect influence on public attitudes and values.

Statistical Correlations between the
Media and Public Agendas
To explore the influence of media news agendas on
the public, researchers have employed sophisticated
research models based on statistical analysis. Statistical
correlation is one such analytical tool that has been
used to demonstrate the power of agenda setting
by determining the level of media-audience agenda
agreement on public-interest issues. Correlations
between factors defined as variables can help with
understanding relationships even if they cannot directly identify and prove cause and effect. For media
research on agenda setting, the scale of correlation
ranges from 1.00 (perfect agreement) to 0.00 (no
agreement at all). In other words, among a sample
group from a designated audience, a correlation of
+1.00 would mean that the media and members of the
sample group agreed completely on the importance of
all topics mentioned in the news, from most to least
emphasized. Conversely, a correlation of zero would
mean there was no media and sample group agreement whatsoever on the importance of those topics.
(There can even be a –1.00 correlation, which means
the public completely rejects the media emphasis, not
a realistic situation normally.)
Using statistical correlation as a metric for analysis,
studies of media influence have consistently demonstrated that there is a strong relationship between
topics selected by the media as newsworthy and topics
perceived by the public as important to the communit y (defined as, say, a correlation of .65 or higher).
Such findings consistently demonstrate the significant
agenda-setting power of the news media.
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