Criticisms
1) Agenda setting is an inherently causal theory, but few studies establish the hypothesized temporal order (the media should set the public's agenda).
2) The measurement of the dependent variable was originally conceptualized as the public's perceived issue "salience," but subsequent studies have conceptualized the dependent variable as awareness, attention, or concern, leading to differing outcomes.
3) Studies tend to aggregate media content categories and public responses into very broad categories, resulting in inflated correlation coefficients.
Read more about this topic: Agenda-setting Theory
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