The role of the Internet in agenda setting: A synthesized uses and gratifications and agenda setting mode

Agenda setting states that media audiences determine the salience of issues based on the media coverage provided. This implies that the media agenda becomes the public agenda of important issues. During the past decade, the Internet has become a popular medium for seeking out political information. Therefore, it is necessary to see how changes in media consumption affect agenda setting. This study addresses the changing agenda-setting process in the new media environment and the role of the Internet in the public's agenda of important public affairs issues through a Synthesized Model of Uses and Gratifications and Agenda Setting.;The model was tested by surveying 268 people about their use of media for political information, individual characteristics, and the issues that make up their public agendas. The results help explain the relationship between individual characteristics and media use, the motives for seeking political information, and the relationships among individual characteristics, motives, and media use.;The uses-and-gratifications component established four motives for seeking political information from both television and the Internet: information seeking, entertainment, social utility, and civic duty. Significant relationships were found between individual characteristics and both the frequency of a medium's use and the motives for using the medium for seeking political information. Television and the Internet were found to be supplements or complements, but not substitutes for seeking political information.;The agenda-setting component established that each medium's users possessed a common agenda of important public affairs issues. However, the agendas they possessed significantly differed from the agenda the media showed them. These findings fail to support agenda setting. Although common agendas exist among media users, the media's agenda-setting function is minimal. This implies that the media are not powerful in setting the public agenda and calls into question the application of agenda-setting theory, and, possibly, other mass communication theories, in the new media environment. Future research needs to address the implications of this finding and explore who or what, if not the media, is setting the public agenda.