Notes for "Motivations for Content Selection: An Application of Open-ended Questions in an On-Line Environment"

¹Vincent Price, Public Opinion (Newbury Park:Sage, 1992).

²Maxwell McCombs, "Personal Involvement with Issues in the Public Agenda," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 11 (No. 2 1999):152-168

³Margaret H. DeFleur, "James Bryce's 19th Century Theory of Public Opinion in the Contemporary Age of New Communication Technologies." (Paper presented to the Mass Communication and Society Division, AEJMC, Washington, 1995.

⁴J. R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

⁵ Shelley E. Taylor and Susan T. Fiske, "Salience, Attention and Attribution Top of the Head Phenomena," in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 11 (New York: Academic Press, 1978):249.

⁶The book Agenda Setting: Readings on Media, Public Opinion and Policy Making(Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum, 1991), edited by David L. Protess and Maxwell McCombs, offers a good overview of the various studies in agenda setting.

⁷Salma Ghanem, "Filling in the Tapestry: The Second Level of Agenda Setting," in Maxwell McCombs, Donald Shaw and David Weaver, eds., Communication and Democracy (Mahwah,NJ: Erlbaum, 1997):3-14.

⁸Ibid.

⁹David H. Weaver, "Political Issues and Voter Need for Orientation," in Protess and McCombs, op. cit., 131-140.

¹⁰Maxwell McCombs, "Need for Orientation in the New Media Landscape," unpublished manuscript, 2002.

¹¹Wayne Wanta, "The Public and the National Agenda," (Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum, 1997)

¹²Maxwell McCombs. Edna Einsiedel and David Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion: Issues and the News (Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum).

¹³Maxwell McCombs and Paula Poindexter, "The Duty to Keep Informed: News Exposure and Civic Obligation," Journal of Communication 33(June 1983):88-96.

¹⁴This question has been a staple and public opinion polls for decades. It is usually phrased as an open-ended question that asks respondents, "What do you think is the most important problem facing the nation today?" Aggregated responses from the poll data are often used to operationalize the public agenda. See McCombs, "Personal Involvement," op. cit.

¹⁵Dixie Evatt, "Measuring Public Knowledge Through Open-ended Questioning," Southwestern Communication Journal 14No. 1, 1998):61-71

¹⁶John G. Geer, "Do Open-ended Questions Measure 'Salient' Issues," Public Opinion Quarterly 55(Fall 1991):360-370.

¹⁷Brant R. Burleson, Steven R. Wilson, Michael S. Waltman, Elizabeth M. Goering, Teresa K. Ely and Bryan B. Whaley, "Item Desirability Effects in Compliance Gaining Research: Seven Studies Documenting Artifacts in Strategy Selection Procedure,": Huamn Communication Research 14(October 1988):429-486.

¹⁸For more details on the results see Dixie S. Evatt, "The Influence of Emotion-Evoking Content of News on Issue Salience" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas-Austin, 1997); Dixie S. Evatt and Salma Ghanem, "Media Messages About Social Issues: Testing Emotion -Evoking Story-Telling Styles at the Second Dimension of Agenda Setting," (paper presented at World Association for Opinion Research, 1999); Dixie S. Evatt and Salma Ghanem, "Telling the Story of Floods: News Framing and Emotion," (paper presented at Association of State Floodplain Managers National Conference Austin, 2000).

¹⁹H. G. Zucker, "The Variable Nature of News Media Influence," in Brent D. Rubin, ed., Communication Yearbook 2 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978):225-240