THE THRESHOLD OF PUBLIC ATTENTION

The analysis reviews time series data for the period 1945 to1980 on media coverage and corresponding public attention toa set of ten political issues including poverty, racial problems,Watergate, and Vietnam. The study focuses on the early stagesof public awareness and the need for a "critical mass" or thresholdto move a matter from the status of private concern to a public,political issue. The pattern of evolving public awareness variesdramatically for different types of issues. In some cases, thepublic appears to have a much steeper "response function" inreacting to real-world cues than the media; in other cases,the media seem to be more responsive. Modeling the growth ofattention to public issues with the logistic curve met withmodest success. The article concludes with a call for much closercoordination between agenda-setting research and the study ofpolitical cognition.