Research Proposal: Agenda Setting in Canadian Elections (POLS 201)

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This research proposal analyzes agenda-setting's role in Canadian elections.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
1
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OUTLINE
Name:
Student Id:
Instructor Name:
Course Name:

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
2
Topic – Investigate the role that “agenda setting” played in an election of Canada.
Proposal outline
The proposal is made upon the role of agenda setting in Canadian elections, but
before describing the topic, it is essential for users of this report to know about agenda
setting. It is an idea of what the public thinks set by media (Vu, et. al., 2014). The firstly the
agenda-setting theory was identified in 1972 by Dr Maxwell McCombs and Dr Donald Shaw.
According to the method of agenda setting plays a vital role in shaping political realities. It
has been overviewed that agenda setting enables to saliences the issues involved in news
content develop on public perception.
While setting an agenda, it is essential to consider two basic assumptions, such as –
media should filter and shape the reality instead of reflecting it and focuses on a few issues or
topics. The reason behind this is that the public only tends to perceive those issues as more
important.
In Canada, at the time of elections, political parties set out some agenda thus to
influence the public and win great appearance. It has been overviewed that newspapers and
other media channels provide considerable press coverage towards any specific topic that
makes a political party more robust and capable (Conway, et. al., 2015).
Agenda setting helps political parties to increase their public presence and capture
public eyes towards specific issues or problem in society. It represents that the party is paying
too much attention to resolve these issues and contribute to federal benefits. Since past
decades, the National Policy of Canada playing a vital role in agenda setting; it is an
effectively political-economic strategy which assists in populating and developing prairies.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
3
Furthermore, the agenda puts a vast impact on public thinking such as – generate
discussion, find out the pros and cons of the problem, expectations linked to elected officials
also get influenced. The electoral impact of agenda setting is political parties accepting those
issues or problems, and they will be resolved as soon as possible. Hence, here it would be
better to say that having an active agenda-setting strategy assists in affecting distinctive
communication behavior. In other words, it forces people to think about a specific political
party and support it adequately (Camaj, 2014). Although, there is some topic which cannot
highlights in agenda setting at the time of elections, such as – AIDS, environment, drugs,
abortion and economy. In other words, most of the political parties cover solutions for current
issues or problems; they don't focus on past issues faced by societies or communities.
In this present scenario, the selection of appropriate media channels plays a
significant role in conveying the actual message of political parties; so that politicians are
tending to acquire internet and television to influence public thinking.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
4
References
Camaj, L. (2014). Need for orientation, selective exposure, and attribute agenda-setting
effects. Mass Communication and Society, 17(5), 689-712.
Conway, B. A., Kenski, K., & Wang, D. (2015). The rise of Twitter in the political campaign:
Searching for intermedia agenda-setting effects in the presidential primary. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(4), 363-380.
Vu, H. T., Guo, L., & McCombs, M. E. (2014). Exploring “the world outside and the pictures
in our heads” A network agenda-setting study. Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly, 91(4), 669-686.