Using aggregate time-series data, this study tests four research hypotheses. First, we examine the long-term trend in the issue agenda diversity of the public as measured by the Gallup Most Important Problem question from 1956 to 2004. Second, we test whether the agenda-setting effect between the media agenda and the public agenda has become weaker over that time. Finally, with multivariate autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modeling, this study investigates the causal relationships among the longitudinal changes in public agenda diversity, the New York Time's content diversity, and the New York Times' agenda-setting effect on public opinion. While no significant trend in the agenda-setting effect was found, we found a significant quadratic trend in public agenda diversity and significant causal relationships among these three time-series measures. In short, increased public agenda diversity decreased the New York Times' public agenda-setting effect, and the issue agenda diversity of the New York Times has decreased over time, but the overall agenda-setting effect between the New York Times and the public has not become weaker over time.

This study examines how men of different races are displayed in terms of masculinity types and product types by analyzing the content of 636 ads collected from the three most popular men’s lifestyle magazines in Taiwan, China, and the United States between 2008 and 2010. Western models were found more frequently portrayed as Tough, Macho, and Androgynous, but less frequently than Asian models as Vigorous and Sunny. Global marketers use more Asian models when targeting Asian markets than when targeting American markets. Racial difference was also revealed in types of advertised products.

This study aims to explore second-level agenda-setting at the national level. In particular, it examines the relationships among the citation bias of the New York Times, national level public opinion, and Congressional policies from 1956 to 2004 in order to better understand mass media's role in national policymaking. In addition, it also tests one important intervening variable of the relationships among the three attribute agendas (the media agenda, the public agenda, and the policy agenda)—the president's policy liberalism.

This study examined the influence of event sponsorship on the image of Kaohsiung as portrayed by the international news coverage of the 2009 Kaohsiung World Games. A content analysis of relevant news coverage reveals that the media's increased positive description of Kaohsiung's landscape, citizens, and public officials, as well as the increased use of conquest and coronation frames, enhanced the city's image. However, this positive coverage may have been eclipsed by the more rapid increase in the object salience of the event and the increased use of other media frames. The increased media coverage of Kaohsiung also promoted the visibility of Taipei, but did not affect the visibility of political issues and other Taiwan cities. The findings imply that hosting a mega sports event is a useful way for a city to increase visibility and gain positive coverage, but an ineffective approach to avoiding negative political news frames on international media.

While media frames reflect the dominant discourse about an issue, frame analysis can elucidate how they affect public perception. ¹ 1 William A Gamson and Andre Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 1 (1989): 1–37. Employing content analysis of news coverage of adolescents’ use of social media in mainstream newspapers (n = 323) from 2014 to 2017, supplemented with secondary data from two national surveys of adolescents, this study investigates how news media construct the reality of adolescents’ use of social media; how the constructed reality differs from the subjective reality reported by adolescents’ themselves; and how news media reflect the elite discourse in terms of adolescence’s nature, agency, and needs in the context of using social media.