Brad Hamm, associate dean of the School of Communications, joined his research partner and mentor Don Shaw, of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, to discuss the concept of “agenda melding” at annual meeting of the Korean Society for Journalism and Communication Studies May 19-21 in Kwungju.
Shaw gave the event’s keynote speech May 19, and Hamm joined him for the session on agenda melding May 20. The research in this area was first published by Hamm, Shaw, Max McCombs of Texas and David Weaver of Indiana in 1999. In their abstract, they wrote:
“Recent studies show an agenda-setting effect at deeper levels beyond broad news categories. Audiences also absorb the attributes of news-the frames and slants in the way news is presented-and this suggests that while the mass media do not tell us what to think, the mass media do have considerable power to tell us how to think about topics, with implications for social policy. Beyond these two levels of agenda setting, however, is something more significant-agenda melding. Agenda melding argues that individuals join groups, in a sense, by joining agendas. There is a powerful impulse to affiliate with others in groups as one leaves the original family setting, and one joins these groups via media of connections, mostly other people but also other media.”
Former Elon faculty member Young Min and current faculty member Byung Lee (now working in South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar) also presented research at the Korean conference. Hamm also spent some time traveling and touring with Shaw and Lee.