Think Tank Agenda Setting: The Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations on Elections, the New Administration's Transition Agenda, and Beyond. A Case Study

Abstract

The idea that think tanks set the order of importance of issues seems fairly obvious they are comprised of academics, revolving door administration officials, and other minds devoted to the full-time research and analysis of the issues facing our government and our world They have the luxury of exploring a variety of options related to an issue and the resources to dig deeply and vertically into an issue versus the broader paintbrush strokes that official government agency and departments generally provide In many respects, think tank influence is like that of the U.S. news media Much like the news media, think tanks can highlight what they consider newsworthy and that highlighted information then becomes, by definition, news Amen can voters tend to perceive the big issues of the day as those issues on which the media focus There has been a great deal of research and suggestion that it is the news media that are setting the public agenda in the United States But it is not as simple as that For example, why do the media focus on certain issues and not others? Is it due to the news value, which underlies the decisions the media professionals make?

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA477263

Entities

People

  • Marla L. Carl

Organizations

  • Air Command and Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Case Studies
  • Commerce
  • Congress
  • Foreign Policy
  • Foreign Relations
  • Governments
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • Law
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Political Science
  • Political Systems
  • Public Policy
  • United States
  • United States Government
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Economics
  • International Journalism and Media Studies.