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Wikipedia Page Proposal: Political Agenda POLS*3670 By Travis Adams and Keltie Fraser

For our Wikipedia page proposal we decided to edit an existing Wikipedia stub on 'Political agenda'. We chose the topic of political agenda because it is an important term to understand when trying to comprehend how public policy occurs and how it is influenced. Although there is an abundance of online sources and articles covering many aspects of the topic, Wikipedia only has a very small article dedicated to describing it. It is for this reason that we thought it would serve as a perfect stub to edit and add information to.

This stub needs to be edited because it lacks many of the technical aspects that are required for a topic of its magnitude. There are no defined sections and the overall structure of the article lacks organization. Although the author presents some key points, the paragraphs are insufficient in length and much of the information provided is vague and inadequate. For example, the third paragraph briefly mentions mass media and its effects on shaping political agenda, but is only composed of a single sentence with no proof to back it up and no additional examples to further explain what is being mentioned.

In terms of writing style, the stub also contains some run-on sentences and a small amount of grammatical errors. Through editing this stub we hope to correct those errors and improve the overall quality of writing.

In addition to the actual content of the article itself, the referencing could also be revised and expanded on as many of the sources provided are either poor quality or are not accessible in English. In order to improve this articles validity it is our goal to increase both the quantity and quality of sources.

There are a number of key ideas that need to be added or expanded upon to truly cover what a political agenda is. At the beginning of the stub the author briefly touches on the subject of political elites who can affect the political agenda. We feel it is necessary to go more in depth into how and when each type of political elite (i.e. congress, political leaders) does affect the political agenda. We plan on expanding this thought with the information that we have gained through our additional sources such as “Who Influences Whom? The President, Congress, and the Media” by Edwards, and Wood. At one point the author also mentions the media as a factor that affects the political agenda, but they only touch on it very briefly. The role that the media plays in influencing political agenda is so large and complex, it is for this reason that we will be dedicating an entire section to it. This will be done through referencing a number of statistical studies, something not present in the article currently. Using research studies to support our claims, we will also describe exactly how the media influences the political agenda, as well as what topics they influence the most.

First referenced will be a study by Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart that finds that media coverage on anti immigration in Netherlands directly correlates to the success of anti-immigration populist parties and their political agendas (Boomgaarden, H. G., & Vliegenthart, 2007). A similar study by Sevenans et. al that compares the behaviour of politicians in comparison to the media will be referenced here as well. This source is important because it relates political agenda to the media on a global scale (Sevenans et. al, 1999).

Finally, we would like to add a section relating political agenda to state centralization. In this section we will describe how different levels of state centralization affect the political agenda (Acemoglu et. al, 2016). For example, if a state has a higher level of centralization it will incite citizens to try and change the agenda, therefore political elites might instead prefer a non-centralized state where they can still maintain more control over the political agenda (Acemoglu et. al, 2016).

Some other key concepts that we found might be important to mention and dedicate a separate section to were the “Political Agenda Effect”, and “Escalation Effect”. The “Political Agenda Affect” section will describe the idea that when citizens from different backgrounds get together, their agenda will change in a way that takes their demands away from elites to focus more on public goods (Acemoglu et. Al, 2016). The “Escalation Effect” section will describe how if citizens get together, this will induce elites to form national resources to fight against them and maintain the political agenda the way they desire (Acemoglu et. al, 2016). Through improving more of the technical requirements that this article lacks, including appropriate writing style, proper referencing, and organization we feel we can really improve the overall quality of this article and provide additional evidence for how the above mentioned ideas; political elites, the media, and state centralization relate to political agenda.

Annotated Bibliography

Acemoglu, D., Robinson, J., & Torvik, R. (2016). The Political Agenda Effect and State Centralization. National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w22250

A 2016 publication in the National Bureau of Economic Research, this article talks about the relationship between political agendas and state concentration. Through, an in depth research study, it advances the idea that political agendas, and political concentration are tied together. The basic idea being that how centralized a state is may change political dynamics and thus the political agenda. The more centralized a state, the more public citizens may try to affect the public agenda. Therefore, elites may strategically choose to have a non-centralized state so not to induce public citizens to try and organize nationally to affect the political agenda

Boomgaarden, H. G., & Vliegenthart, R. (2007). Explaining the rise of anti-immigrant parties: The role of news media content. Electoral Studies, 26(2), 404-417. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2006.10.018

This source is from the academic journal on Electoral Studies. The methodology used was, a content analysis of the five most popular Dutch newspapers. It garnered roughly 170,000 articles and so the large sample adds to the validity of the claims it makes. The overall goal of this study was to correlate the evidence of more coverage of media stories on anti-immigration, to the rise of anti-immigrant political parties. It is therefore, relevant because it is studying how the political agenda on immigration is affected by the media. The findings show that the media coverage on anti-immigration issues directly correlates to how successful anti-immigrant parties are at getting their ideas on the political agenda.

Edwards, G. C., & Wood, B. D. (1999). Who Influences Whom? The President, Congress, and the Media. American Political Science Review, 93(02), 327-344. doi:10.2307/2585399

Published in The Cambridge University Press, this source is a study of the American President, Congress, and media in their role in affecting the political agenda. The methodology used involves evaluating a time series of the president and congress attention on five major issues important to American politics: crime, health, care, education, relations with Russia, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the end, the main conclusion is that most of the time the media, president and congress all play a significant role in reacting to events, and altering the political agenda. In the end, this research is relevant to the topic of political agendas because it shows how political agendas are affected by multiple influences, and that one actor like the president does not dominate the political system.

Julie Sevenans, Stefaan Walgrave & Gwendolyn Joanna Epping (2016) How Political Elites Process Information From the News: The Cognitive Mechanisms Behind Behavioral Political Agenda-Setting Effects, Political Communication, 33:4, 605-627, DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2016.1153543

A recent submission to the academic journal on “Political Communication”, this source provides a lot of information on the media’s relation to political agendas. It makes reference to numerous studies in different countries, showing that its conclusions are both generalizable and repeated. The methodology used in each study is essentially studying the behaviour of politicians in comparison to the media and this is mostly done via surveys. The general consensus of the studies examined is that the media does play a vital role in determining what ideas political groups lay out. It takes the assertion that media have an effect on political agendas, and actually goes out and proves it through research.

Werner Jann, Kai Wegrich (2007) Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods (4)45-48

In chapter 4 of the Handbook of Public Policy Analysis, Werner Jann and Kai Wegrish discuss agenda-setting as one of the many stages in the policy cycle. They define political agenda as nothing more than “the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials, and people outside the government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time” (Kingdon 1995, 3). They go on to talk about the many actors that collectively play a role in influencing and shaping political agendas, and that no one actor has complete control over agenda-setting.