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 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.
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