Political agenda-setting and the media: who leads, who follows?

The aim of this study is to assess whether, to what extent en how the mass media determine the political agenda. Due to their diverging research designs, previous studies resulted in contradictory outcomes. This project combines the methods of previous studies, quantitative (time series) and qualitative approaches (interviews), to overcome the limitations of the available studies. The research comprises time series analyses of media and political agendas, selection of ten cases for further analysis, a media framing analysis of media coverage of these cases and a series of interviews with privileged witnesses.