About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
Why do public issues like the environment rise and fall in importance over time? To what extent can the trends in salience be explained by real-world factors? To what degree are they the product of interactions between media content, public opinion, and policymaking? This book surveys the development of eight issues in Canada over a decade -- AIDS, crime, the debt/deficit, the environment, inflation, national unity, taxes, and unemployment -- to explore how the salience of issues changes over time, and to examine why these changes are important to our understanding of everyday politics. Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada offers one of the first empirical analyses of the interaction of the media, the public, and policymakers in Canada and, more generally, makes an important contribution to the study of political communications and policymaking well beyond the Canadian context.
Contributor Notes
Stuart Soroka is assistant professor of political science at McGill University.
Editorial Reviews
Soroka has produced by far the most detailed and sophisticated study to date of Canadian agenda setting ... his clear and concise discussion of the problematics and methods of studying agenda-setting has provided a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.
— Political Communication, 20, 343-344, 2003
Soroka has produced by far the most detailed and sophisticated study to date of Canadian agenda setting… his clear and concise discussion of the problematics and methods of studying agenda-setting has provided a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.
In the vast literature on agenda setting, this book is destined to become one of the top five publications. It will be a "must read" for anyone involved in this line of research, or for general readers interested in the formation of public opinion and public policy.
— Maxwell McCombs, Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication, University of Texas at Austin
[T]his concise and well-written book could certainly prove useful to scholars interested in agenda-setting, public opinion and policy studies ... this book may convince even the most skeptical students of politics to take agenda-setting seriously. Rating: *****
— Political Studies Review, 1:3
