Co-Founding father of agenda-setting visited the Lab

Co-Founding father of agenda-setting visited the Lab

Donald Shaw, who co-founded, with Max McCombs, media agenda-setting theory, visited the Lab on Nov 18. Shaw has had a long-standing connection with the Lab. Shaw was the PhD advisor of David Weaver who was in turn the PhD advisor of Jonathan Zhu who has in turn supervised nearly a dozen members of the Lab. This visit finally brought together the intellectual grand-grand father and his grand-grand children.

In 1992, as Editor of Journalism Quarterly, Shaw oversaw the publication of a special issue of the journal on agenda-setting, guested edited by McCombs, in which Jonathan Zhu presented his zero-sum theory of agenda-setting. At age of 78, Shaw is still active in research, with a particular interest on the role of social media (e.g., Twitter) in civic communities, which he refers to as a Papyrus Society. He was pleased to learn from the visit that our Lab is also working on the role Twitter plays in agenda-setting, partly based on Zhu’s 1992 JQ study under his editorship.

(JZ)