A new study by Frank Baumgartner, Shaun Bevan and Miklós Sebők, titled “Agenda-setting studies in public policy: Origins, development, and new possibilities for coding in the age of AI”, has been published in the journal Communication and Change.

The article reviews over fifty years of research building on McCombs and Shaw’s seminal 1972 agenda-setting study, charting how this foundational work influenced both communications and political science and giving particular attention to methodological innovation.

The authors highlight how increasingly powerful computing, “text-as-data” approaches, automated classification systems and emerging artificial intelligence technologies have transformed agenda-setting research, enabling larger empirical projects and new analytical possibilities.
Framed by developments such as machine-learning and AI, the paper suggests future directions for the field that build on classic theory while adapting to new data environments and technological tools.

The full study is available here:
https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s44382-026-00021-8