The Policy Agenda Setting Theory Under The Influence Of Media

Medium agenda can affect public and thus influence policy agenda. This prospective was proposed during the development of agenda-setting theory, which is a classic theory of Communication and Politics. Taking the example of changes of China’s household registration policy, this article explores issues of Communication and Politics behind this system. With powerful function of distribution, China’s urban-rural dual system refrains the population mobility. Its negative effect on human right, economic development and social advancement is standing out. Though media and the public strongly question this policy and require changes, and decision-makers have been trying to reform, the household registration policy doesn’t change utterly. The reform of changing household registration system has been prevented for more than half a century. In the urbanization of national static background, household registration policy has come the cross of reforming. How to break this impasse is not only the problem of social development but the issue Communication and Politics are facing with. Many theories like Transmission Dynamics Theory, the Multiple Stream Theory on policy agenda and Game Theory can provide an analytic frame for analyzing the changes of agenda setting. Out of the limitation of focusing on only one event to research the agenda setting, this article chooses the changes of household registration policy, which spans for a long period, to explore input mechanism of agenda setting and functional mechanism of medium and policy agenda. This is a new attempt for researching policy agenda and agenda setting and thus it has certain reference value for reforming the household registration system.