Comparing Agenda-Setting Roles of Newspaper Columnists and Editorials in Kenya

A conference paper presented at the 2012 AEJMC CONFERENCE Chicago, Illinois by Kioko Ireri, lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, USIU-A.This research compares the agenda-setting roles of newspaper columnists and editorials in Kenya. It examines whether three newspaper columnists and editorials set the agenda on issues of national importance in 2008 and 2009. This was done by investigating whether there were any associations between issues given prominence in the opinion columns and editorials and what Kenyans, through public opinion polls, considered as the “most important problem” facing the country. The agendas of the columnists and editorials were also compared and investigated. Results show that there were no positive correlations between the agendas of the columnists and the public and between the agendas of the editorials and the public in 2008 and 2009. But there were moderate-positive and high-positive correlations when the agendas for columnists and editorials were matched and compared