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The purpose of this paper is to improve Kingdon’s (1984, 2011) concept of policy entrepreneurs (PE) with regard to the theoretical development of the definition and identification and level of agency by supplementing it with elements of Schmidt’s (2008, 2010, 2011, 2012) sentient agents. The improved concept of discursive policy entrepreneurs (DPEs) is then applied in an in-depth case study about the agenda setting process of micro and macro whole-of-government accounting in Australia in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Based on the concept of DPEs, a series of operationalised characteristics and proxies are developed to identify them and describe their behaviour. These are then applied in the case study. The two main data sources are semi-structured in-depth interviews and archival documents.

The findings show that the focus on DPEs’ discursive and coordination activities is critical for identifying and investigating the key actors of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)/Government Finance Statistics (GFS) harmonisation agenda setting process. The study also finds that the two relevant decision-making bodies, the Financial Reporting Council and the Australian Accounting Standards Board, lost control over their agendas due to the actions of DPEs.

The improved concepts of DPEs will allow researchers to better identify the main agents of policy change and differentiate them from other supporters of policy ideas. Due to the qualitative nature of the study, the findings are not necessarily generalisable.

The findings from this study can help participants of agenda setting processes to gain a better understanding of the actions and behaviours of DPEs. This might allow standard setting bodies to mitigate against undue influences by DPEs.

This study is the first study that uses Schmidt’s concept of the sentient agent to address the limitations of Kingdon’s concept of PE and develops and applies characteristics to identify PEs and their actions. It is also the only study to date that investigates the GAAP/GFS harmonisation agenda setting process.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand agenda setting by international human rights organizations in the online environment and at the same time contribute to agenda‐setting theory. The role of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in the area of human rights is clarified, and agenda setting and related concepts are discussed.

The study focuses on how attention is drawn to human rights issues in online communication by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International. A content analysis of online forums of HRW and Amnesty International was conducted by monitoring their web sites and Facebook and Twitter pages over a period of three months. In addition, two expert interviews with representatives of Amnesty Finland were conducted to better understand how the organization's online communication activities relate to its policies in drawing attention to human rights.

Based on this study, drawing attention to human rights issues is a goal that leads to active online communication. NGOs aim at attracting attention to their issues online by initiating a dialogue via online forums and motivating the public to participate in activities that may influence the media and the political agenda. The existing agenda‐setting research tends to emphasize the role of journalists in setting the public agenda, and mentions NGOs primarily as a source for journalists and as a political player. The online environment shows, however, that these NGOs mostly aim at setting the public agenda to create social change, while the media and political agenda are also not forgotten.

This study suggests that the interdependence of the media, public and political agendas is more complex than has thus far been considered in agenda‐setting theory, especially in the current online environment. It investigates online agenda setting by two international NGOs, but does not discuss the role of the media or the public at large in their relationship with these NGOs. As this study has a limited time frame, a content analysis over a longer period and interviews with representatives of a wider variety of NGOs could be a next step. Future research could also compare the online communication of NGOs with that of profit organisations.

The findings show how agenda setting is supported by intricate multi‐platform activities in the present‐day online environment by the organizations studied in order to initiate a dialogue on societal issues. This suggests that in the online environment, the media, public and political agendas are becoming increasingly interrelated and within this triangle the public agenda seems to be gaining further in importance.

The impact that NGOs have on today's society is growing, and hence studying their online agenda setting is valuable from the perspective of corporate communication. International NGOs early on recognised the value of online communication.

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the interrelationships that exist between politicians' Twitter agendas, news websites agendas and public agendas at the first level during the 2019 Greek Parliamentary elections for the two front-runners of the elections, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras. Three researches were conducted to assess the issues agendas of candidates' tweets, news websites coverage as well as the issue importance of the public for an 18-day period prior to the elections. At the issue level, although Twitter and media agendas align more, they are distinct from public agenda. Overall, Twitter proved to be an ineffective tool for influencing the news websites and public agendas during the 2019 Greek Parliamentary elections with online media agendas being slightly more powerful. Moreover, the public agenda did play a role in shaping Twitter as well as media content but in a counterbalancing manner. In addition, this study confirmed that agenda building and setting dynamics at both levels vary based on the issue and candidate being analysed.

This paper explores how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has dealt with the emerging issue of accounting for cryptocurrencies by investigating its constituents' expectations and the motivations underlying its regulatory response.

The theoretical lens of regulatory space is used to analyse the four-year debate around cryptocurrency holdings and informs the extensive thematic analysis of public documents, meetings recordings and comment letters on the topic.

Facing national standard setters' initiatives to regulate accounting for cryptocurrency, the IASB defended its position in the regulatory space through an agenda decision based on ewct 2xisting standards, which was finalised by the International Financial Reporting Standards Interpretation Committee (IFRS IC) despite criticism from constituents and Board members.

The paper provides insights into the IASB approach to a regulatory vacuum regarding a new class of items, which derive from a new and rapidly-evolving technology. Disruptive technology impacts the contested arena of accounting regulation, in which the constituents ask for new solutions and the IASB tries to resist such pressures, while defending its position.

The paper sheds light on the growing importance of agenda decisions in the IFRS environment and on the limits of the IASB long regulatory process in the circumstance of emerging accounting issues deriving from rapidly-evolving technology.

This investigation is timely and relevant as it considers the regulatory issues arising from disruptive technological innovations (i.e. cryptocurrency), shedding light on the limits of regulatory processes in times of technological change.

News media have been shown to have a significant influence in the selection and perception of issues in political campaigns. This has become known as “agenda‐setting”. The evolution of the agenda‐setting literature is traced and the links with political campaigning and political marketing are identified. Although the term is widely used in Australasia, Europe and North America, there is no previous empirical research on agenda‐setting in Greece. The article outlines a content analysis of press coverage over the period of the campaign for the European elections in Greece in 1999. The results are contrasted with an analysis of party manifestos and press releases and with public opinion prior to the campaign. Differences between the three agenda groups are identified.

This chapter identifies, defines and explores four news media roles of conduit, facilitator, mediator and political actor through which the media participate with corporate, social and political actors in agenda-building processes. The framework of the media’s four agenda-building roles sheds light on how the news media perform their various roles as well as how other actors, such as organizations and media audiences, are able to mobilize the media performing these roles. This framework helps explain how and why media roles affect the way actors are able to influence the media agenda with the intention of shaping the public agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare haze-related content between traditional and social media in China by applying agenda-setting theory and the extended parallel process model (EPPM). Specifically, this paper examines the correlation between the two forms of media in terms of the ranking of the attributes of haze (i.e. the EPPM components) and the interrelationships among the attributes.

Content analysis and semantic network analysis were employed to address the research aims.

The results revealed that more than half of the total messages on both types of media reflected the EPPM components, either threat or efficacy information. However, the imbalance between the threat and efficacy information was more prominent in the haze-related content presented in the People’s Daily than it was on Weibo. In addition, the results from a Spearman’s rank-order correlation and a quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) indicated that there was no significant correlation between the People’s Daily and Weibo in terms of the rankings of the attributes of haze (i.e. the EPPM components) or the interrelationships among the attributes.

This study is the first to apply a theoretical approach to examine and compare the nature of haze-related messages on traditional and social media.

This study aims to examine factors, beyond child requests, that influence parents’ perceptions of the most important gifts to give their children by assessing the influence of television advertising on children’s programming.

Using agenda-setting as a theoretical and methodological template, a content analysis of 7,860 commercials in children’s programming was compared using a questionnaire to 143 parents of 240 children to test the transfer of salience between advertising and parents’ perceptions. The study also examined the role of child purchase requests in this relationship.

The product categories that most prevalently advertised on children’s television had a significant relationship with the product categories that parents perceived to be the most important to give their children as gifts. Furthermore, the results indicate that this relationship was not contingent upon parental advertising mediation or child product requests.

The results are limited to a single broadcast market during the Christmas season. Strategically, the research suggests that advertising through children’s television programming may be an effective way to directly inform parents’ gift-giving consideration sets, and this target and outlet should be strategically evaluated in subsequent campaign decisions about the marketing mix.

The findings add new insights to the gift-giving literature, indicating that advertising in children’s programming may be an alternative direct influence on parents’ perceptions. This research also extends research on advertising agenda setting into the new context of commercial advertising of consumer products.

Transformative value is a central tenet of transformative service research (TSR) because it affects individual and community well-being, quality of life and sustainability. Although transformative value plays a significant role in well-being, the literature suffers from a lack of sound interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks that delineate how transformative value is created in services throughout the service consumption process. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and role of service communications during the various stages of the service consumption process to enable the creation of transformative value for people and the environment.

To achieve the above goal, the authors integrate agenda-setting theory (media theory) combined with framing and relational dialectics (communication theories) as well as TSR.

In line with the objectives of the study, the authors propose an integrative framework named Transformative Value Creation via Service Communications (TVCSC) that explains how firms set their transformative corporate agendas through their dialectics with consumers, society and media. This transformative agenda is reflected in the marketing mix of their services (7Ps) as communicated with various means, physically and digitally (sales/frontline personnel, advertising, CSR, social media and website). Recommendations for a transformative marketing mix are provided. Furthermore, TVCSC illustrates how value is co-created in all customer–firm interactions via relationship dialectics throughout the service consumption process to result in transformative value outcomes.

The proposed framework identifies several research gaps and provides useful future research directions.

This is the first comprehensive framework that explains how transformative value is created through the various communications in services and is the outcome of value co-creation interactions of the service consumption process.