Last week while the Pope was in Sydney and World Youth Day dominated the media agenda, the founding father of media agenda-setting flew in for a quick visit after speaking at the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association conference in New Zealand and, while attracting a much smaller audience, had some interesting things to say.

Professor Max McCombs who gained worldwide attention in 1972 after publishing research with his colleague Donald Shaw showing media set the agenda of issues during the 1968 US Presidential election, has evolved his views since, but says the media are still setting and framing the agenda of issues and debate.

But now there is a much wider range of media bringing issues to public attention and giving them salience. Professor McCombs said Web 2.0 type media including blogs and social networking sites are playing an active role in setting the agenda of public debate. Most cannot do this on their own though, he warned. He said intermediation which has occurred between press, radio and TV was now commonplace between the ‘new' and the ‘old' media.

The eminent professor who spoke to a group of media pilgrims at the University of Technology Sydney on ‘Media Agenda Setting from Chapel Hill to Web 2.0' said most blogs and social networking sites did not have sufficient audience reach to cause major impact. But he said that when information was picked up by other media, issues could come to public attention that otherwise would not be noticed. And he expects this trend to continue as traditional media invite user-generated content and monitor the blogosphere and other parts of the online world for leads.

Professor McCombs does not see emergent Web 2.0 media transforming communication overnight, but he says the question ‘who sets the media agenda' now has additional answers. Along with think-tanks, political power brokers and public relations practitioners, individuals with a mouse to grind can be the flapping butterfly wings that set off a chain reaction which eventually can travel around the globe.

Bloggers and social network sites may not set the agenda of public debate directly, but they increasingly are influencing other bloggers and social network sites who, in turn, influence others - and when sufficient support is gained their voices form a citizens' chorus.

Professor McCombs' comments support views that the future of media will be hybridisation and mediamorhosis as  argued by Henry Jenkins and Roger Fidler respectively. Nothing totally new in that, but it is refreshing to see the founding father of media agenda setting still advancing and evolving his theories 40 years on from his original Chapel Hill Studies in North Carolina.

Professor McCombs says the media particularly set the agenda of public debate on issues which are not directly familiar to people where they have what he calls a ‘need for orientation'. As well as setting the agenda of issues, he says 40 years of research shows that the media also set the agenda in terms of attributes that various issues and topics of media attention have. In other words, despite what Bernard Cohen said in 1963, the media do tell us both what to think about and what to think.

But it is an ever-widening mediascape, bringing the hope that a greater plurality of views, issues and attributes will see the light of public attention.

Jim Macnamara is Professor of Public Communication and Director of the Australian Centre for Public Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. He has previously held key roles as CEO of media research company, CARMA International, and Group Research Director of Media Monitors.