It was a beginning of a new mass communications theory which can be

divided into two aspects. First aspect is relates to the transmission of issue or
object salience from the media agenda to the public agenda. The second
aspect tells us about the news medias role in framing those issues and
objects in the minds of people.
The relationship between content of the news agenda and the public agenda
was the purpose of McCombs and Shaw to study. In the research they tried to
avoid the misleading idea of possible effects, which occurs when only media
content is studied. For example we cannot assume that television audience
will repeat the same act of violence in real life after watching the violence
television movies. McCombs and Shaw wanted to examine effects on people
that resulted from some specific content of the media messages. The early
study of media did not attempt to establish a link between effects and
specific media content. This study tried to determine a relationship between
media and public regarding acceptance of media messages.