In 1972, M. McCombs and D. Shaw introduced the idea that the mass media have the ability to tell the public which issues are of major importance in a political campaign by virtue of the amount of coverage they give each. This they termed the "agenda setting" function of the media. A study was conducted to investigate various aspects of the agenda setting function of the media as they occurred in a gubernatorial campaign. Four separate agendas were examined: (1) aggregate newspaper--all news stories appearing in a newspaper that were related to an issue regardless of its linkage to the campaign; (2) campaign agenda--a list of those issues given coverage by the media that were linked to the campaign, rank ordered in terms of amount of coverage each received; (3) editorial agenda--a list of those issues given coverage by the media in editorials, also rank ordered; and (4) public agenda, a list of issues perceived by the public as most important in the campaign, as elicited through telephone interviews. The three media agendas were then correlated with the public agenda. The results indicated that the campaign and editorial agendas were generally more effective in setting public agendas than was the aggregate newspaper agenda. The findings suggest that if the media devoted more attention to the obvious linkages between important issues and a campaign, the agenda setting effect could be enhanced. (FL)