Agenda setting, news framing and priming effect are the three mostly discussed theoretical models
in communication field. In historical view, all of them once provided new approaches and methodologies
to the research on the relationship between media content and public opinion. Among them, priming effect
is originated from cognitive psychology and explains how agenda setting happens from a microscopic
perspective. However, priming effect has been faced with the problems of methodology, paradigm shift
and research subject when it was applied to communication studies. Due to different research contexts,
communication scholars have not paid much attention to priming effect.