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E.E. Schattschneider claims “At the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict.” What he means is that politics is a competition for attention. Actors in the political arena each seek to further their own goals at the expense of opposing actors. Schattschneider claims that the audience is the determining factor in most political discussions, and that players will attempt to either socialize or privatize the conflict, depending on the mood of the audience, the nature of the conflict, and the needs of themselves. Because of the sheer volume of possible conflicts, people must prioritize those which they feel are the most important. Political combatants will try to push those issues which are high on their priority list to the front of the forum. By controlling which issues become salient enough to reach the arena of public debate, actors engage in agenda setting. Agenda setting takes place at many levels, but questions arise as to who has the power to set agendas, and how they do so. In an ideal democracy, the citizens would be the main pushers of given agendas, unfortunately, the public interests often lose out to the agendas of the policy and media elites. In the discipline of Political Science, ma