3. Tap into NFC: A New Kind of Uncertainty in Agenda-Setting Theory

"⚠️ Just a heads-up: there's a lot to say about uncertainty. The deeper you go, the more likely you are to feel uncertain yourself. Even I’ve found myself lost in uncertainty! Hopefully, my explanation provides you with a little clarity, so you don’t lose your way."

There is a long history of uncertainty in agenda-setting theory—much longer than I have space for here—and there are some gaps in the conceptualization throughout that history. For ease of understanding, I’ve broken it down into two parts: reviewing the history and explaining my process behind this reconceptualization.

Part 1. Rethinking Uncertainty in Agenda-Setting Theory: Why NFO Might Be Misunderstood

If you've ever found yourself obsessively reading up on an issue — clicking article after article, trying to make sense of it all — you’ve experienced something that agenda-setting theory tries to explain. Specifically, it’s a concept called the Need for Orientation (NFO). Introduced by McCombs and Weaver in 1973, NFO was conceptualized to describe why people seek out information. They argued that such motivation is driven by two factors: relevance and uncertainty.

Relevance refers to how involved or interested we are in a topic — the more personally connected it feels, the more likely we are to pay attention.
Uncertainty, on the other hand, refers to how unsure we feel about a topic, especially when we’re not confident in our attitudes or decisions related to it.

Initially, these two factors were treated as equals — like twin engines powering our drive to seek information. But here’s the issue: while relevance and uncertainty are both integral to how we engage with information (NFO), their relationship has a unique characteristic within the framework of NFO—it's hierarchical.

Conceptually, relevance comes first — it reflects whether users perceive information as important or meaningful. Uncertainty follows, representing the confidence (or lack thereof) users have in their attitudes toward that information.

Still, when researchers measure the level of NFO, the two are often treated as coequal factors. This contradiction stems from a common assumption: that uncertainty arises only when information is already perceived as relevant. In other words, people don’t feel uncertain about topics they don’t care about — which leads to treating relevance and uncertainty as intertwined, even when their functions within the cognitive process are clearly different.

Relevance Gets Us in the Door — But Uncertainty Keeps Us Thinking

Let’s break it down.

Relevance prompts us to start looking. It explains why something catches our attention. Uncertainty, though, doesn’t just get us to click — it gets us to pause, reflect, and engage deeply.

Uncertainty isn’t simply the absence of knowledge. As researchers like Brashers (2001) and Faragó et al. (2019) suggest, it’s more accurately a desire to resolve ambiguity — to achieve confidence in our attitudes by actively thinking through the information we’ve acquired. This process involves evaluating, synthesizing, and understanding information — it takes deliberation and effort.

In this sense, uncertainty is less about curiosity and more about consideration.

A brief detour

Why saying “it’s sunny in Boston” means more than saying“it’s sunny in Tucson”

Let’s take a detour — to the weather forecast.

Before McCombs and Weaver introduced the Need for Orientation (NFO) into agenda-setting theory, they drew heavily from earlier psychological research to define its core elements — especially uncertainty. One of the most fascinating and underappreciated sources they referenced was a 1967 study by Jones and Gerard, who offered a remarkably intuitive yet conceptually rich way to think about why people seek information in the first place.

To explain what makes uncertainty meaningful — and why it can drive us to seek clarity — Jones and Gerard used a beautifully simple analogy: the weather.

Imagine you’re planning your day and you hear this forecast: “It’s going to be sunny today.”

If you live in Tucson, Arizona, where it’s sunny nearly every day, this forecast is unsurprising. It confirms what you already assumed. There’s no real decision to be made, no adjustment to your plans — so you probably shrug it off.

Now imagine hearing the same sunny-day forecast in Boston, Massachusetts, where the weather can change drastically from day to day, and where each season brings a wide range of possibilities. That same forecast — “It’s going to be sunny today” — suddenly becomes useful. It’s informative because it resolves uncertainty. You might grab sunglasses instead of an umbrella.

Why does this matter?

Because this example reveals something fundamental about uncertainty:

We seek information not just when we don’t know something, but when multiple meaningful possibilities exist and we don’t yet know which one is true.

In Tucson, there are few “competing” possibilities — it’s almost always sunny. In Boston, there are many: rain, snow, sun, fog. The more varied the outcomes, the more informative the forecast becomes.

Jones and Gerard called this the informational value of uncertainty. The more options you’re considering, and the more equally likely they are, the more uncertain you feel and the more you want clarity.

McCombs and Weaver, the founders of agenda-setting theory, borrowed this insight when defining uncertainty as a part of NFO. But in doing so, they subtly shifted its meaning from external ambiguity (like the unpredictability of Boston weather) to internal psychological confidence, especially in political decisions.

That shift helped explain how voters engage with news, but it also introduced a conceptual wrinkle: uncertainty. What was originally about the environment and options became about self-perception and decision-making.

Scholars Are Catching On: Uncertainty as a Trigger for Consideration

While the original NFO model didn’t account for this depth, later studies have filled in the gaps. Camaj and Weaver (2013) introduced the idea that uncertainty may promote mindfulness — a psychological state in which individuals are more receptive to new information and more intentional about how they process it. When we feel uncertain, they argue, we’re more likely to engage in purposeful media use, dedicating attention to organizing and differentiating what we consume.

Similarly, McCombs and Stroud (2014) expanded this idea using Kim’s (2007) framework of accuracy goals. High levels of uncertainty, they argued, resemble the accuracy goal — the need to reach the most informed conclusion possible. People driven by this goal don’t stop gathering or analyzing information until they feel confident in their stance. This kind of uncertainty-driven deliberation, they suggest, may actually weaken the tendency to easily switch stances by encouraging critical thinking rather than reactive loyalty.

In both cases, uncertainty isn’t just a starting point — it’s the engine behind thoughtful, reasoned engagement with complex issues.

Reframing the Relationship: Should Uncertainty Even Be a Part of NFO?

These arguments about uncertainty challenge the original model of NFO. If relevance and uncertainty play such different roles — one initiating attention, the other deepening consideration — should they really be treated as equal parts of the same concept?

The answer might be no.

The original NFO framework implies a hierarchical relationship, with relevance and uncertainty working together to determine how much orientation a person “needs”. However, measurement practices didn’t reflect this imbalance, and theoretically, the hierarchy no longer holds.

Because NFO is about the motivation to seek information, it makes sense to tie it to relevance. But uncertainty goes a step further — it reflects the motivation to process, evaluate, and form beliefs based on that information, which is an entirely different role.

As the name suggests, “Need for Orientation” is about helping people find their bearings — choosing where to look. But uncertainty reflects what happens once they arrive — how they deal with the complexity of what they’ve found.

That’s why this study (and this post!) argues that uncertainty should be treated as a separate, independent concept, not just a lower order concept of NFO. Doing so clarifies both concepts and allows us to better model how people engage with media — from initial curiosity to deeper deliberation.

Final Thoughts: Uncertainty Is More Than Not Knowing

Uncertainty isn’t just ignorance. It’s a trigger — a psychological nudge that pushes us to go beyond surface-level exposure and into real understanding.

If we want to develop a fuller understanding on what goes into the consideration of more complex issues, we need to give uncertainty the respect it deserves.