| The Chapel Hill Study in 1968 marked the birth of agenda setting theory.Taking the analysis of media agenda's influence on the public's cognition as the core,this classical theory evolved from traditional agenda setting(objects)to attribute agenda setting(attributes)in the past 50 years,but was still based on the assumption that human's cognition structure is linear.With the rapid rise of Internet in the 21st century,media industry has become increasingly "networked" due to the development of media convergence and social media platforms.And recent scientific studies have changed our understanding of human's cognitive structure:it is networked,rather than linear.These two significant changes have raised great challenges to the effectiveness of agenda setting theory.In view of these challenges,Maxwell McCombs,one of the founding fathers of agenda setting theory,as well as Guo Lei proposed the third level of agenda setting theory--Network Agenda Setting Model by borrowing the theoretical basis of cognitive network and research methods of social network analysis.Focusing on a series of elements of cognitive network,including objects and attributes,this new model intends to give a more accurate reflection of the public's cognitive structure,and a more comprehensive presentation of Walter Lippmann's concept of "pictures in our heads".Scholars' examinations of agenda setting theory are always based on American political events,while Chinese political activities are hardly involved.Considering this gap,this paper intends to study the 19th CPC National Congress,one of the most important political events recently in the Chinese context under the theoretical framework of Network Agenda Setting Model,so as to examine Chinese mainstream media's agenda setting effects through overseas social media platforms.To be specific,by adopting methods of content analysis and social network analysis,this study takes Chinese mainstream media CGTN's video news reports on YouTube and the public's comments to these videos as research subjects,utilizes QAP(Quadratic Assignment Procedure)from social network analysis software UCINET to analyze the correlational and causal relationships between media agenda and public agenda,and social network visualization tool NetDraw to present the network pictures of the two agendas.The empirical study finds that the media agenda,presented by CGTN's video news reports regarding 19th CPC National Congress on YouTube,and public agenda,presented by YouTube users' comments to these videos,have significant correlational and causal relationships.The co-occurrence matrices show that the themes "Economy" and"Diplomacy" appear together the most in both two agendas,demonstrating that CGTN frequently mentions China's economic development and China's performance on global stage in reporting 19th CPC National Congress on YouTube,and the public also connects the two themes in their comments.The network visualization pictures show that the themes"Economy","Society","Diplomacy" and "Leadership" are at the center in both two agendas,indicating that these themes are core issues of both media reports and public comments.The high similarity between media agenda and public agenda presented in the network visualization pictures makes it easier to understand the empirical results and reflects the influence of media agenda on public perceptions.This empirical research is also an examination of Network Agenda Setting Model in a Chinese political context. |
