Network Agenda Setting Effect Of Global Media Events On Twitter

In February 2022,China hosted the Beijing Winter Olympics successfully despite the severe challenges and multiple uncertainties brought about by COVID-19.The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games,as a global media event,won the world’s attention.As the host country,can China break through the intermediary role of Western media to achieve disintermediated international communication?The paper takes the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as a case study,integrates media event theory and network agenda-setting theory,and uses the methods of content analysis and social network analysis to answer this question.It collects relevant tweets on Twitter from 20:00 February 4th to 24:00 February 6th,2022,and divides them into Chinese media tweets,foreign media tweets,and individual users’ tweets.Based on the analysis of the tweet texts,it constructs the agenda co-occurrence matrixes and agenda networks of the three subjects,then demonstrates and compares their relationships through QAP calculation.In this way,the paper explores the agenda-setting effect of Chinese media and the degree of disintermediated communication in this media event.It is found that around the opening ceremony of the 202 2 Beijing Winter Olympics,Chinese media set some agenda networks for tweet users,such as the visual presentation of the show and diplomatic activities among heads of state.However,on some controversial and conflicting topics,foreign media represented by U.S.media still act as communication intermediaries,exerting influence on the agenda network of international audiences.In addition,the agenda of international audiences also deviate to a certain extent,indicating the possible effect of more influencers.At the theoretical level,the paper integrates the traditional media event theory and the network agenda-setting theory in the research on the international communication effect on social media,expanding the application and conjunction of the two classical theories in the context of new media.In this way,it provides new empirical materials for further research.On the practical level,the paper provides a reference for Chinese media to better grasp international communication opportunities brought by media events to carry out more disintermediated communication in the future.