Agendamelding and COVID-19: the dance of horizontal and vertical media in a pandemic

How are attitudes formed in the 21st Century, and who sets the agenda for initial COVID-19 coverage in the United States? We explore these questions using a random sample of 6 million tweets from a population of 224 million tweets collected between January 2020 and June 2020. In conjunction with a content analysis of legacy media such as newspapers, we examine the second-level agendamelding process during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The findings demonstrate that in the early weeks of the pandemic, public opinion on Twitter about the virus was distinctly different than the coverage of the issue in the traditional media. The attributes used to describe it on social media demonstrate users relying on their past experiences and personal beliefs to talk about the virus. In the 1st week of February, public opinion, traditional media, and social media converged, but traditional media soon becomes the main agenda setter of COVID-19 for 13 weeks. However, for the final 5 weeks of our sample, traditional media are taken over by social media. The findings also show that, except for a few weeks at the onset of the outbreak, Twitter users relied on their personal experiences far less than what statistical models predicted and allowed. Instead, traditional media and social media to shape their opinion of the issue

Testing the Agendamelding Theory: How Audiences Tailor Agendas to Suit Their Needs

The present study reexamines the first and second levels of agenda setting as well as the contribution of need for orientation in our evolving media environment in an effort to shed light on how audiences “meld” agendas from various media sources with their own personal preferences to form a coherent picture of society. A survey of American adults (N = 1,069) was combined with a content analysis of traditional and social media sources to evaluate agendamelding, which predicts that, depending on the characteristics of individuals, audiences give more weight to certain media sources when melding their agenda. Correlation analyses indicated that respondents echoed the most prominent issues and most prominent attributes describing those issues depicted in both the traditional and social media they consumed. Higher need for orientation resulted in a stronger reflection of the media. A regression analysis indicated that younger audiences and Democrats give more weight to social media than traditional media when melding their agendas. Individuals with a higher need for orientation give more weight to traditional media and their own personal preferences than they give social media. Republicans generally allow their personal preferences to impact their agenda more than all Democrats and most Independents. The impact is more pronounced in those with professional training and without a college degree. However, young, educated, female Independents allow their personal preferences to impact their agenda most. Income tends to impact agendamelding in minorities more than Caucasians. The findings support the agendamelding theory that predicts differences in the way various individuals mix media messages to form, or join, agenda communities. While the results bode well for the nascent field of agendamelding, more research is needed to replicate the findings.Doctor of Philosoph

Agendamelding how Americans meld agendas

A survey of American adults was combined with a content analysis of traditional and social media sources to test the agendamelding theory. Correlation analyses indicated strong agenda-setting effects for both traditional and social media. A regression analysis indicated, among other things, that younger audiences and Democrats give more weight to social media than traditional media while Republicans generally allow their personal preferences to impact their agenda. The findings support the agendamelding theory

A world of two agendas Agenda setting sampling

This article studies the efficiency of different samples for content analysis of news in media effects studies by comparing the agenda-setting effect of a classic sample with the effect of a sample drawn based on audiences’ self-reported media habits. Contrary to the belief that exposure to sampled media content is necessary for observation of media effects, samples drawn based on overall readership/viewership of the media are more efficient than samples based on audiences’ actual consumption habits. A traditional media sample yields a stronger agenda-setting effect compared to a sample drawn based on self-reported media habits. But correlations between the two media samples are also strong. The findings suggest that a broad intermedia agenda-setting process makes it possible for researchers to draw a traditional sample that is representative of the issues salient to audiences regardless of their level of exposure to the sampled media. In other words, even in a demassified media environment, traditional samples are still the best option for media effects researchers