The Test Of Network Agenda Setting:correlation Between Media Agenda And Public Agenda In COVID-19

In 2017,McCombs put forward the network agenda setting(NAS)theory.The core view of this theory is that what affects the public is not a cognitive network composed of a series of issues.The media not only tell us "what to think" and "how to think",but also determine how to connect different pieces of information,so as to build a cognitive network of social reality or a certain topic.The first mock exam is based on the relational network memory model.This model holds that individuals always connect different elements and make social reality meaningful.Therefore,network agenda setting pays more attention to the connection network between topics/attributes,and studies how the media affects the connection network between different topics/attributes in the minds of the audience.The research on agenda setting theory at home and abroad mostly stays in the discussion of agenda setting and attribute agenda setting,while there is less research on the third level network agenda setting.This study takes COVID-19 as the research topic,and adopts the methods of content analysis,questionnaire survey and network analysis.In view of the analysis of 358 party newspapers,241 city newspapers and 266 questionnaires,this new idea of agenda setting research is tested and applied in the non Western Chinese context.The results show that in COVID-19,there is a significant positive correlation between the network agenda of the party newspaper,the network agenda of the metropolitan newspaper and the implicit network agenda of the public.The network agenda of the party newspaper,the network agenda of the metropolitan newspaper and the public dominant agenda show a weak correlation.The correlation between the agenda of the metropolitan newspaper and the public implicit agenda is higher than that of the public explicit network agenda,which indicates that the media agenda of COVID-19’s report on COVID-19 has successfully affected the public’s cognitive network of COVID-19,and confirmed the applicability of the agenda setting theory in the Chinese mainland context.The research results of this paper provide strong empirical support for verifying the network agenda setting model.