Construction And Transformation Of News Frames Under The Effects Of Agenda Interaction

"Fire accident of Lankao" happened in early2013, along with Yuan Lihai who is the key figure involved in this accident, has drawn widespread concentration from both social media and mass media in China. This thesis intend to explore how the construction and the transformation of news frame influence the interaction of agenda between social media and mass media through consecutive stages of media presentation. Before the fire accident in Lankao, Yuan Lihai initially appealed to media as a well doer who had adopted more than100orphans in2005while after the fire accident the shared concentration of Yuan Lihai as a well doer shaped the interaction of agenda between social and mass media. By analyzing discourse of news coverage of Lankao fire, I find the agenda of mass media is highly consistent with that of social media. The mass media, the same as social media, tend to prioritize the ethical identification of Yuan over accountability of institution and thus frames their news coverage in a fragmented way, which is a structural frame that may highlight the legend and the story of Yuan. In addition, most mass media are more likely to use both the frame of "ethical identification" and the frame of "accountability of institution" in order to balance the coverage, which essentially reflect the demands of professionalism. This process of news framing is constantly influenced by the agenda interaction between social and mass media and eventually constructs a stable news frame concerning this accident. The transformation of the news frame induced by a emergent article of "Lady Lihai " breaks the stability of the process of news framing, in which it rejected the frame of "accountability of institution" while concentrated on the ethical deficit of Yuan. The breaking of the stable news frame results in the intense rejection and criticism of this frame because of its deviance of professionalism in the social media. It explains how agenda interaction between social media and mass media shapes news framing by containing both online agenda and professionalism. However, news framing that ignores any of these two considerations may lead to negative effects, which may eventually fail to set agenda.