An Agenda Influence Research Between Traditional Media And Social Media While Covering Topics About Two-Child Policy

In the current research,the researcher extended the study of agenda influence to public policy.Mainstream newspapers as traditional media,Sina Microblog as social media and two-child policy as the event,the researcher not only analyzed the agenda influence relation between traditional media and social media while they covered or posted topics concerning two-child policy,but also analyzed how different types of social media users affected the agenda relations between social media and traditional media.The scientific way of content analysis was applied to assist the study.Findings showed that the agenda influence between traditional media and social media was not simply one-way influence,but a rather complex and dynamic two-way process.In the time period right after the release of the two-child policy,traditional media affec ted the agenda of social media.For the next few time periods,there was no sign of agenda influence between traditional media and social media,traditional media and social media seemed to form their own agenda respectively.As time went by,agendas of traditional media and social media began to interact with each other in a stable and reciprocal way.The reciprocal influence path was repeated in this way: the agenda of traditional media in the previous time period affected the agenda of social media in the present time period,while the agenda of social media in the present time period affected the agenda of traditional media in the next time period.Findings also indicated that the power of different types of social media users on affecting the agenda relations between social media and traditional media showed a big difference: user types of traditional media,independent new media,and government(organizations or officials)could best affect the agenda relations between social media and traditional media;user types of grassroots opinion leaders and industrial opinion leaders tended to have similar capacity on affecting the agenda relations between social media and traditional media,though their capacity to influence the agenda relations between social media and traditional media was much smaller than user types of traditional media,independent new med ia and government(organizations or officials);user types of grassroots netizens,enterprise or its executives tended to have very little power to affect the agenda relations between social media and traditional media.