The Third Level Of Agenda Setting

The agenda setting theory was first mentioned in the 1972 article “Agenda Setting Functions of the Mass Media” by American scholars McCombs and Shaw.The mass media has the function of setting the agenda for the public.The media's news reports and information dissemination activities affect the public's judgment on important matters and their importance by giving different degrees of significance to the theme.At home and abroad,the research on agenda setting theory mainly mentions the discussion of agenda setting and attribute agenda setting,but the third level-network agenda setting.This article is based on the collection and empirical analysis of the official discourse agenda of China-US trade friction events and relevant data of Weibo public opinion.This new idea of agenda setting research through network analysis methods is tested and specific in the application of non-Western Chinese context.The QAP test after encoding the data shows that the official discourse agenda network is dense,and the distribution of attribute nodes is more balanced.The two attributes of China's stance,attitude and measures are repeatedly mentioned at the same time as other attributes,indicating that China is the countermeasures to deal with China-US trade friction can be seen in the Chinese government's tougher attitude when facing China-US trade friction.In the public agenda network of Weibo,when the public refers to China-US trade frictions,the most mentioned attribute is personal,and “Trump” is the word most commonly used by Chinese people when referring to China-US trade frictions.It shows that the Chinese people are more inclined to associate the trade war with Trump personally.Although the official discourse agenda and the Weibo people's discourse agenda have some different characteristics,the two agenda networks have been significantly correlated through QAP tests.This article has initially verified that China's official discourse agenda and Weibo discourse agenda have been involved in China-US trade friction Relationship on the Internet Agenda Setting.The results of this paper provide strong empirical support for verifying the model of online agenda setting,and further examine the relevance of the official discourse agenda to the Weibo public agenda network.