The Effect Of Network Agenda Setting: Analysis Of The Relationship Between Media Reports And Audience Perception In Sino-US Trade Disputes

With the rapid development of Sino-U.S.Economic and trade relations,there has been an increasing bilateral trade collision between China and the US.The Sino-U.S.Trade dispute,which has been going on since 2018,is considered as a concentrated reflection of this collision.The media has done wide reports on Sino-US trade disputes,so how did these reports affect the audience's perceptions and attitudes on issues related to Sino-US trade disputes? This essay attempts to respond to this question from the perspective of the third-level agenda-setting theory,Network Agenda Setting(NAS).In order to answer the question above,this study,by adopting research methods like content analysis,questionnaire surveys,and social network analysis,etc,analyzed 278 media reports and 500 questionnaire surveys to examine the effect of network agenda setting on Sino-US disputes and attempt to discuss its accidental element.which can also provide localized empirical evidence for the research of network agenda setting.The results has suggested that in the China-US trade war both public implicit and explicit cyber agenda showed a positive and significant association with media network agenda,and the correlation between media network agenda and public implicit cyber agenda is higher than public explicit cyber agenda,which indicates that the network agenda from media reports has successfully affected the public's cognition on China-US trade war and confirms the applicability of theory of network agenda-setting in the context of China.In order to test the influence of need for orientation on network agenda setting,this study conducted QAP analysis on the public implicit,explicit online agenda and media online agenda of different levels of need for orientation.The results showed that the implicit,explicit agenda of high,medium,and low need for orientation are significantly related to the media network agenda,among the public implicit network agendas,the public implicit agenda of medium need for orientation has the highest correlation coefficient with the media network agenda,while among the public explicit online agenda,the correlation of low need for orientation with the media network agenda is the highest,and the assumption that the demand-oriented audience who can be more obviously affected by the media network agenda has not been effectively verified.Therefore,in the public network agenda,although the demand-oriented factors can affect the effect of network agenda setting,the results of the impact of the level of need for orientation on the effect of network agenda setting are complicated,and further research is needed.