Intermedia Network Agenda-setting In International Current Political Affairs

After more than 1,000 days of negotiation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Cathy Meng,Chief Financial Officer of Huawei company,returned to China on 25 September 2021 on a government-chartered plane.Various types of media played active roles in this incident in guiding national people to form a consensus of solidarity.Weibo provided a public opinion arena for the discussion of Meng’s case and served as a platform for the media to exert their Network Agenda-Setting effect.This paper crawled the content data posted by more than 2,000 certified media on Weibo through crawler software and found that the media that were active in the Cathy Meng case fell into five main categories: official mainstream media,marketoriented media,We-media opinion leaders,media from Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan,and overseas media on Weibo.Using the Cathy Meng case as a case study,this paper used Social Network Analysis and cross-lagged analysis models to explore the Network Agenda-Setting effects and interactions among these five types of media on Weibo platform,aiming to provide insights into the role of official mainstream media in guiding other media on international current political affairs.The results of this study showed that there were significant correlations among the agenda attribute networks of these five types of media,producing Network Agenda-Setting effects.In different phrases of development of Cathy Meng incident,official mainstream media occupied a central and leading position and had had influences on market-oriented media,media in Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan and on overseas media just in a day or even in few hours.It had the highest correlation with market-oriented media about their agenda attribute networks.Official mainstream media and media in Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan had a mutual influence relationship;market-oriented media and self-media opinion leaders had a high correlation in agenda attribute networks and market-oriented media acted as intermediaries among other media;overseas media on Weibo were in a marginal position.If official mainstream media are to better assume their social responsibility,they should strengthen their significance on market-based media,indirectly influencing the agenda attribute network of We-media,and paying attention to the role played by Hong Kong,Macau and Taiwan media in international current political affairs.