| Agenda setting is a classic theory of mass communication that has evolved for more than 50 years and has now developed into the third level of network agenda setting(NAS).Compared with the first and second level of agenda setting,the third level connects separate agendas and focuses on the transfer of salience between agenda networks.As a global sporting event,Western media coverage of the Olympic Games does not focus solely on the event itself,but on the political and economic situation of the host country,presenting a more complex combination of coverage agendas.In the run-up to the Beijing Winter Olympics,there was a diplomatic boycott by the United States,and the word boycott appeared on the international social media platform Twitter.Therefore,it is necessary to study the interaction of Chinese and American media with the Twitter platform in terms of agenda networks.This paper selects China Daily and The New York Times as representatives of two countries and the English Twitter platform.Two methods are used: content analysis and social network analysis.Based on the NAS theory,this paper studies the agenda network interaction between Chinese and American media and Twitter.What kind of agenda networks did China Daily,The New York Times,and Twitter each present during the Beijing Winter Olympic Games? Are there correlations and regressions between the mainstream news media of the two countries and the Twitter platform? The news of the core countries determines the flow of information within the international public opinion.Does China,as the host country of the Beijing Winter Olympics,have better agenda-setting capability compared to the US media? That is,which of the two has a more significant agenda-setting effect on the Twitter platform?The study found that both China Daily and The New York Times focused on event coverage and pandemic prevention and control.Both China Daily and The New York Times focused on event coverage and pandemic prevention and control.China Daily’s media agenda network was evenly distributed,with Chinese media covering the Beijing Winter Olympics in a comprehensive manner,both onstage and behind the scenes.The New York Times’ media agenda network was unevenly distributed,with significant differences in salience across agendas and closely related diplomatic boycott and human rights issues.The Twitter platform has an uneven distribution of agenda networks,with significant agendas for event coverage and Olympic culture,and low discussion of macro-level agendas such as industrial economy and sustainable development.Both China Daily and The New York Times are correlated with Twitter,with the latter being more significantly correlated.Both China Daily and The New York Times have a regression relationship with Twitter,with the latter having a more significant regression relationship.The above analysis indicates that China Daily,as the official media of the host country during the Beijing Winter Olympics,interacted with international social media platforms to generate an agenda network,however,the New York Times had a stronger agenda-setting ability. |
