Abstract
In China's media environment in recent years, social media is considered to be far more influential than traditional media in setting the public agenda. However, this paper argues that under special circumstances such as the outbreak of a large-scale epidemic, the status of traditional media and social media in setting the public agenda will change significantly. In this paper, researchers selected five news programs about COVID-19 and related topics on social media Weibo and Douyin during the initial period of the outbreak, January-August 2020. Finally, 325 news programs and 2,876 social media topics were selected for correlation analysis. Through coding as well as SPSS analysis, it was ultimately found that traditional media in the first quarter of the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic far exceeded social media in setting the agenda for the public, determining not only what the public is paying attention to, but also how the public understands the topics related to the epidemic. However, in the second quarter of the year, after COVID-19 control was gradually normalized, social media regained its agenda-setting position. However, the influence of traditional media and social media on public agenda-setting declined, failing to determine what the public was concerned about and losing the position to decide how the public would discuss the relevant issues. In addition, this paper finds that the channels through which the public chose to focus on the new crown outbreak changed between the first and second quarters.
Author Information
Lihong Yuan, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
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