Dissertation
THE NETWORKED INTERMEDIA AGENDA SETTING OF THE “BLACK LIVES MATTER” MOVEMENT BETWEEN NEWSPAPERS AND TWITTER: A MIXED-METHOD STUDY
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006434
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/119207
Abstract
The emergence of social media has altered the ways in which ordinary people obtain information and perceive the world. However, mixed results have been generated regarding whether or not traditional, elite media still have the significant influence in shaping what people discuss and how they discuss Scholars have called for more scholarly attempts to address the who-leads-whom debate in various contexts. Using the perspective of network intermedia agenda-setting, this dissertation has three goals: (1) This dissertation investigates the ways in which the U.S. mainstream newspapers and Twitter set network agendas for the BLM movement. (2) This dissertation further explores how the networked depictions of both platforms interact with each other over time. In other words, this dissertation strives to understand which platform – newspapers or Twitter – is more powerful in setting agenda for its counterpart, and at which attribute-agenda level. (3) Upon drawing an overall conclusion based on the data analysis, this dissertation strives to further understand Twitter’s impact on journalists’ work routines, published works, as well as today’s journalistic norms, through interviewing with frontline journalists. Through analyzing a full sample of 4,189 newspaper articles and over 1.23 million tweets about the BLM movement, findings showed that newspapers and Twitter both placed saliencies to the substantive attributes such as police and policing, violence, systemic racism, and demonstrations. However, newspapers depicted these attributes using an overall supportive tone while Twitter users used a largely condemnatory tone. Further, both unidirectional and reciprocal effects have emerged between the newspapers and Twitter for the substantive attribute agendas, while newspapers showed an overall stronger power than Twitter. No effect was observed for affective attributes. When it comes to each substantive attribute combined with a specific affective attribute, the intermedia agenda-setting effects have shrunk significantly. In terms of the bundled substantive attribute agendas (i.e., the ways in which both media interconnected different substantive attributes as a network-like agenda), both platforms showed greater impacts on its counterpart, whereas the newspapers were more influential than vice versa. Lastly, null effect emerged when it comes to the combination of bundled substantive attributes and affective attributes. Implications were discussed.
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Details
- Title
- THE NETWORKED INTERMEDIA AGENDA SETTING OF THE “BLACK LIVES MATTER” MOVEMENT BETWEEN NEWSPAPERS AND TWITTER: A MIXED-METHOD STUDY
- Creators
- Yan Su
- Contributors
- Porismita Borah (Advisor)Bruce Pinkleton (Committee Member)Alexis Tan (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Edward R. Murrow College of Communication
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 201
- Identifiers
- 99900592360701842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation