Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Who sets the cyber agenda? Intermedia agenda-setting online: the case of Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Journal of Computational Social Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Since the early introduction of the notion of agenda-setting, researchers have attempted to determine the factors that shape media agendas. One of the key sources of media agenda has been identified as intermedia flow, which various studies revealed in the offline-to-online-to-SNS media context. While most of them focused on the offline-online flow, the present study examines agenda-setting within the new online platforms in various countries, thus allowing for cross-country and cross-media comparisons. We applied time-series analysis to new online media and to traditional online media samples in the context of Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. Our findings of intermedia agenda-setting effects show a moderate but consistent flow from new online media to traditional online media. This highlights the importance of studying these new directions of agenda flow. Apart from that, no profound agenda-setting patterns can be found elsewhere. Possible reasons and implications are discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The British daily The Sun had to be excluded as it was not accessible through Netbase. Instead, “The Mirror” was chosen.

  2. Although being European, England and Portugal had to be excluded because of their common language with the U.S. and Brazil, respectively.

References

  1. Althaus, S. L., & Tewksbury, D. (2002). Agenda setting and the “new” news patterns of issue importance among readers of the paper and online versions of the New York Times. Communication Research, 29, 180–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650202029002004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bakshy, E., Rosenn, I., Marlow, C., & Adamic, L. (2012). The role of social networks in information diffusion. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 519–528). New York: ACM.

  3. Berglez, P. (2008). What is global journalism? Journalism Studies, 9, 845–858. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700802337727.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Brosius, H.-B., & Kepplinger, M. (1995). Killer and victim issues: issue competition in the agenda-setting process of German television. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 7, 211–231. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/7.3.211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Bruns, A. (2005). Gatewatching: Collaborative online news production. New York: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Chadwick, A. (2013). The hybrid media system: Politics and power. Oxford: University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. Chaffee, S. H., & Metzger, M. J. (2001). The end of mass communication? Mass Communication and Society, 4, 365–379. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327825MCS0404_3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Cornfield, M., Carson, J., Kalis, A., & Simon, E. (2005). Buzz, blogs, and beyond: The internet and the national discourse in the fall of 2004. Pew Research Center. Retrieved May 25, 2015, from http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/news/press_releases/society_and_the_internet/PIPBlogs051605pdf.pdf.

  9. Denham, B. E. (2014). Intermedia attribute agenda setting in the New York Times: The case of animal abuse in U.S. horse racing. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91, 17–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699013514415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Esser, F. (2013). Mediatization as a challenge: Media logic versus political logic. In H. Kriesi, S. Lavenex, F. Esser, J. Matthes, M. Bühlmann, & D. Bochsler (Eds.), Democracy in the age of globalization and mediatization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Are news audiences increasingly fragmented? A cross-national comparative analysis of cross-platform news audience fragmentation and duplication. Journal of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12315.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Gleason, S. (2010). Harnessing social media. American Journalism Review, 32, 6–7.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Golan, G. (2006). Inter-media agenda setting and global news coverage: Assessing the influence of The New York Times on three network television evening news programs. Journalism Studies, 7, 323–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500533643.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Granger, C. W. J. (1969). Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods. Econometrica, 37, 424–438.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Groshek, J., & Groshek, M. K. (2013). Agenda trending: Reciprocity and the predictive capacity of social networking sites in intermedia agenda setting across topics over time. Media and Communication, 1, 15–27. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2199144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Guo, L., & Vargo, C. J. (2017). Global intermedia agenda setting: A big data analysis of international news flow. Journal of Communication, 67(4), 499–520. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Harder, R. A., Sevenans, J., & Van Aelst, P. (2017). Intermedia agenda setting in the social media age: How traditional players dominate the news agenda in election times. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 22(3), 275–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161217704969.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Hermida, A. (2010). Twittering the news: The emergence of ambient journalism. Journalism Practice, 4, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512781003640703.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H., & Moon, S. (2010). What is Twitter, a social network or news media? In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web, Raleigh, NC, USA, 26–30 April 2010. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from http://an.kaist.ac.kr/~haewoon/papers/2010-www-twitter.pdf.

  20. Lee, B., Lancendorfer, K., & Lee, K. J. (2005). Agenda-setting and the internet: The intermedia influence of internet bulletin boards on newspaper coverage of the 2000 general election in South Korea. Asian Journal of Communication, 15, 57–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/0129298042000329793.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Lim, J. (2006). A cross-lagged analysis of agenda setting among online news media. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 83, 298–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900608300205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Lim, J. (2011). Intermedia agenda setting and news discourse. Journalism Practice, 5, 227–244. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2010.509184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Lopez-Escobar, E., Llamas, J. P., McCombs, M., & Lennon, F. (1998). Two levels of agenda setting among advertising and news in the 1995 Spanish elections. Political Communication, 15, 225–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609809342367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Maier, S. (2010). All the news fit to post? Comparing news content on the web to newspapers, television, and radio. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 87, 548–562. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769901008700307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Mathes, R., & Pfetsch, B. (1991). The role of the alternative press in the agenda-building process: Spill-over-effects and media opinion leadership. European Journal of Communication, 6, 33–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323191006001003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. McCombs, M. E. (2014). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Malden.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Meraz, S. (2011). The fight for ‘how to think’: Traditional media, social networks, and issue interpretation. Journalism, 12, 107–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884910385193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Napoli, P. M. (2010). Audience evolution: New technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Neumann, R. W., Guggenheim, L., Jang, S. M., & Bae, S. Y. (2014). The dynamics of public attention: Agenda-setting theory meets big data. Journal of Communication, 64, 193–214. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12088.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., Levy, D. A. L., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Digital news report 2017. Oxford. Retrieved June 26, 2017, from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20News%20Report%202017%20web_0.pdf. Accessed 26 June 2017

  31. Parmelee, J. (2014). The agenda-building function of political tweets. New Media & Society, 16, 434–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813487955.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory news consumer. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx.

  33. Reese, S. D., & Danielian, L. H. (1989). Intermedia influence and the drug issue: Converging on cocaine. In P. J. Shoemaker (Ed.), Communication Campaigns about Drugs: Government, Media and the Public (pp. 47–66). Hillside: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Roberts, M., & McCombs, M. (1994). Agenda setting and political advertising: Origins of the news agenda. Political Communication, 11, 249–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.1994.9963030.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Rusciano, F. L. (2013). World Public Opinion. In W. Donsbach, C. T. Salmon, & Y. Tsfati (Eds.), The Spiral of silence: New perspectives on communication and public opinion (pp. 179–186). New York: Routledge Chapman & Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Rusciano, F. L., & Fiske-Rusciano, R. (1990). Towards a notion of “world opinion”. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 2, 305–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/2.4.305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Schäfer, M. S., Ivanova, A., & Schmidt, A. (2014). What drives media attention for climate change? Explaining issue attention in Australian, German and Indian print media from 1996 to 2010. International Communication Gazette, 76, 152–176. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048513504169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (2013). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media sociology perspective (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. Susarla, A., Oh, J.-H., & Tan, Y. (2012). Social networks and the diffusion of user-generated content: Evidence from YouTube. Information Systems Research, 23, 23–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Sweetser, K., Golan, G., & Wanta, W. (2008). Intermedia agenda setting in television, advertising, and blogs during the 2004 election. Mass Communication and Society, 11, 197–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205430701590267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Vonbun, R., Königslöw, K. K., & Schoenbach, K. (2016). Intermedia agenda-setting in a multimedia news environment. Journalism, 17(8), 1054–1073. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884915595475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Webster, J. G. (2014). The marketplace of attention: How audiences take shape in a digital age. Cambridge: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Weimann, G., & Brosius, H. (2016). A new agenda for agenda-setting research in the new media era. In G. Vowe & P. Henn (Eds.), Political communication in the online world. Theoretical approaches and research designs (pp. 26–44). New York, NY: Routledge.

  44. Weimann, G., Weiss-Blatt, N., Mengistu, G., Tregerman, M. M., & Oren, R. (2014). Reevaluating “The end of mass communication?”. Mass Communication and Society, 17, 803–829. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2013.851700.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Winter, J. P., Eyal, C. H., & Rogers, A. H. (1982). Issue-specific agenda-setting: The whole as less than the sum of the parts. Canadian Journal of Communication, 8(2), 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Wu, Y., Atkin, D., Mou, Y., Lin, C. A., & Lau, T. (2013). Agenda setting and Micro-blog use: An analysis of the relationship between Sina Weibo and newspaper agendas in China. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 2(2), 8–25.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Zhao, W. X., Jiang J., Weng J., He J., Lim E., Yan H., & Li X. (2011). Comparing Twitter and traditional media using topic models. In Advances in Information Retrieval, Proceedings of the 33rd European Conference on IR Research, ECIR, Dublin, Ireland, April 18–21, 2011. Berlin: Springer.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Studies and Media Research, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

    Mario Haim & Hans-Bernd Brosius

  2. Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Gabriel Weimann

Authors
  1. Mario Haim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gabriel Weimann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Hans-Bernd Brosius
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mario Haim.

Additional information

This paper is dedicated to Asher Goldstein, a professional scientific editor. This paper was the last one he edited before he passed away in May 2015.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Haim, M., Weimann, G. & Brosius, HB. Who sets the cyber agenda? Intermedia agenda-setting online: the case of Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. J Comput Soc Sc 1, 277–294 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-018-0016-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-018-0016-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation