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Do news media and citizens have the same agenda on COVID-19? an empirical comparison of twitter posts

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  • Han, Chunjia
  • Yang, Mu
  • Piterou, Athena

Abstract

This study analyses the agenda setting on social media in the COVID-19 pandemic by exploiting one of the disruptive technologies, big data analytics. Our purpose is to examine whether the agenda of news organisations matches the public agenda on social media in crisis situations, and to explore the feasibility and efficacy of applying big data analytics on social media data. To this end, we used an unsupervised machine learning approach, structural topic modelling and analysed 129,965 tweets posted by UK news media and citizens during April 2, and 8, 2020. Our study reveals a wide diversity of topics in the tweets generated by both groups and finds only a small number of topics are similar, indicating different agendas set in the pandemic. Moreover, we show that citizen tweets focused more on expressing feelings and sharing personal activities while news media tweets talked more about facts and analysis on COVID-19. In addition, our results find that citizens responded more significantly to breaking news. The findings of the study contribute to the agenda setting literature and offer valuable practical implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Han, Chunjia & Yang, Mu & Piterou, Athena, 2021. "Do news media and citizens have the same agenda on COVID-19? an empirical comparison of twitter posts," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:169:y:2021:i:c:s004016252100281x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120849
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    4. Lāsma Šķestere & Roberts Darģis, 2022. "Agenda-Setting Dynamics during COVID-19: Who Leads and Who Follows?," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-13, November.
    5. Mohamed M. Mostafa, 2023. "A one-hundred-year structural topic modeling analysis of the knowledge structure of international management research," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3905-3935, August.
    6. Santoveña-Casal, Sonia & Pérez, Ma Dolores Fernández, 2022. "Relevance of E-Participation in the state health campaign in Spain: #EstoNoEsUnJuego / #ThisIsNotAGame," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
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