The evolution of agenda-setting theory : how local TV station's Facebook posts affect news decisions of evening broadcasts
Abstract
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The relationship between a local television news station and its audience has changed. No longer is it a one-way conversation, but rather, social media has opened a dialogue between the gatekeepers who make editorial decisions for the station and the community the television station serves. During the day, a TV station might post to Facebook several stories in progress, and this research explores whether the stories that get a lot of traction are then included in the evening broadcast. Ultimately, the objective is to see whether audience participation on a local TV station's social media might lead to different ways of thinking about agenda-setting theory. A total of 903 Facebook posts were analyzed from five television stations in the Boston area, including the type of interactions and the number of Facebook followers for each station. The findings show that, in general, the higher the overall score for a social media posting, the more likely the story would be included in the television news broadcast.
Degree
M.A.
Thesis Department
Rights
Access is limited to the campuses of the University of Missouri.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.