Media agenda setting and online search traffic: Influences of online and traditional media
Venue
American Political Science Association, American Political Science Association (2010)
Publication Year
2010
Authors
BibTeX
Abstract
This paper addresses the patterns of influence between the news media and the
public, by specifically targeting breaking stories, or shocks, to a news system.
Specifically, we assess media agenda setting and selective exposure by looking at
the relative public attention spans to hard and soft news (as measured by query
volume), in comparison with the volume of news coverage (in print, broadcast, and
Web content) for these selected news events. We measure the dynamic distribution of
issue coverage in the news media, and how this volume of coverage ultimately
influences online search traffic. In order to assess sustained interest in a given
topic, distributions of query volume and news coverage were fit with Gamma
distributions of appropriate parameters. Findings indicate that there are
significant differences in the public attention spans for hard and soft news
issues, particularly relative to what news coverage might predict. Soft news events
produced a slower rate of decline in query volume, matching the slow tapering off
of issue coverage found in Web content. Conversely, for hard, substantive news
issues, query volume drops off quite quickly, more closely paralleling the
distribution of coverage in broadcast news.
