![]() This organized distraction was not an isolated incident. The flooding of the media with stories about a minor scandal appeared to have been no accident, but represented a concerted effort of the Chinese government to distract the public’s attention from the earthquake and the government’s inadequate disaster preparedness 1. News about the earthquake was marginalized, to the point that the Chinese Red Cross implored the public to ignore the celebrity scandal. Within hours, Chinese media were saturated with stories about the apparent confession by an Internet celebrity to have engaged in gambling and prostitution. On August 4, 2014, a devastating earthquake maimed and killed thousands in China’s Yunnan province. Our results are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables and examination of several alternative explanations, although the generality of the successful diversion must be established by further investigation. The pattern is absent in placebo analyses involving Brexit coverage and several other topics that do not present a political risk to the president. This increased activity, in turn, is followed by a reduction in coverage of the Mueller investigation-a finding that is consistent with the hypothesis that President Trump’s tweets may also successfully divert the media from topics that he considers threatening. We find that increased media coverage of the Mueller investigation is immediately followed by Trump tweeting increasingly about unrelated issues. ![]() Using the president as a case study, we present evidence suggesting that President Trump’s use of Twitter diverts crucial media (The New York Times and ABC News) from topics that are potentially harmful to him. President Trump’s reliance on Twitter is unprecedented, but the underlying implications for agenda setting are poorly understood. Social media has arguably shifted political agenda-setting power away from mainstream media onto politicians.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |