Abstract
This chapter examines how “the world outside and the pictures in our heads” uniquely transfer in an online-only social media environment in relation to the discrete emotion of fear. Grounded in agenda-setting theory, bidirectional relationships of agenda-setting variables (i.e., news media coverage, public opinion, and topic salience) were measured in the daily temporal online discourse regarding Donald Trump’s transition of power in the White House. About 42,352,749 publicly available and English-language mentions occurred on Twitter, Reddit, forums, online news sites, blogs, or Tumblr. Time series analysis of the topic on Twitter revealed that the topic transferred from the public agenda to both the news media and the journalists. Notably, these journalists’ tweets were also driven by the discrete emotion of fear. In contrast to the agenda-setting theory’s original tenets, neither the journalist’s tweets nor the news media’s tweets set the public agenda.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Darker Side of Social Media |
| Subtitle of host publication | Consumer Psychology and Mental Health |
| Editors | Angeline Close Scheinbaum |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Chapter | 3 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Edition | 2nd |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781003410058 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781032530673, 9781032530680 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 6 Jun 2024 |