Parsing Framing Processes: The Interplay Between Online Public Opinion and Media Coverage

TLDR

The study examines how frame‑building and frame‑setting processes operate between online public opinion and traditional media, and explores the influence of government and netizen autonomy on these dynamics. The authors performed a content analysis of 206 online posts and 114 news reports about a Chinese sociopolitical incident to test associations and causal links between opinion and media frame salience. The analysis shows that online public opinion turns a local incident into a national issue, exerts a strong early‑stage frame‑building influence on media reports, while media adapt online frames but do not set frames for online discourse, and concurrent frame salience in both domains supports strong frame‑interaction effects.

Abstract

To what extent do frame-building and frame-setting processes manifest themselves in the interplay between online public discourse and traditional (offline) media discourse? Employing a content analysis of 206 online posts and 114 news reports regarding a sociopolitical incident in China, we test the associations and causal relationships between the salience of opinion frames and media frames. Online public opinion plays an important role in transforming the original local event into a nationally prominent issue. It also exerts a significant frame-building impact on subsequent media reports but only in the early stage of coverage. However, the media are not passive in this two-way process and adapt online frames as necessary. Although media coverage is the primary source of information for netizens, it does not set frames for online discourse. Noticeably, significant associations between concurrent opinion frames and media frames lend strong support to frame-interacting effects. Discussion focuses on governmental influences in the frame-building process and the potential of netizen autonomy to attenuate frame-setting effects.