Paper presented by Eli Skogerbø at the ECREA Political Communication conference 2015, Odense, 27 Aug. 2015.

1. Eli Skogerbø, University of Oslo (UiO), Axel Bruns,
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Andrew
Quodling (QUT) and Thomas Ingebretsen (UiO)
Agenda-Setting Revisited: Social
Media and Sourcing in Mainstream
Journalism

2. Social media and agenda-setting
• Theory
– Is the agenda-setting hypothesis transferrable to an online,
hybrid media environment where social media increasingly
constitute tools for both journalists and their sources?
– How are tweets included in journalism and thereby in
agenda setting processes?
• Media agenda-setting, intermedia agenda-setting, online agenda-
setting and agenda-building
- Previous studies yielded varying results

3. Research questions
• How do social media, in this case Twitter,
contribute to media agenda-building and agenda-
setting in different political and cultural settings?
• What sources are cited and what functions do
their tweets have in journalism?
• What differences and similarities do we find
across media in different countries?

4. Methods and Data
Comparisons across Australia, Norway & Sweden
• Similar cases: Small in population, welfare states, stable multi-party democracies, many media
outlets
• Election campaign coverage in news media – news articles mentioning election or similar
phrases and citing tweets.
• Collection period: 10 weeks prior to Election Day (Australia 9 September 2013, Norway 12
September 2013, Sweden 14 September 2014)
• Australian sources: The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald (Sunday version, the Sun Herald),
Australian Financial Review, online news of ABC, wire service AAP.
– 214 articles
• Norwegian sources: VG, Aftenposten, and Dagens Næringsliv, online election news of NRK, the
NTB wire service
– 69 articles
• Swedish sources: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet, the online news of SVT, the
wire service TT.
– 76 articles

5. Twitter citations in election coverage over the ten weeks
prior to the 2013 Australian general election.

6. Tweet citations and functions in articles in the 2013 election coverage
in Australia (excl. ‘media diary’ sections).

7. Twitter citations in election coverage over the ten
weeks prior to the 2013 general election in Norway.

8. Tweet citations and functions in articles in the 2013 election
coverage in Norway (excluding VG’s ‘Sagt’ section).
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Aftenposten
Dagens Næringsliv
NRK
NTB
VG
17% / 5 28% / 8
44% / 8 17% / 3
10% / 3
35% / 6
21% / 6
24% / 4
80% / 4
22% / 4
14% / 4
40% / 240% / 2
12% / 212% / 212% / 2
20% / 1
20% / 1
7% / 2
6% / 1
6% / 1
6% / 16% / 1
Cited Groups
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Aftenposten
Dagens Næringsliv
NRK
NTB
VG
88% / 15
100% / 5
69% / 20
67% / 12
17% / 5
60% / 3
17% / 311% / 2
20% / 120% / 1
7% / 2
6% / 1
6% / 1
6% / 1
Tweet Function
Actor Type
Politician
Named user
Relative of politician
Journalist
Unnamed user
Expert
Celebrity
Other
Tweet-Function
Opinion
Acknowledgment
Joke
Announcement
Other
Fact

9. Twitter citations in election coverage ten weeks prior to
2014 general election in Sweden.

10. Tweet citations and functions in articles in
the 2014 election coverage in Sweden

11. Comparing the Role of Tweets 1
Journalistic practices
Similarities and differences between the media
• No pattern: The Australian (broadsheet/quality) and VG (tabloid/popular) used
a larger number of tweets in election coverage articles than their
competitors.
Similarities and differences between the countries:
• Australian media cited tweets in election-related news articles more
frequently than their Scandinavian counterparts, 155 articles compared to
77 articles in Sweden and only 39 articles in Norway.
• Considerably greater chance that tweets cited in the news media could
influence or set the media agenda in Australia than in Sweden and especially
in Norway – suggesting that intermedia agenda-setting power of Twitter
sources is lower in Scandinavia than in Australia.

12. • Australian and Swedish media cited tweets of
politicians and fellow journalists, as well as ordinary
users.
• Norwegian media devoted less space to the tweets of
political actors or journalists, and instead presented a
broader range of tweeters. Ordinary users and
relatives of politicians emerging were prominent
categories.

13. Does Twitter set the agenda?
• The sheer difference in the number of tweets quoted
shows that Twitter contributed more often to
agenda-setting and agenda-building in Australia than
in Scandinavia.
• Tweets were included into the election coverage
regularly in Australia, while Norwegian and Swedish
news media included them less often but were
somewhat more open to citing non-elite sources,
named and unnamed.
• The diversity of sources quoted was larger in
Scandinavia than in Australia.

14. Conclusions – for further research
• Twitter’s influence on media agendas differ between
media organizations (resources?/journalistic
cultures?) and national settings (political cultures?)
– When journalists resources are limited, Twitter becomes
more influential?
• The relationship between political journalists and
their sources may be of different quality and
character in different settings
– Actual and perceived distance between journalists and
political elites, may be smaller in Scandinavia than in
Australia.

15. Thank you!