Abstract:

This article’s main purpose is to understand whether the intermedia agenda-setting effect occurs between the online versions of international newspapers and Twitter during the Papal election in 2013. The researchers have tracked each available country’s trending topics on Twitter to understand the popularity of the subject in various countries. The researchers then followed each country available on Twitter at the time when the study was conducted, starting right after the announcement of the new Pope at the Sistine Chapel in Vatican on 12 March 2013 till 15 March 2013 for four days and collected all available data. Later, the researchers collected data from the websites of international newspapers, The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal. Two computer-based content analysis were conducted. In order to understand the relationship amongst these media entities, the cross-lagged panel design with the Rozelle-Campbell (1969) baseline was used. In the end, researchers examined the second level agenda setting effect between media by looking into what was said about the Papal election – positive, negative, or neutral. The results supported both first and second-level agenda setting influence between media.

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