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Employing Topic Modeling in the Intermedia Agenda-Setting Theory: the Interplay Between the Media, the Corporation and the Public in Cambridge Analytica Scandal

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Employing Topic Modeling in the Intermedia Agenda-Setting Theory: the Interplay Between the Media, the Corporation and the Public in Cambridge Analytica Scandal Employing topic modeling in the intermedia agenda-setting theory: the interplay between the media, the corporation and the public in Cambridge Analytica scandal Name: Xijia Hu Student ID: 11351497 Master’s Thesis Graduate School of Communication Research master of Communication Science Supervisor: Sanne Kruikemeier Date: February 01, 2019 Abstract 1 This study explored the causal relationship between media, organizational and public agendas with the issue of Cambridge Analytica scandal. Topic modeling was the first time used in the agenda-setting theory to detect subtopics of media agenda and corporate agenda. Besides, online search behavior was regarded as the public agenda. Time-series analyses were employed to daily-level aggregated news articles (N = 313), Facebook press release (N = 62), and the popularity of Google search. Results of VAR model indicated that on the first level agenda-setting, the amount of news articles and press releases can influence the popularity of Google search about “Cambridge Analytica”. Subsequently, on the second level of agenda- setting, the use of lagged regression model demonstrated that subtopics flowed from media agenda to corporate agenda and public agenda, and from corporate agenda to public agenda. During the last decade, Facebook has shown enormous user growth and even changed communication to some extent, leading to more interactive deliberations (Heggde & Shainesh, 2018). Users share personal activities on Facebook to their Facebook friends and even strangers. Every day, Facebook users produce more than 500 terabytes of information (Tam, 2012). To some extent, the user generated content makes up the foundation of Facebook, and strengthens the connections between users and the platform (Heggde & Shainesh, 2018). Therefore, it is important for the company to maintain trust and encourage active content generation on Facebook. However, on March 18th, 2018, Christopher Wiley, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, disclosed that the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users was used illegally to analyze their political preferences and to predict their voting intentions (Alpha.com, 2018). Cambridge Analytica was accused of taking advantage of this data to help Donald Trump with his 2016 presidential election campaign (Isaak & Hanna, 2018; Persily, 2017). As one of the top 10 stories of 2018 (Glusac, 2018), the scandal had a strong negative impact on the company: both Cambridge Analytica and its parent company shut down (Lumb, 2018), and 2 Facebook saw a sharp decrease in its market value (Shen, 2018). The leak of user information harmed the privacy of the public and subsequently attracted public attention. This scandal pushed many countries to amend their privacy laws and social media platforms to update their privacy rules as to protect privacy in the digital era (European Commission, 2018). In addition to the backlash for the company that the scandal caused and the microtargeting techniques (e.g., Tarran, 2018; Ward, 2018), it is also a particularly interesting case to explore the intermedia agenda setting effects between the media, the company (i.e., Facebook), and the public. Intermedia agenda setting theory, which is developed from traditional agenda setting theory, explains that the agenda transfers from one medium to another (Harder, Sevenans & Van Aelst, 2017; Tam, 2015). The existing studies have focused more on the interaction between two actors, either on issue transfer between different media outlets (e.g., Guo & Vargo, 2017; Vonbun, Königslöw & Schoenbach, 2016), between traditional media and social media (e.g. Rogstad, 2016), or between the media and the corporations (e.g., Kroon & van de Meer, 2018; Van Aelst & Vliegenthart, 2014). However, what happened when more than two actors joint the agenda-setting process? Cambridge Analytica scandal presents a good case for intermedia agenda setting research between three actors (the media, the company, and the public), because these three main actors have different issue salience goals in this issue. For the media, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was highly newsworthy (Glusac, 2018). For Facebook, the scandal created a public relations crisis, which the company was expected to react quickly to, providing information to the media and the public; because the scandal threatened the reputation and trust to the company this further affected their financial performance (Huang, 2006; Patriotta, Gond, & Schultz, 2011; Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2003). Thus, the organization is another actor which engages in the agenda-setting process, and aims to lead the agenda to save its reputation. Equally important, the public actors also have an interest in joining the agenda setting process. As the scandal revealed the risks posed towards privacy, the public is likely to 3 follow up on the progress of the scandal investigation, and speak about their demands regarding privacy protection. Hence, three actors all have the motivation to drive the agenda. Previous studies have, however, either focused on the relationship between the media and the public (Ragas, Tran, & Martin, 2014), or between the media and corporations (Kroon & van de Meer, 2018). Thus, there remains a gap to explore: When the media, the organization, and the public are all included in the agenda setting route, which actor takes the lead? Therefore, this study aimed to fill this gap and to investigate the interplay between the media, the organization, and the public in the first-level and second-level agenda setting process, and used the Cambridge Analytica scandal as the context. Topic modeling was employed to detect the subtopics in media and corporation agendas. Time series analysis was used to explore the causal relationship between three actors. Taken together, this study contributes to the understanding of intermedia agenda-setting theory and advances the theory by exploring the interplay between the media, the organization, and the public. The study explores the relationship between three actors in intermedia agenda setting, and deepens the understanding of how a company responded to a major scandal and their influence in a public relations crisis. In addition, the use of topic modeling in this study expands the method by analyzing the subtopics in the newspaper and press releases. The implementation of topic modeling is a creative, new approach to the topic detection in the agenda-setting theory. Practically, this study contributes to company understanding of their position in the issue salience process, and guides them in planning campaign strategies. 4 Theoretical Framework The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Theory Since McCombs and Shaw (1972) introduced the agenda-setting theory, it has become one of the most well-developed theories in communication science. Based on interviews with voters, McCombs and Shaw (1972) found that news media can shape public attention and political reality by selecting which news coverage to make salient. Subsequently, scholars expanded on this by addressing different types of issues, media, audiences, etc. (e.g., Dearing & Rogers, 1996; McCombs, 2004; McCombs & Shaw, 1993; McCombs, Shaw, & Weaver, 1997; Wanta & Ghanem, 2007). In the agenda-setting theory, the effect of agenda setting has been considered to be twofold— “what to think” and “how to think” (Lim, 2011). “What to think” refers to the first level of agenda building, which explores how the media selects the issue and influences the public’s opinion on it. The first level agenda setting effect refers to how the issues highlighted by the major media transfer to the secondary media (McCombs & Shaw, 1993). The emergence of this effect can be attributed to the small size of secondary media, which do not have enough resources or journalists to obtain the information first-hand. Roberts and McCombs (1994) found that issue transfer from newspapers to television programs occurred during the 1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign. In addition to the issue salience and transfer, attributes of issue agendas are transferred from one medium to other ones as well. For example, Kroon and van de Meer (2018) explored the reciprocal influence in affective attribute between organization agendas and tabloid agenda. Different from first-level agenda-setting influence on ‘what to think’, the second-level agenda setting describes ‘how to think’ about an issue. Specifically, second-level agenda-setting is a social learning process by the salience of attributes of one medium has influence on these attributes of another medium (Lim, 2011). 5 Apart from affective and cognitive attribute, subtopics within an issue as an attribute category which proposed by Ghanem (1997) is not widely used in agenda-setting theory. This study prefers subtopics within an issue to explore the second-level agenda-setting theory. This is because an issue usually contains several subtopics. For example, in the articles of Cambridge Analytica scandal, the subcategories includes the fact issue (Aleksandr Kogan), the analysis of the impact (privacy), the role of Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), etc (see Appendix 1.). To analyze the subtopics provides a more informative study in the issue salience (Lim, 2011). Due to the development of online communication, the decentralized characteristic of the new media landscape has changed the way of both first-level and second-level agenda-setting route (Ragas, Tran, & Martin, 2014). Although media salience is still applicable, the traditional media has lost its dominant role in the agenda setting
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