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1 Tipping the Twitter Vs. News Media Scale? Conducting a Third Tipping the Twitter vs. news media scale? Conducting a third assessment of intermedia agenda-setting effects during the presidential primary Bethany Anne Conway Associate Professor Department of Communication Studies, California Polytechnic State University College of Liberal Arts 1 Grand Ave., #47-31 San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 [email protected] Eric Tsetsi Lecturer Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam Nieuwe Achtergracht 166 1018WV Amsterdam, NL [email protected] Kate Kenski, PhD Professor Department of Communication, University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences 1103 E University Blvd. Tucson, AZ 85721 [email protected] Yotam Shmargad Assistant Professor School of Government & Public Policy, University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences 1103 E University Blvd. Tucson, AZ 85721 [email protected] 1 On January 8, 2021, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump’s social media account two days after an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (McClusky & Zennie, 2021). This was not the first time that Twitter had blocked the president. In fact, the company placed factcheck warning labels on President Trump countless times and suspended his use of the platform for 12 hours the previous day (Clayton et al., 2021). While it was Twitter’s legal right to engage in such action, the week’s events leading up to the ban sent a powerful message about his use of the platform—that Twitter provided Trump with power to sway opinions. Furthermore, it is not just public opinion that Trump was able to sway. Research suggests that Twitter use by politicians, including Trump, can influence what traditional media outlets choose to cover (Conway et al., 2015; Conway et al., 2018; Jungherr, 2016; Kenski & Conway, 2016; Sayre et al., 2010; Shapiro & Hemphill, 2016; Stromer-Galley, 2019; Wells et al., 2016). The role that news media play in perpetuating Trump’s “Twitter power” by citing his tweets and, thus, repeating his claims, continues to draw attention. But how powerful was this relationship during the 2020 electoral season? There is plenty of evidence that politicians use social media to set the news media agenda (Bimber, 2014; Groshek & Groshek, 2013; Meraz, 2009; Kreiss, 2014, 2016; Parmelee, 2013a). At the same time, this relationship should be described as reciprocal—meaning that predictive power resides with both social media and the traditional news media (Conway et al., 2015; Kenski & Jamieson, 2016; Sayre et al., 2010). The magnitudes of these relationships also vary depending on the issue in question (Conway et al., 2015; Conway et al., 2018) and the time lag assumptions made in a given analysis (Harder et al., 2017; Shapiro & Hemphill, 2016). One particular case where there is some question about the impact of Twitter use on news media coverage is during presidential primary elections. In two studies of issue emphasis during the 2 presidential primaries, Conway, Kenski, and Wang (2015) and Conway, Filer, Kenski, and Tsetsi (2018) found that newspapers exhibited greater influence on primary candidate Twitter feeds than the reverse. Many arguments have been made for why this was the case: newspapers set the agenda for television (Roberts & McCombs, 1994), which increases their agenda-setting power; Trump often fails to focus on specific issues in his Twitter feed (Kopan, 2016); issue emphasis may be infrequent during nomination campaigns in general, as politicians try to maintain a level of ambiguity (Kendall, 2016); and politicians also rely on news media outlets for legitimacy (Conway et al., 2015). Yet no president before Trump has used Twitter with as much frequency to spread such incendiary—and attention-grabbing—rhetoric (Quealy, 2021). Here, we replicate two previous studies (Conway et al., 2015; Conway et al., 2018) to examine whether Trump tipped the scale of intermedia agenda-setting power toward Twitter during the 2020 presidential primary elections. Such research remains pertinent as we continue to examine the role of social media in the agenda-setting process (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008; Groshek & Groshek, 2013; Harder et al., 2017; Kreiss, 2014; Towner & Dulio, 2012; Van Aelst et al., 2017). Our results, while mixed, suggest that for the first time Twitter may have led newspapers to a greater extent than the reverse. Frontrunners also demonstrated a propensity to define their own agenda rather than following that of the news media. After three election cycles where Twitter’s role in politics has continued to shift, predictions about the loss of gatekeeping power among legacy media are beginning to gain traction (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). The News Media-Twitter Relationship Similar to previous studies, we analyze the impact of political campaign content on the news media agenda using intermedia agenda setting, which focuses on how different media drive one another’s content (Denham, 2010; McCombs, 2004; Weaver & Choi, 2014). Much of this 3 research focuses on how campaign information subsidies in the form of press releases, advertisements, websites, and blogs influence news media coverage (Boyle, 2001; Dunn, 2009; Lancendorfer & Lee, 2010; Lopez-Escobar et al., 1998; Sweetser et al., 2008). Currently, much research focuses on social media use on behalf of politicians and parties (Conway et al., 2015; Conway et al. 2018; Jacobson, 2013; Jungherr, 2016; Meraz, 2009; Sayre et al., 2010), a force that became integral to the campaign scene little more than a decade ago. Twitter specifically is seen as essential to political campaigns (Kapko, 2016; Shmargad & Sanchez, 2020). It is fair to say that, at least with regard to politics, social media have surpassed all previous information subsidies when it comes to reaching journalists both in frequency and in power. Journalists actively use Twitter to source and build stories just as they did with former information subsidies (Farhi, 2009; Parmelee, 2013a, 2013b). Recent work suggests that journalists even liken Twitter to a news wire (Lawrence, 2015) that allows them to do work without true “mobilization” (Lecheler & Kruikemeier, 2016). Content analyses also suggest that journalists “use Twitter quotes to cite official sources more than non-official sources” (Bane, 2019, p. 199). Overall, it seems that journalists have “adopted an opportunistic model, tapping social media to fulfill a need for information until professional journalists [arrive] on the scene, hours or even days later” (Hermida, 2012, p. 664). At the same time, though politicians can use Twitter as a megaphone to the press, this does not guarantee that Twitter sources rule the day when it comes to issue emphasis. Previous studies have found that traditional news media outlets often set the Twitter agenda when it comes to various events, crises or otherwise (Ceron et al., 2016; Rogstad, 2016; Su & Borah, 2019; Vargo et al., 2015). Moreover, when it comes to debates on social media, politicians “are highly dependent on the media infrastructure,” in that they rely on mainstream media brands to provide 4 evidence for their claims (Anli & Simonsen, 2018, p. 1091). This top-down conceptualization of the news media-Twitter agenda has much support. Pertinent to the current study, in the case of the 2012 primary elections, Conway et al. (2015) used time series analysis to examine whether the top U.S. newspapers predicted candidate and party issue emphasis on Twitter, focusing on eight issues. They found that newspaper issue emphasis predicted Twitter issue emphasis to a greater extent than the reverse both in terms of the numbers of leads and their strength. Later, in a replication piece during the 2016 primaries, Conway and colleagues (2018) once again found that those same newspapers predicted Twitter emphasis on eight issues, while Twitter predicted newspaper emphasis on just six issues. Overall, given the number of issues on which newspapers led and the number of leads for newspapers (nine) vs. Twitter (five), newspapers outpredicted Twitter and the feeds of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in particular. This is not to say that bottom-up conceptualizations of the news media-Twitter relationship do not exist. Prior research shows these relationships are often reciprocal and that social media can be used to push unique agendas (Conway et al., 2018) which news media are then likely to adopt (Kenski & Jamieson, 2016; Metzgar & Maruggi, 2009; Sayre et al., 2010). Agenda-building research also suggests “the media’s impact on candidates’ and parties’ agendas is limited or even absent” during the campaign season (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006, p. 96). As journalists increasingly go to Twitter for content, this relationship could be growing. President Trump tweets more than any politician in history, with an average of approximately 35 tweets per day during the final 6 months of his presidency (Way Back Machine, 2021). Further, research suggests that news media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, “give Trump front page coverage due to his power of attraction evinced in the tweets that his 5 followers retweet the most'' (Perez-Curiel & Naharro, 2019, p. 645), making his tweeting style ultimately enticing. Here we followed the lead of previously mentioned studies on the presidential primaries and predicted the following: Hypothesis 1: Reciprocal relationships existed between the issue agendas of newspapers and the issue agendas of Twitter feeds. Hypothesis 2: The issue agendas of newspapers predicted the issue agendas of Twitter
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