The Mutual Influence of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Twitter Users During COVID-19: Network Agenda-Setting Analysis.
Iman TahamtanDevendra PotnisEhsan MohammadiVandana SinghLaura E MillerPublished in: Journal of medical Internet research (2022)
This paper extends theorizing on agenda setting by providing empirical evidence that agenda-setting effects vary by topic and types of Twitter users. Although prior studies showed that network agenda setting is a "one-way" model, the novel findings of this research confirm a "2-way" or "multiway" effect of agenda setting on social media due to the interactions between the content creators and audiences. The WHO can determine which topics should be promoted on social media during different phases of a pandemic and collaborate with other public health gatekeepers to collectively make them salient in the public.