Agenda-Setting of the Public Health Emergencies (COVID-19) Based on Audience's Perspective

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of sudden public health incidents notes the agenda setting of the media in the process of message diffusion, but the audience's expectation for the media framework is seldom paid attention to. Through an online questionnaire, the media usage, satisfaction, intuitive evaluation of different message framing and placement methods of the audience (N=401) are investigated. The results notes that audiences attach the most importance to message placement and gain-framing, where the importance of message placement is basically the same as the agenda setting of official media;audiences are satisfied with media coverage overall and are most concerned about the speed of media response, while the ability to deal with false message needs to be improved;some audiences attach equal importance to additional message on sudden public events. This study proposes an audience-led agenda-setting in response to public health emergencies, providing a new perspective to understand the audience's message needs and agenda setting. © 2022 ACM.