Framing in Newspaper Coverage and Candidates’ Facebook: Intermedia Agenda Setting in Taipei Mayoral Election of 2014

Since social media platforms have been widely applied in election campaigns as candidate-controlled media tools, candidates expect their social media outlets being influential when employing strategic actions to affect the public perception and the mass media reports in not only the topics, but also the attributes of reports. For which we know the effect as the intermedia agenda setting. This study examined whether candidates’ social media influence the news’s coverage in framing two leading candidates in both news frames and affective tones during the 2014 Taipei mayoral election, giving evidence to support both first-level and second-level agenda setting theory. With content analysis of two leading campaign issues during the election, MG149 account controversy and wiretap case, results showed strong correlation between the candidates’ Facebook posts and four major newspaper coverage in the quantity of news frame, but results for in affective tones were not confirmed. Intermedia agenda setting effect is proved occurring in both Ko’s and Lien’s campaign, since the quantity of four categories of frames (issue, image, strategy, and ideology frame) in two campaigns members’ Facebook post are aligned with those in newspaper. However, the results for affective attributes differ in each team. Ko’s team members determined a large part of the media frame at both positive and negative frame, showing that second-level intermedia agenda setting effects occurred in his campaign, while Lien’s didn’t have significant correlation with news coverage in affective dimension, only his team member apparently transferred a powerful negative frame to mass media in wiretap case.