Media Power Measuring via Emotional Contagion

Abstract

Media power, the impact that media have on public opinion and perspectives, plays a significant role in maintaining internal stability, exerting external influence, and shaping international dynamics for nations /regions. However, prior research has primarily concentrated on news content and reporting time, resulting in limitations in evaluating media power. To more accurately assess media power, we use news content, news reporting time, and news emotion simultaneously to explore the emotional contagion between media. We use emotional contagion to measure the mutual influence between media and regard the media with greater impact as having stronger media power. We propose a framework called Measuring Media Power via Emotional Contagion (MMPEC) to capture emotional contagion among media, enabling a more accurate assessment of media power at the media and national/regional levels. MMPEC also interprets experimental results through correlation and causality analyses, ensuring explainability. Case analyses confirm the higher accuracy of MMPEC compared to other baseline models, as demonstrated in the context of COVID-19-related news, yielding compelling and interesting insights.

Keywords

• explainability
• media power
• emotional contagion