Environmental agenda setting in local media: Thematic and attributive levels

Abstract

The article presents the results of analysis of information agenda of regional media and social media on ecology. The theoretical coordinates of the study are set by the theory of “agenda formation” at two levels - thematic and attributive. The authors’ goal is to identify the problems of the information agenda of the regional media and social media on ecology, categorize its attributes, as well as an eye tracking analysis of the attention of the youth audience to the identified categories of attributes. The research materials were media texts of 13 online media and 6 urban online communities of the VKontakte network (for 2022) of six industrial cities of the Chelyabinsk region. For the first time, the results of a theoretical and empirical study of the topic from the standpoint of a cognitive-matrix analysis of categories and attributes of the information agenda, the use of eye tracking technologies in studying the reaction of the youth audience are presented. The results obtained made it possible to identify 10 categories of attributes of the information agenda on ecology. As the study showed, the attributes of the category “environmental problems” are most often presented in quantitative linguistic expression in media texts.

Keywords

• agenda setting
• ecology
• mass media
• social media
• thematic and attributive levels
• eye tracking analysis