?Agenda-Setting and topic detection: towards a formulation that allows us to quantify the influence of the mass media?

BALENZUELA, PABLO

CABA

Workshop; 3rd WORKSHOP IN OPERATIONS, NETWORKS & DATA ANALYTICS,; 2017

Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

One of our objectives is to understand the processes of public opinion formation and the dynamics of change that occur in groups and social networks. This process can be dominated by different factors and shows specific features that depend both on the topic of discussion and on the scale of the group in question. To this end we use numerical models and analysis of data, looking at the problem from different scales, and focusing on the processes governed by the exchange of arguments and the role of the influence of the mass media. In this way we seek to advance in the understanding of group discussions, in the quantitative analysis of the influence of large media or for example in the dynamics of opinions related to anti-vaccine movements of small groups of people.In this talk I will focus on the work we are doing in one of these lines: How to quantify the influence of a mass media and its influence on the public agenda.The Agenda-Setting theory provides a practical framework for understanding the role of media in a society and its ability to inform its consumers according to the topics they choose as relevant. When the media is successful in this task, we say that they set the agenda. In this talk I will discuss what we are doing to study the agenda of the main Argentine newspapers through the detection of news topics, which allows us to identify the main issues dealt with, their evolution over time and their correlation with public interests.