The Stability of Cable and Broadcast News Intermedia Agenda Setting Across the COVID-19 Issue Attention Cycle

ABSTRACT In today’s fragmented media environment, it is unclear whether the correspondence between media agendas that characterizes intermedia agenda setting persists. Through a combination of manual and computerized content analysis of 486,068 paragraphs of COVID−19 coverage across 4,589 cable and broadcast news transcripts, we analyze second and third-level attribute agenda setting, both in terms of central themes and aspects. Through the lens of the issue attention cycle, we assess whether relationships among media agendas change over time. The results show that even in a fragmented media environment, there is considerable evidence of intermedia agenda setting. The attribute agendas were largely similar across outlets despite the similarity slightly decreasing over time. The findings suggest that there was only modest evidence for the prominent perception of fragmented coverage for cable and broadcast news networks’ attribute agendas concerning the COVID−19 pandemic.