Coverage of Political News in Tweets of International News Agencies: A Comparative Analysis of World-Systems Countries

Abstract

This article attempts to study the flow of political news in tweets of four international news agencies: AP, AFP, Reuters and Xinhua, for 7 years from 2010 to 2016. Theoretically, the study takes its roots from the World System Theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. We used the content analysis method and examined the coverage of political news about 15 world countries (five core countries, five semi-periphery and five periphery countries) in 6746 tweets of international news agencies. We also analyzed the portrayal, retweet rate, favorite rate, and shared portrayal of world system countries. We found that there are significant differences in coverage of political news about the world countries in tweets of international news agencies. Moreover, Traditional hierarchies and structures of political news flow still exist on Twitter. Core countries are covered as well as shared more and positively as compare to the semiperiphery or periphery countries.