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Whose Story Wins on Twitter?

The South China Sea dispute is one of the most complicated geopolitical issues of the twenty-first century. While this international conflict revolves around military and economic disputes, in today’s information age international politics also hinges on how each country presents the dispute in the news and whose “story” wins. Based on the Network Agenda Setting model, this study analyzed the news coverage in three involved countries—China, the Philippines, and the United States—and examined whose “story” gains the most prominence on Twitter, an emerging transnational public sphere. A combination of network analysis and the Granger causality test were used to explicate the media effects. Network visualization techniques were adopted to graphically represent the media network agendas. Overall, the results showed that the Twittersphere to a great extent followed the US news media in reasoning the association and dynamics between different countries involved in the South China Sea dispute, whereas the media in China and the Philippines showed minimal to moderate impact on this global social media platform. The findings demonstrate that the US media’s agenda-setting effect can transcend national borders, and that the imbalanced power structure has been reinforced in this new media environment.