Mediated public diplomacy in the digital age: Exploring the Saudi and the U.S. governments’ agenda-building during Trump’s visit to the Middle East

Abstract

This study analyzed the agenda-building capacity of political public relations messages of the Saudi and the U.S. governments during Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East and scrutinized their influence on the media coverage and public opinion. The findings indicate that all three levels of agenda-building received solid empirical support from the data: governmental information subsidies significantly influenced media coverage and public opinion on the level of issues and stakeholders (1st level), their attributes (2nd level), and networked co-occurrences of issues/stakeholders (3rd level of agenda-building). Traditional information subsidies emerged as a powerful tool driving the agenda-building process. The study confirms the effective capacity of public relations communication to build the media and the public agendas in non-Western media culture and expands the applicability of the agenda-building network analysis research to the Middle Eastern media market.