How micro-agenda setters acted in the 2024 Romanian presidential election campaign
How micro-agenda setters acted in the 2024 Romanian presidential election campaign

Summary/Abstract: Social media era has transformed the agenda-setting process by altering the dynamic relationships among the public agenda, media agenda, and political agenda. Social media platforms enable quick access to social or political information, generating citizen participation (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela, 2012). Many studies have focused on the effectiveness of online communication between the political actors and the public, online political participation (Boulianne, 2009, 2015; Bode, 2012; Gil de Zúñiga, Jung and Valenzuela, 2012; Gil de Zúñiga, H., Weeks, B., & Ardèvol-Abreu, A., 2017; Dimitrova, Matthes, 2018; Wojcik, 2005 et al.), controversies related to online political participation (Flichy, 2008; Lee, Hosanagar & Nair, 2014; Morozov, 2011; Wojcik, 2005, 2011) and the investigation of agenda setting (McCombs and Shaw, 1972). The present research is based on the premise that agenda setting as a political process is influenced by social media communication and online participation in political activity influences the media agenda, public agenda and political communication, relating and interconnecting. As we will see next, social networks have the potential to generate the re-examination of the political agenda or become arenas of political mobilization among groups that are traditionally left out of the debate or less visible (Segaard, 2015; Dogaru-Tulică, 2019). How did the Romanian online environment manage to change the public agenda at a time of great social and political pressure? is one of the key questions that the present study seeks to address, building on the concept of micro-agenda setters—an extension of agenda-setting theory that explores how individual actors or small groups shape public perceptions on issues of interest (Casero-Ripollés, 2020). Using the qualitative focus-group research method, this paper shows that micro agenda setters play a crucial role in the formation of opinions in contexts such as election campaigns, influencing the main topics of discussion of online communities.

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