Can World System Theory predict news flow on twitter? The case of government sponsored broadcasting
ABSTRACT Social media platforms provide world governments with the opportunity to distribute news content from their broadcast channels directly to foreign publics [Wallerstein, I. (1974) The modern world system. New York: Academic Press] World System Theory, which has successfully explained and predicted the structure of international news flow, is now being challenged. Specifically, these social platforms undermined assumptions regarding the one way flow of information toward audiences and the exclusive institutional nature of the players in the international system. This study examines the unique case of government sponsored news media and its international news flow. It finds that while the structure of the international news flow on Twitter exhibits a hierarchical core periphery structure, non institutional actors (e.g. bloggers) conformed less than institutional players (e.g. governments and news media) to that structure. This study also found that non institutional actors assumed the role of bridging news sources and audiences, a role traditionally reserved for a small minority of elite news media. The growing and diversified pool of information mediators resulted in a more fragmented network of news flow, siloed, rather than interconnected. Research findings are synthesized and analyzed in the context of international broadcasting and social media scholarship.