Communication is obviously an important function for museums. Engagement with mass media is one of the indispensable ways for museums to communicate with their publics. The concept of mass media arose in the early twentieth century and refers to information dissemination accessible to all in principle, including newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet, and others (McQuail and Deuze 2020: 16–19). In this article, mass media mainly includes the traditional mainstream media, while social media on the Internet will not be discussed. For many people, mass media is still an essential channel for up-to-date information nowadays. In recent years, the national and global mass media has paid increasing attention to museums in China, and their reports on traditional festivals, special events, museum development and International Museum Day have achieved great prominence. However, inaccuracies and negligence in mainstream media reports about museums still occur from time to time, as seen in the case of CCTV News where an author of tomb-raiding novels was invited to a live show to discuss the archaeological excavation of the Sanxingdui Site, Sichuan (The Paper 2021). While this incident invites criticism of the professional standards of journalists, it also raises skepticism about the absence of archaeologists and museum professionals in mass communication. Are museums absent from the communication process? Are museums acting as gatekeepers when reporting on relevant content? What is the relationship between museums and mass media? In this article, I argue that “agenda-setting theory” helps to address these issues.
The concept of agenda-setting theory grew from a small-scale audience study conducted by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1968 during the US presidential election. This famous Chapel Hill study demonstrated that voters’ judgments about the importance of some issues are highly correlated with a repeated emphasis in mass media (McCombs and Shaw 1972: 176–187). They thus argue that “mass communication plays a role in setting the public agenda, as news reporting influences people's judgments about the events and importance of the world around them by giving varying degrees of prominence to various agendas” (Guo 2011: 194). The core of agenda setting is the “transfer of salience from one agenda to another” (McCombs 2014: 265). Since then, the theory has continued to develop. When researching US drugs, scholars found that news reported on the front pages of traditional elite media, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, are often considered more newsworthy and thus reported by other newspapers (Danielian 1989: 29–46). This is known as “intermedia agenda setting,” the mutual influence between various media outlets exploring questions of who sets the media agenda (McCombs 2014: 258–263).
Agenda-setting theory has also been introduced into the cultural domain, including museum studies. Some scholars have demonstrated its feasibility and put forward the term “cultural agenda setting” (Bantimaroudis 2014). Their research follows the development process of agenda-setting theory to explore whether museums can set a public agenda, whether content attributes influence agenda setting, who sets the agenda, and museum agenda setting in the Internet era (Bantimaroudis et al. 2010; Zakakis, Bantimaroudis, et al. 2015; Zakakis, Noikokyris et al. 2019; Zyglidopoulos et al. 2012). Cultural agenda setting may provide a new way for museums to promote more efficient communication and expand their popularity and influence.
The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in museums among the public in China, but discussion of agenda setting in Chinese museum studies is limited and mostly based on practice. The importance of museums setting an agenda for the public has been highlighted and exemplified in several cases (Jiang 2016) along with various ways to set the agenda (e.g., through exhibitions, educational activities as well as hashtags on social media) (L. Kong 2018). The application of agenda-setting principles in museum websites is also a critical issue (Lv 2010). From these studies, it is seen that one of the main channels for museums to communicate and set an agenda is through mass media (Li 2016). However, compared with Western studies, the specific ways Chinese museums use mass media to set their agenda have not been discussed. Utilizing the framework of cultural agenda-setting theory, in this report I translate the skepticism mentioned above into the following research questions, specifically:
- (1)Is there any correspondence between the actions of Chinese museums and the coverage reported by mass media?
- (2)Do Chinese museums have the ability to set the agenda for mass media in terms of time and topics?
- (3)What are the sources of mass media coverage of museums?
Materials and Methods
The crux of addressing these issues lies in investigating the extent to which actions or activities within the museum are reflected in mass media coverage, thereby illustrating the transfer of salience from the museum agenda to the mass media agenda. The research design involved three steps. First, museum activities and media coverage of the museum in various mass media outlets were collected over a period of time. Second, content analysis was conducted into the topics and sources of that coverage. Third, the relationship between the museum and mass media was analyzed using quantitative analyses, including Pearson Correlation and Granger Causality analysis.
Therefore, a case study was required. The Beijing Palace Museum, one of China's most prominent cultural institutions, provides an ideal case to explore agenda setting. Its official website serves as an educational platform, functioning not only as a window for people to learn about the museum and enhance their understanding and appreciation of Chinese traditional culture but also as a channel through which they can pay attention to, supervise, and jointly promote the development of the museum (Beijing Palace Museum n.d.a, n.d.b). The “Chronicles of the Beijing Palace Museum” section on the website documents its major events and activities in previous years, serving as corroboration for the museum's agenda. Open-access data for this study was collected from 2017 to 2021. Apart from a small number of training records aimed only at internal staff, 425 examples of media coverage in total were obtained, namely 95, 125, 94, 58, and 53 for each year from 2017 to 2021 respectively.
Three types of mass media provided the coverage from 2017 to 2021 which was analyzed in this research. The first type is authoritative and influential media, including representatives of the state-level news agency, central-level newspapers, international news agency websites, and mainstream TV media in China. They are Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily, China News, and CCTV News. The next type is vertical media concentrating on the development of the museum industry. HiMuseum, a popular vertical media platform aiming to promote museum culture, was selected to explore the differences between vertical media and mainstream media in reporting. Using “Beijing Palace Museum” as the keyword, media coverage was searched chronologically through their websites or databases. After excluding reprinted, duplicate, and irrelevant reports, the incidence of news stories covered by these five Chinese media outlets was 429, 658, 963, 95,1 and 104, respectively, totaling 2,249. Next, The Guardian (UK), The Times (UK), and The New York Times (US), which are authoritative and significant international newspapers, were chosen as the representative Western mainstream media in the study. Their websites were searched using the keywords “The Forbidden City” and “Beijing Palace Museum” and the relevance of the coverage was checked one by one. The sample numbers were 24, 17, and 17, totaling 58.
To facilitate subsequent analysis, the time unit was set quarterly. Except for 2020 and 2021, which were greatly affected by COVID-19, museum activities and media reports showcase stable growth year by year. The number of all incidence of news coverage was seasonal: there were more in the fourth quarter and fewer in the first quarter of the year. This may indicate that coverage reported by the mass media is basically consistent with the activities of the Beijing Palace Museum.
After case selection and preliminary data collation, the different topics, which made up the museum programs and events and the media reports, were classified through content analysis, a process defined as “a systematic, subjective and qualitative methodology” (Stemler 2001: 1) and which is a powerful tool in the social sciences and humanities. Referring to the study by Nikos Zakakis and colleagues (2015: 347) and taking into account the specificities of Chinese museums, one hundred examples of news coverage were selected randomly and open-coded, forming nine categories from the overall coverage. The contents could be further consolidated into three topics based on the relationship between museums and other social institutions and individuals, among which “Service Capacity” addresses the relationship between museums and the public, encompassing subtopics such as “Operation Development,” “Marketing,” “Public Relationship,” and “Venue Services”; “Competitiveness” addresses the relationship between museums and other social institutions, including subtopics “Strategic Cooperation,” “Brand Building,” and “Museum Events”; and “Governance Capacity” focuses on the internal affairs of museums, specifically concerning “Academic Programs and Training” and “Administrative Affairs.”
Meanwhile, to distinguish the relationship between museums and mass media, it was also essential to conduct an early analysis of the information sources from mass media. Obviously, active communication by museums is not the only way for mass media to obtain news, as they seek relevant information from other individuals or institutions. Sharing stories through reprinting content among the various media organizations and public hotlines were also frequent channels for producing news profile of museums.
Finally, the software IBM SPSS Statistics 20 was used to perform Pearson Correlation analysis on the time series and topics to illustrate the relevance of the agendas between the museums and mass media outlets (it could be suggested that an agenda-setting relationship exists between them). Besides, Granger Causality analysis was conducted to discover the direction of agenda setting in museums and mass media. It was based on the statistical assumptions of a time series model to determine whether the past values of the test variable were helpful in predicting the future values of the explained variable. When the original hypothesis was rejected, the test variable was the Granger cause of explained variable (Chen 2014: 381).
Results
Category of Museum Coverage
The result shows that both the Beijing Palace Museum and mass media outlets prioritize audience-oriented contents, with roughly 55 percent of the media coverage focusing on the “Service Capacity” topic. The Beijing Palace Museum allocates roughly equal importance to “Competitiveness” and “Governance Capacity,” with each accounting for approximately 20 percent, whereas the former has gained much higher attention from the mass media. This likely stems from the need of the Beijing Palace Museum to enhance its influence and competitiveness relative to other organizations by leveraging mass media publicity. Reports regarding museum internal affairs, particularly those related to management and operations, often poses challenges in capturing widespread public understanding and engagement unless there are significant academic achievements or personnel changes. As a result, such topics tend to receive less attention in the mass media.
Regarding specific subtopics, “Operation Development” is the most commonly mentioned by the Palace Museum at 41.9 percent, whereas “Administrative Affairs” receive the least attention at just 1.2 percent. The focus of the mass media largely agrees with this. However, despite comprising 25.9 percent of the Beijing Palace Museum actions, “Academic Programs and Training” are notably underrepresented in the mass media. It suggests that while both the Beijing Palace Museum and the mass media prioritize public service matters similarly, they diverge in preferred contents due to distinct perspectives.
Sources of Information in the Mass Media
It is clear that the media reports include information actively disseminated by the Beijing Palace Museum, as well as independent content that they gathered themselves. For example, mass media communicated the phenomenon “Running into the Beijing Palace Museum,” in which visitors flock into the museum to get a glimpse of a sensational exhibition with masterpieces (Wang 2017). This was not the only such case; a piece of breaking news about “a 26-year-old man driving to hit Donghua Gate of Beijing Palace Museum” was reported in 2020 (The Paper 2020). Neither of these reports has been mentioned by the official website of the Beijing Palace Museum, which could be seen as an independent agenda in this study. Independent agendas are distinguished from museum agendas, some of which may be a sudden event, others may be more negative, critical, or controversial stories, which could not be controlled by museums.
Generally speaking, in Chinese mass media reports, the number of museum and independent agendas is relatively balanced. Over 80 percent of the coverage in CCTV News comes from the museum. Conversely, most Western media reports are independent agendas. They struggle to obtain news from the museum due to the constraints of time and space.
Pearson Correlation Analysis
Pearson Correlation analysis suggests that there is a moderate correlation between the Beijing Palace Museum and the mass media in the time series (0.491, statistically significant at the 0.05 level), which could be seen as the existence of an agenda-setting relationship. To be more precise, the Beijing Palace Museum only shows a moderate correlation with Xinhua News Agency (0.461, statistically significant at the 0.05 level) and China News (0.527, statistically significant at the 0.05 level), while the correlation with the rest of the media outlets could not be proven. The sample size from Western media coverage is too small to conduct the analysis.
When completing text coding, correlation analysis is also conducted on the topics of agenda setting. The results demonstrate a strong correlation between the PR topics released by the Beijing Palace Museum and those engaged with by the mass media (0.729, statistically significant at the 0.05 level). In specific terms, the topics among Xinhua News Agency (0.804, statistically significant at the 0.05 level), China News (0.688, statistically significant at the 0.05 level), and the Beijing Palace Museum show strong correlation. The number of Western media stories about the museum was also too limited to analyze. There is a significant consistency in topics between the Beijing Palace Museum and mass media, indicating there is indeed an agenda-setting relationship, but only between some particular media outlets.
Granger Causality Analysis
Considering the sample size, only the coverage from the Beijing Palace Museum and Chinese mass media were analyzed. Since the transfer of cultural agenda salience was relatively slow and the time involved in the study was relatively long, a “day” was used for the unit of time lag. The results show that when the Beijing Palace Museum is the test variable and Chinese mass media is the explained variable, the possibility is less than 0.05, rejecting the original hypothesis. As a result, the agenda of the Beijing Palace Museum is the Granger cause of Chinese mass media, underscoring the ability of the museum to set an agenda for the Chinese mass media. Conversely, the possibility is over 0.05, indicating Chinese mass media cannot set the agenda for the Beijing Palace Museum. The results also show that the Beijing Palace Museum can set the agenda for Chinese mass media such as China News, People's Daily, and HiMuseum, while, conversely, they cannot set the agenda for the Beijing Palace Museum.
Discussion
The findings of Pearson Correlation and Granger Causality analysis indicate that mass media is consistent in reporting time and topics in relation to the Beijing Palace Museum. The museum can set the agenda for Chinese mass media, but not for Western ones. The discrepancy between domestic and international media is also supported by the study undertaken by Zakakis and colleagues in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens (2015: 355).
Nonetheless, when turning attention to a specific media outlet, a different picture emerges. The agenda setting for a single media outlet of the Beijing Palace Museum is not effective. On the one hand, given the prevalence of collaboration and reprinting articles among media outlets, news production tends to be less innovative and more uniform. However, to maintain the authenticity and individuality of diverse media outlets, any reprinted content was excluded from the data collection process. Consequently, this may lead to certain events being underrepresented or omitted. On the other hand, each media outlet is selective in their reports, with different preferences for sources, content, and styles. The national Xinhua News Agency, for example, focuses on significant events at home and abroad. It covers numerous commentaries and highlights international exhibitions of the Beijing Palace Museum. The People's Daily places a premium on comprehensive series reports accompanied by insightful journalistic commentary. It also focuses on cultural heritage and young staff in the museum, which is largely neglected by the Beijing Palace Museum itself. The coverage of CCTV News varies greatly due to the way data is collected and the algorithm of its website, with 2021 having a significantly higher number of stories than other years. The graphic-based, video-centered, and interactive nature of CCTV News leads to more graphs and videos, making it difficult to cover all the topics of the Beijing Palace Museum. China News is the only media outlet that was valid both in Pearson Correlation and Granger Causality analysis. Its target readers are mainly overseas Chinese and its stories are more comprehensive, covering nearly all the events, showing a more obvious consistency with the Beijing Palace Museum's agenda regarding time and topics.
The vertical media, HiMuseum, correlates poorly with the Beijing Palace Museum. It is devoted to presenting the current state of the museum industry from an outside perspective. Apart from exclusive interviews, the reports on HiMuseum are mainly from museum contributions and reprints, whereas a wide range of other aspects of museum work is not covered probably due to the limited staff. Most importantly, the lack of a news and information service license make it impossible to follow up on many events in the museum, resulting in a smaller number of reports and a narrower scope of contents.2
Western mass media coverage of the Beijing Palace Museum is limited and largely suggests an independent agenda. In terms of topics, Western media pays more attention to “Museum Events” related to foreign affairs, such as the “Strategic Cooperation” between the Beijing Palace Museum and Western institutions and visits by national leaders. In the meantime, these media outlets often regard the Beijing Palace Museum as a symbol, interpreting its current situation as a reflection of China. For example, the New York Times reported the closure of the Beijing Palace Museum in early 2020 to illustrate the huge significant impact of COVID-19 in China (Myers and Marchi 2020). In these reports, the Beijing Palace Museum serves as a cultural landmark, representing the Chinese national image. Due to variations in the institutional mechanism, discourse system, and agenda-setting process, it remains a challenge for the Beijing Palace Museum to set the agenda for foreign news outlets in a short time.
Recommendations
The capacity of the Beijing Palace Museum to set the media agenda reflects its communication power and influence in the wider society. Extrapolating from the case of the Beijing Palace Museum, it may be speculated that museums have the potential to set the agenda for mass media. Nevertheless, as David Weaver pointed out (1982: 213–229), current agenda setting in museums may only be an objective effect but not an intentional one. The case of the Beijing Palace Museum inspires other Chinese museums to consider how to understand and make use of this effect.
First, museums need to be aware of their two roles in mass communication, that of a medium and that of a source. Museums can be seen as a medium during the communication process, that is able to “articulate and to transform relations to time and space” (Silverstone 1994: 162). They not only share knowledge, but also receive and feed information back to stakeholders through all kinds of actions inside and outside the museum, online and in person. Otherwise, the role of museum as a source for both the public and mass media is often overlooked. They hold scarce firsthand information and have a certain degree of dominance in communication, which is the main reason museums are able to serve as gatekeepers and set the agenda for mass media. This certainly does not mean that museums have the right and power to manipulate public opinion and media preferences. On the contrary, the objective effect means that museums should also be more careful and cautious in handling communication with the media.
Second, by setting the agenda for the mass media, museums are essentially looking to expand their reach and increase the efficiency of their communications through widespread media distribution. Therefore, one of the best ways to maximize the benefits is to work with media outlets that are appropriate for their mission, purpose, scale, and position. For example, taking into account the alignment in value orientation and target audiences, the documentary “Masters in the Forbidden City” collaborated with China Central Television and Bilibili, which sparked a craze for visiting the Beijing Palace Museum. National museums such as this may consider long-term and in-depth cooperation with national, far-reaching, and authoritative media outlets. Museums provide the media with timely updates while mass media disseminates fresh and exclusive information to achieve a win-win situation. It is recommended that local museums work with influential regional media, such as Beijing Daily in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, The Paper in the Yangtze River Delta region, and Nanfang Daily in the Pearl River Delta region. Local institutions concentrating on the daily life of city residents are a potential partner for community and smaller museums. Since Chinese museums cannot directly set the agenda for foreign media, it would be more appropriate to expand international coverage by cooperating with those English-language domestic media outlets such as China Daily. Collaboration with foreign museums is another way to enhance the visibility of Chinese museums.
Third, museums need to consider both the publicity value of the agenda for promotion and the dual news and publicity value of the agenda from the perspective of the mass media. Content that is merely professional or didactic, but lacks dissemination, is unlikely to be embraced by the mass media as well as the public. The Beijing Palace Museum has developed a series of cultural and creative products that break away from the traditional serious and rigid representations of historical figures. Instead, they are presented in a more accessible and even lovable manner, creating a contrast that has led to widespread distribution. Driven by their mission, museums ought to anticipate events and actions, review each piece of publicity in advance, select events with outstanding value, and consider whether to cover them and how to make them more influential. As events and initiatives are examined in advance from the perspective of the mass media, museums play the role of gatekeepers, which can improve their communication effectiveness more precisely.
Finally, museums are usually reluctant to get involved in the media's agenda, especially on negative or controversial topics. Since mass media obtains information from everywhere, museums can never block messages or stand immune. When the Beijing Palace Museum became involved in media controversy after a negative story emerged, “driving into the Beijing Palace Museum is a privilege” (F. Kong 2020), they should not have kept silent and shied away from strong statements.3 Because the Beijing Palace Museum did not explain formally the regulations about parking cars on the avenue outside the museum, it was criticized for “the privileged Benz” when it trended on social media. Although museums are regarded as highly trustworthy (American Alliance of Museums 2021), negative reports and unconvincing responses will decrease their credibility. Instead, driven by mission and ethics, museums should be more proactive, responding to and directing the media agenda so it can be discussed from a more rational and scientific perspective.
A good example was the dispute over the allocation of the stone rhinoceros in the Chengdu Museum. In 2018, when growing voices from the public advocated for moving the stone rhinoceros back to its original place to stop heavy rain, Chengdu Museum dispelled rumors by telling the history of the rhinoceros and popularized its archaeological excavation, restoration, and protection (Chengdu Museum 2018). As a result, they skillfully defused the public crisis and diverted the public attention to the agenda set by the museum. In practice, many museums are inevitably engaged in negative news or controversial topics, but avoidance is not the best solution. Only by grasping the right to speak in a timely and appropriate manner, and by drawing the attention of the media and the public to the more critical aspects behind the incident, can museums lead rational discussions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, museums are not absent from communication processes and can serve as gatekeepers when reporting on relevant content. The relationship between museums and mass media throughout the process of news production is more than just being reported on and reporting, sending messages and publishing news. Museums in the nineteenth century debated cultural issues intensely, and the media became a forum for debate, reflecting the preferences of editors and public opinion (Fahy 2013: 83). At present, mass media needs cultural information from museums, and museums also need mass media to promote their latest developments. They share missions and rely on each other to some extent. However, there are often differences in the understanding of information between museums and mass media. They have their own preferences and are subject to the requirements of their respective social systems (Huang 2005: 200–203).
But it cannot be denied that museums, as an important source and medium of information in the cultural field, have already participated in and become an important part of the news production system. Museums should appreciate the importance of agenda-setting theory in their communications, because agenda-setting functions could help museums to build their brands, expand their influence, and deal with public relation crises. On the other hand, the objective effect of setting agendas for the mass media is double-edged: it is a power that can amplify museum voices or magnify their mistakes. Therefore, while museums capitalize on their capacity to shape media narratives and amplify their reach, they should also shoulder the responsibility and accountability that comes with it.
Acknowledgments
We want to express our appreciation to Prof. Jun Wei and Dr. Ningning Dong who kindly provided advice on revisions.
Notes
Although thousands of reports can be searched on the CCTV News website with the keyword “Beijing Palace Museum,” the display is limited to 30 pages, making it impossible to obtain all the coverage. In order to cover the relevant information from 2017 to 2021, the data was sorted according to the order of relevance.
According to the provisions of the “Administration of Internet News and Information Services” enacted by Chinese Internet Information Office in 2017, a license to provide news and information services on the Internet is a must. Producing news without permission or beyond the scope of permission is prohibited.
A woman posted photos with a Mercedes-Benz in Taihemen Square on a closing day in January 2020, sparking outrage among the public. However, the Beijing Palace Museum implemented a ban on motorized vehicles in the open area in 2013, even for foreign presidents. The public did not accept the brief apology posted on social media by the Beijing Palace Museum and questioned why there are loopholes in the management of the space, arguing that it was a privilege to break rules.
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