Dynamic Public Perceptions of and Media Influences on Military Threats to Taiwan: A Method Triangulation Approach

To understand dynamic public perceptions of the potential military threat posed by China among Taiwanese audiences, the current study considers daily military data, news coverage on major websites, and online forum discussions, along with public opinion surveys. Time-series data for 7 months, integrated into vector autoregression models, support tests of pathways involving (a) changes in factual data to salience in news coverage, (b) changes in news coverage to changes in public perception, (c) changes in public perception to salience in online forum discussions, and (d) reciprocal relationships between changes in news coverage and salience in online forum discussions. Further tests address how the patterns of influence might depend on Taiwan’s polarized political and media landscapes. The results support motivated agenda-setting effects (impact of news salience among willing believers) but reject selective (partisan media shape partisans’ war perceptions) and resonance (issues aligned with the media’s partisan slant shape war perceptions) explanations.