The place of social media messages of the Minister of Health and Scientific Board members in determining the media agenda during the COVID-19 process within the context of Agenda Setting Theory: Hürriyet, Sözcü, Yenişafak and Yeniçağ Newspapers

The Internet have brought many innovations into our lives. Nowadays, it can be said that one of the most important of these innovations is social media. Social media has played an active role in influencing events around the world by finding a common usage area all over the world. This study explores the impact of Twitter, one social media platforms, on the COVID-19 agenda in the newspapers within the framework of agenda setting theory. The rates of the messages published on the official Twitter accounts of the members of the Scientific Committee and the Minister of Health Fahrettin KOCA, who is also the chairman of the board, between 11 March and 1 September 2020 regarding the COVID-19 epidemic, appeared in the Hürriyet, Sözcü, Yeniçağ, and Yenişafak newspapers on the same dates, and the effect of social media on the agenda in these newspapers were investigated. A total of 2,484 Twitter messages were analyzed using the content analysis method, and 873 codes were obtained from the analyzed messages. From these codes, 14 categories were created. These categories are shopping, vaccination, education, disease, medicine, masks, healthcare workers, epidemic management, epidemic measures, social environment, social distancing, sports, cleaning, and country. It was observed that the categories with the greatest number of Twitter messages were epidemic management and epidemic measures. Among the Scientific Committee Members, Fahrettin KOCA shared the greatest number of Twitter messages followed by; Tevfik ÖZLÜ and Serap ŞİMŞEK YAVUZ. The categories obtained from the Twitter messages of the members of the Scientific Committee were taken as the basis for the analysis of the newspapers. Thus, by using a common category pool, it was determined to what extent the categories of the Twitter messages were reflected in the newspapers. For this purpose, a total of 1261 news articles on the websites of Hürriyet, Sözcü, Yeniçağ, and Yenişafak newspapers were searched and analyzed according to the Scientific Committee Members and categories. It was found that the categories that take place the most in the news in the newspapers are epidemic management and epidemic measures. In addition, the board member that was involved in the news most is Fahrettin KOCA, followed by Tevfik ÖZLÜ and Ateş KARA. Upon examination of the distribution of the categories in Twitter and newspapers, it is seen that the shopping and education categories have similar orientations while in the categories of medicine, mask, social environment, social distance, and sports, Twitter messages have no effect on the rate of publication of these categories in the newspapers. It has been observed that there are periodic similarities and differences in the categories of vaccines, diseases, drugs, healthcare workers, and cleaning. In the epidemic management category, while the increase and decrease rates of Twitter messages were fluctuating, it was observed that they followed a constant distribution in the newspapers, and in the epidemic measures category, there was an intersection in the ratios of the two parameters as a result of the decrease in Twitter messages, especially in May and June, and the increase in the newspapers. It has been observed that the reflection of the Twitter messages published on the social media in the newspapers are the same in some categories and different in some categories, but in most of them they align for some periods. As a result, it has been observed that social media has a periodical impact on the newspapers agendas.