The Promotion Effect of Artificial Intelligence on News Agenda Setting in the Context of Digital Media

In today's digitally connected world, artificial intelligence (AI) has substantially changed news production and consumption: This paper examines how AI technologies improve the news agenda setting, which is a major mass communication concept put forward by McCombs and Shaw. Unlike the traditional editorial gatekeeping model, the digital era has introduced "algorithmic agenda setting," characterized by automated content curation and creation. Through a mixed-methods approach that integrates theoretical frameworks with quantitative simulation studies, this paper demonstrates that AI tools, especially recommendation systems and NLP, facilitate the diffusion of particular news topics. Findings indicate that AI not only extends the reach of agendas with personalized distribution, but also prolong the time for public to pay attention. However, such efficiency also raises concerns regarding algorithmic bias and echo chambers. Analysis of the correlation between AI deployment and user engagement metrics reveals that AI acts as a powerful catalyst, transforming passive audience to active participants in the process of salience transfer.