Second-Level Agenda Setting Effects: The Internet Portal Sites’ Visual Framing of the 2012 Korean Presidential Candidates

This study explored the effects of second-level agenda setting through visual framing on portal sites during the 2012 Korean presidential campaign. To examine how the political bias of digital news affected visual images of candidates, two major portal sites, most online newspapers, and diverse visual attributes were adopted. The data sample (n = 625) focused on the photographs of Park Geun- Hye as a conservative candidate and Moon Jae-In as a progressive. The results demonstrated that Park’s photographs were most positively covered in conservative online newspapers in the conservative portal, while Moon’s photographs were most favorably covered in progressive online newspapers in the progressive portal. These results show that portal sites serve as not only news aggregators and providers, but also as online gatekeepers.