Role of Mainstream Media as Aligning Cultural Identity by Public Opinion: A Case Study of the Recent Theft at Louvre Museum in France
Abstract
On October 19, 2025 there was a shocking robbery at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Four thieves used a freight lift platform to steal eight pieces of French royal jewelry with specific immeasurable historical values from the Gallery d'Apollon within seven minutes. Notably, after the incident, different media platforms have presented quite different narrative frameworks and public opinion, which has exerted a diversified influence on public cultural identity. This phenomenon presents a valuable case for the role of mainstream media in the quest of the role of cultural identity via the mechanism of public opinion. Mainstream media transcended an isolated incident into a public issue about the value of cultural heritage and succeeded in directing the public from the performance to build a value consensus about cultural protection.Through the media coverage of the Louvre theft incident and their impact, this study reveals that the mainstream media play an irreplaceable core role to the guide of cultural identity. The results show that the mainstream media take "cultural security reflection" as the core narrative framework, with negative and neutral emotional tones as the mainstay, focusing on key issues such as museum security and artifact recovery. The study finds that mainstream media play a core role in guiding public cultural identity through agenda-setting, frame construction and authoritative interpretation. This paper reveals the media's public opinion guidance mechanism in cultural heritage events, points out research limitations such as sample coverage and time dimension, and puts forward future research directions.
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