Glossary: in the Agility APIs and SDKs, a channel is a sitemap. The channelName parameter is the sitemap's reference name, in lowercase.
In the Agility APIs and SDKs, a channel is a sitemap. Calls that read a sitemap or its pages take a channelName: the reference name of the sitemap as defined in Settings > Sitemaps, in lowercase. Many sites have a single channel named website.
If an instance has several sitemaps, each one is a separate channel, and your code passes the channel it serves.