Media and Politics Midterm
Telecommunications Act of 1996
- eased regulation rules by allowing ownership of multiple TV stations, as long as combined audience of stations amounted to less than 35% of the population - concentration of ownership = concern over diversity of perspectives, quality of content, watchdog perspective (journalists don't report on stories that disfavor their parent corps)
What influences news coverage?
Market Pressures, Journalistic Values, Organizational Processes, Personal Views
Chong and Druckman, "Identifying Frames in Political News": What did they learn about the general balance of frames?
- Balance is not the norm- on average negative frames exceeded positive frames by 44% - Dominance of liberal frames expressing opposition to issues?
Media Companies Response to Market Pressures
- Business minded journalists/reporters - Cut budgets - Close international offices (Cover less news, cover news more cheaply) - Increased cheap, local coverage (Cover what audience wants) - Cross-promote
Primary Elections
- Candidates must appeal directly to the public - rise of new technology (TV) allowed candidates to reach national audiences via the media - public embraces candidates who run strong media campaigns (less party centric, more individualized) - weakening political parties shifted from party-based campaigns to candidate-based campaigns
Wright, "The Media and Representation of Refugees and other forced Migrants": Citizen Journalists, Participatory Journalism
- Citizen journalist- one who is engaged in participatory journalism - Participatory journalism- the act of a citizen or group of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information - Freelancers fall between journalists and citizen journalists
Carlin and Winfrey, "Have you Come a Long Way Baby?": Mother
- Clinton: "Scolding mother, talking down to a child' (334), "Chelsea Clinton's presence was a last minute push to humanize her" (335) - Palin: Inability to balance, Bristol's pregnancy reflection of shortcoming (334), "How much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?" (333)
Carlin and Winfrey, "Have you Come a Long Way Baby?": Iron Maiden
- Clinton: "overly ambitious," "calculating", "cold", "scary", "intimidating (337) - Palin: "pit bull with lipstick" (338), "Not shrill... she's not going to remind anybody of their ex-wife" (338)
Carlin and Winfrey, "Have you Come a Long Way Baby?": Seductress/Sex Object
- Clinton: Non-sexual- pant suits over dresses (332), Blow up doll (330) - Palin: "Palin can seem like the young, trophy running mate"(331), "sexy appearance" (331)
Carlin and Winfrey, "Have you Come a Long Way Baby?": Pet Object
- Clinton: Role of Bill Clinton as advisor (336-37), "accused of having a 'meltdown'" (337) - Palin: McCain's protectiveness of Palin (336), "I'm proud of her" (336)
Challenges to Traditional Media: Increased Competition
- Local News - Entertainment (other stuff to watch besides news)
Lawrence, "Framing Obesity": Research Question
- Q: the degree to which public discourse has framed obesity in terms that are conducive to a concerted public policy response. Some see the issue as individually based (individualizing framing) or as the result of larger social forces (systemic.
Organizational Processes
- Routines and procedures affect coverage = Accessibility (stories where reporters live are more common than stories elsewhere, limit foreign news) - Beat system- a reporter covers a particular topic or area - Go where the news is predictable (police records, White House, governor's office) - Pack Journalism- notice what other outlets cover and cover the same story - Reliance on sources- sometimes anonymous (leaks, either to undermine a person/idea or as a "trial balloon")
Lazer, et al. "Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action": Context
- Shift of news consumption to online platforms disrupted established business models - News outlets have closed or shrunk - "Longstanding media institutions have been weakened" - "Meanwhile, new channels of distribution have been developing faster than our abilities to understand or stabilize them."
How does news coverage differ between large and small news organizations?
1. Large corporations (usually) private, tend to represent less diverse voices/opinions that challenge its backers 2. Smaller news organizations tend to be more locally based
Bennet: Authority-Disorder Frame
- Preoccupied with order and whether authorities are capable of establishing or restoring it - Within personalized, dramatized and fragmented news episodes - In the past, argued that authority-order balance favored authority, but growing trend toward portraying unsympathetic, scheming politicians who fail to solve problems - Increased levels of mayhem, greater volume of criticism of government, politicians and policies, higher journalistic tones of negativity and cynicism - confirms political biases, tends toward negative
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": What are false equivalences?
- Presenting two things as equivalent when they are not - i.e. reporting a lie and its rebuttal as being two reasonable alternatives
Patterson, "News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters"
- Q: Role of media coverage in 2016 election (Second week of August to the day before the November balloting) - Hyp: Negative media bias - Method: Election coverage in 5 daily papers (LA Times, NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, USA Today) and 5 main newscasts (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN Situation Room, Fox Special Report, NBC Nightly News)
Carlin and Winfrey, "Have you Come a Long Way Baby?": What are the four gender stereotypes Carlin and Winfrey discuss?
Seductress or sex object, mother, pet or iron maiden
Carlin and Winfrey, "Have you Come a Long Way Baby?": The authors report asking men to read a draft of the paper. How did the men react?
Some men questioned whether the examples used were actually real.
Wright, "The Media and Representation of Refugees and other forced Migrants": Coverage of 2004 Sumatra Tsunami
- 'Amateur' coverage of the disaster reached unprecedented levels, particularly in those areas populated by tourists, because of the recent and rapid proliferation of video recording capabilities of mobile phones - False impression that tourist areas were the worst hit areas, so news organizations first concentrated there, ignoring worse affected 'non-tourist' areas until weeks after the initial impact - Western news media focus on disasters that involve westerners
Chong and Druckman, "Identifying Frames in Political News": What did they learn about the number of frames?
- 1,153 articles were coded and 2,401 frames identified - Average article contained nearly two frames - Audiences are exposed to multiple frames per article and to an even greater number of distinct fames across a series of articles - Reflects each side of an issue putting forth various ways of defining an issue - Effecting number of frames based on number of unique frames appearing in news stories and the relative frequency with which each frame is used - Exceeded 1 or 2, in contrast to the controlled experimental environment in which there is a focus on just one or two frames
Patterson, "News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters.": Findings
- 17% of coverage on scandal (Trump's taxes, Clinton's emails)- newsworthy because they're a break in routine that could affect candidate's odds - 90% of controversy coverage was negative - Policy positions- 84% negative - Personal qualities- 80% negative - Leadership and experience- 73% negative - Trump: transition from positive to negative as he gained popularity, policy stands got more press attention than in usual case (12%) - Clinton: continuation of negative pattern, controversies got more attention than Trump's (19% v. 15%), scandals accounted for 16% of coverage
What are the regulatory forces affecting American print media?
- Always has been less (if any) of broadcast media, self-regulation - Risk of libel, but regulation of ownership - Developed more on the local level
How do current market forces shape news?
- Audience size dictates both content and scope of outreach. Advertisers pay to reach respective audiences, either locally or nationally. - The concept of rating points lends to a competitive consciousness of television networks and need for advertising to raise revenue. - National news, though in competition with commercial news, faces more competition from local news (but is still nothing compared to entertainment).
What are the two dominant values of modern political journalism?
- Autonomy- (Post 1988 campaign) restatement of candidate's words compromised journalistic autonomy because of its heightened rhetoric/made journalists servient to the campaign agenda - Objectivity- prior to hyper-media using campaigns, only meant equal exposure
Aalberg "Media Systems and the Political Information Environment: Why does it matter?
- Because of the important role of the media as informants of the voting population and as watchdogs, recent increases in commercialization in Western markets raise questions about the market change's impact on information flow. - Participatory and effective democracy requires an informed electorate.
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": Examples of Trump media outrage claims during the campaign
- Calling undocumented Mexican immigrants "rapists" and "criminals" - Marco Rubio: "Little Marco" - Ted Cruz: "Lyin' Ted" - Calling various candidates "stupids," "losers," "unstable," "basket case," "unhinged"
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": Hershey cites a few studies of news coverage of Clinton. What did the studies find?
- Clinton's online coverage was more negative than Trump's - 150,000 stories: Clinton was 41% negative, Trump was 36% - 2015 broadcast news and newspapers: 84% negative Clinton v. 42% negative Trump - Only became positive after first presidential debate
Aalberg "Media Systems and the Political Information Environment: Hypothesis
- Commercialized media have a structural bias disfavoring news and current affairs. - Media systems dominated by commercial television, low levels of media regulation, and a strong consumer orientation will tend not to supply significant quantities of news and current affairs in prime time when most people actually watch television. - Countries with more public television, higher levels of media regulation, and a stronger orientation toward serving democracy are expected to offer a substantial share of news and current affairs in prime time. - In the case of homogenization media systems toward a liberal commercial media model, prime time news and current affairs are declining and that the democratic corporatist televisions systems that dominate most of northwestern Europe are becoming more like their liberal commercial counterparts in the US.
Smith & Cramer, "The Unskewed Election.": What are the negative effects of this combination of 1) psychological process and 2) partisan, fractured media landscape for democracy?
- Conversation has grown difficult and politics harder to talk about - Poor grasp of facts
Wright, "The Media and Representation of Refugees and other forced Migrants": what is the typical difference between coverage of people "there" vs. people "here?"
- Coverage of far-off issues is sympathetic to war and disaster vs. unsympathetic view of immigrants close to home
Communications Act of 1934
- Created FCC to grant licenses - Public interest stipulation - Enacted in response to increasing congestion of radio airwaves
Aalberg "Media Systems and the Political Information Environment: Methods
- Dependent variable: degree of commercialization - Key independent variables: coverage of news/current events, viewership
Right of Reply Laws
- EU - require broadcasters to give people criticized in the media a right of access to answer the criticisms
In what ways does the America media system fulfill the three purposes of media in a democracy?
- Election coverage allows for candidate's message and the race status to be widely spread. - Technology lends itself to in-the-minute updates. Variety of outlets, media mediums. - Interpretive media systems serve more of a watchdog role than merely an observational one (ad checks, personal failings, inconsistencies)
Why is horserace coverage more prevalent than coverage of issues during campaigns?
- Elections frames as race between teams, not ideas - Coverage of points reporting, polls, competitive tactics/advantages (vs. policy) - Satisfies journalistic need for autonomy and objectivity, easy to report, sells - Use of polls to make election coverage exciting, interesting, close - Issue-centric election coverage is difficult to do objectively - Reduced role/presence of actual candidate
Episodic/Thematic Frames
- Episodic: crisis, singular incidents, human interest, people's fault - Thematic: bigger context, broad social forces, systematic/system's fault
What are the regulatory forces affecting American broadcast media?
- FCC regulations- weakened in recent years since 1984 deregulation - Regulation via competition - Relaxed regulation of ownership results in increased larges owners (volume and media type)- Robert Murdoch - laissez faire regulation
Smith & Cramer, "The Unskewed Election.": What do we typically do with information we do not like or agree with?
- Find ways to explain it away (re-arranging of Obama/Romney stats by Unskewedpolls.com)
Chong and Druckman, "Identifying Frames in Political News": What did they learn about the number of frames over time?
- General tendency over time toward reduction in the number of effective frames - Opposing sides on an issue, after learning which frames resonate best choose to promote those frames - General movement toward increasingly negative coverage
Smith & Cramer, "The Unskewed Election.": How does Google help us in this psychological process?
- Google and other platforms subtly tailor users' experiences to tell them what they want to hear (filter bubble)
Graber: "Foreign Affairs Coverage": CNN Effect
- Graphic media coverage of effects abroad forces the U.S. to engage in unplanned and undesired interventions - 1992 Somalia footage, U.S. intervention - Violent images arouse sympathies in U.S. public and officials - Non-intervention effects: shortening the time for choosing a policy, shrinking the pool of people regularly consulted prior to decisions, increase of change for ill-considered policy
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": How did journalists cover Clinton in ways that were presumably different than coverage of men in the race?
- Hard to tell if it's a result of history or gender bias - Dealing with role as "first woman:" leadership record (secretary of state) and "women's issues" (child rearing, glass issue) - Media rejected both and largely focused on scandals (emails, Benghazi)
Aalberg "Media Systems and the Political Information Environment: Research Question
- Has increased commercialization in the media market increased or decreased the flow of political information? - Does the flow of information vary according to media system? - Is there evidence of a convergence in the political information environment as more media systems become increasingly commercialized?
Lawrence, "Framing Obesity": Hypothesis
- Health advocates who want to bring about changes in the public policy to address America's obesity epidemic must successfully reframe obesity as a systemic problem; a risk that individuals do not full assume voluntarily, a risk arising from the environment itself and threatening to everyone, and, perhaps, a risk created by others.
What aspects of the American system impede its capacity to fulfill these purposes?
- Horse race coverage often focuses on the competitive aspect of the election, rather than acting as a platform for candidates to spread their message. Similarly, the lack of control by candidates as to the reporting of the message means it can be framed/biased in its presentation. - Hyper focus on crime/violent crimes means important public policy stories are ignored. Appropriateness (geography, medium, news organization) effects the scope of content. Presentation of entertainment, not information. - Condensed news timeline results in sloppier journalism
Hostile/Friendly Media Phenomenon
- Hostile: in a neutral piece liberals see conservative bias, conservatives see liberal bias - Friendly: in a neutral piece liberals see positive liberal bias, conservatives see positive conservative bias
Zaller, "Theory of Media Politics": If journalists pursue their goals, what will news coverage be like?
- If journalists pursue their interest, news will be high quality and sophisticated (complex, non-routine and dependent on the special skill of the provider). - News will be rich in journalistic interpretation and critical analysis.
Aalberg "Media Systems and the Political Information Environment: Findings
- In all countries except the US, leading TV channels have seen an increase in volume of news and current affairs between 1987-97, and dropped slightly in 4/6 between 1997-2007 - In the US, the total volume of news has decreased over time, yet is still higher than many European countries thanks to the large quantity of local news stations - The vast majority of increase in news program offerings happened outside of prime time. - The US offers the lowest amount of news programming during prime time
Why did the press bring down Nixon and Clinton, but give Bush a pass on Iraq?
- In matters of national security, the press has been stripped of the ability to act as an adversary of government - Where domestic political events are concerned, the presence of vocal and authoritative critics grants journalists the necessary leverage to question official accounts - On matters of foreign policy and national security, critics of government policy tend to be silent; the press is left with only official sources
Why does indexing happen?
- Indexing is the process of adjusting coverage of an issue according to the level of disagreement and debate about that issue among policy elites - Due to journalistic norms of using official sources/seeking objectivity by reporting different sides of a debate - Press can represent an adversarial posture only when opponents of government policy outnumber (or prove more vocal than) proponents - Elite consensus- one perspective
Wright, "The Media and Representation of Refugees and other forced Migrants": Refugees as Passive
- Institutional discourses- refugees spoken about by NGO reps, translators, reporters, anchorpersons and politicians (vs. speaking for themselves) - Bifurcation of "foreign news" and "home news" confounds the fact that the sympathetic war refugees and malaise asylum seekers are the same - Refugees don't always have the language skills or security to express themselves in media interviews or lobby the media to improve their situation
Taylor, "Why the Language We Use to Talk About Refugees Matters so Much"
- James Cameron: "French port of Calais was safe and secure, despite a 'swarm' of migrants trying to gain access to Britain." - "Swarm": dehumanizing, instill fear - Expats, immigrants, illegal migrants, illegal persons, boat people, asylum seekers - Labels have important implications- labels affect legal status, makes it "their fault, not ours" - Migrant as politicized- connotations as undesirable, security threats, criminals, resource drains
Zaller, "Theory of Media Politics": According to Zaller, what are journalists' goals?
- Journalists aspire, individually and collectively, to maximize their independent and distinctive "voice" in the news. - Journalists' goals are to produce sophisticated news products, control the content of the news to suit their occupational interest and to hold politicians accountable based on what the politicians have accomplished while in office or say they will accomplish if elected to office.
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": How did journalists respond to potential false equivalences?
- Journalists respond by putting Trump's quotes into context, even in non-news-analysis" stories - Fact checking (politifact)
Wright, "The Media and Representation of Refugees and other forced Migrants": Positive Refugee Coverage
- Karenni community in Houston - Houston Chronicle review of visual arts exhibition of textiles produced by Karenni immigrants - Included fair and factual report of the Burmese political situation that included interviews with Karenni speaking freely about the repression they escaped - Unique cultural characteristics of an immigrant group can be used to create a positive refugee story within the host community d. Karenni Connection BlogSpot and Shadow Journal- hardships, opportunities and daily lifestyles Karenni face in America and Karenni popular culture
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": How did media organizations react to Trump's strategy?
- Media organizations covered Trump because it served them - Trump provided content that attracted audiences, increased ratings and brought in ad money
What have been the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
- Media pools are entirely filtered through the government, so they completely control the narrative and impair objectivity/honesty/watchdog - Embedded journalism showed live progress but was still pro-administration and skewed in the direction of official policy
How does indexing effect foreign coverage?
- Near-total official control in foreign news - Doesn't excite partisan division - American officials are the main sources of information in the foreign policy/national security arena - Need to seek out foreign leaders to offset White House/Pentagon
Lawrence, "Framing Obesity": Methods
- News articles, scholarly articles, books and websites - Content analysis of the NYT page-one stories - Data gathered from prime-time news coverage - Key word searches of Nexis for 10 major newspapers across the country (competing frames) - Coded analysis (topical focus, specific casual claims/solutions for obesity, whether it included a recognizable biological, behavioral or environmental frame)
Mirror Image Definition of News
- News as a reflection of reality - close correspondence between state of the real world and the content of news coverage - asymmetry between newsworthiness and normal course of events (events are newsworthy when they deviate from the everyday) - negative events attract greater coverage because they deviate from the norm
Lawrence, "Framing Obesity": Findings
- Obesity sometimes framed as biological disorder that can be scientifically understood/cured- impersonal causes curable by science, depoliticized - Conventionally framed as a problem of individual behavior (individuals take responsibility for their own health- Bush's administration's fitness website, Individualized solutions rather than changes in health environment, limited political ramifications beyond information providing) - Environmental frame puts obesity responsibility more on corporate and public policy (Lack of community activity offerings, FAST FOOD and advertising) - Claims about obesity as environmental/behavioral have both increased since 1990s, but especially environmental - Increased coverage of environmental causes rather than just obesity itself - Shift of behavioral as default frame to defensive frame
Smith & Cramer, "The Unskewed Election.": How does a partisan media help us in this psychological process?
- Partisan media does the work of explaining away for you - Partisan media put us in "preferred-world state" then we watch only one source/perspective
Zhang & Hellmueller, "Visual Framing of the European Refugee Crisis in Der Spiegel and CNN International" :
- Q: how do different international media outlets, Der Spiegel in Germany and the US CNN International, uses news photographs of the European refugee crisis at stylistic and denotative levels? - Qualitative visual content analysis used to examine picture content and dominant frames in the visual news of CNN and Der Spiegel and coded for visual imagery - CNN: close-ups (humanizing, reader engagement), displaying of negative emotions - DS: broader shots (more context/actors), large crowds (less emotional) - human interest as dominant frame
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": If a candidate makes a factually incorrect statement, what are journalists' options in coverage?
- Report the lie - Find a source to refute the lie
How does pursuit of autonomy and objectivity shape news?
- Reporters began using more analytic/interpretive (Debunking of candidate's statements/ads, Less descriptive, more analytical of candidate's motives and tactics, use of experts) - Gave reporters a voice - Strategy form- analysis of rationale and strategy underlying the candidate's position and rhetoric
Wright, "The Media and Representation of Refugees and other forced Migrants": "TV Codes" of refugee coverage
- Stereotypes: women in colorful wraps, children in ragged t-shirts and shorts, walking barefoot out of Burundi - Repetitive visual conventions construct refugees as a bare humanity- even as a merely biological or demographic presence
Challenges to Traditional Media: Declining Audiences
- Technological disruption (Cable, craigslist) - Advertisers have found better places to advertise (TV, Internet, etc.) - Evening news lost over half its viewers between 1980-2012, now steady with average viewership of about 25 million - Changing Attitudes (drop in media trust, news audience is smaller and more skeptical) - 65% of Americans agree "there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media" - Watergate and Vietnam War initiates drop in general gov. trust, especially the media
Chong and Druckman, "Identifying Frames in Political News": What is the point of this essay?
- The essay analyzes the role and effect of framed arguments and information in media coverage of political news. It focuses on identifying and contextualizing media frames as well as predicting their overarching effect.
Bennet: Fragmentation Frame
- The isolation of stories from each other and from their larger contexts so that information in the news becomes fragmented and hard to assemble into a big picture - Heightened by use of dramatic formats that turn events into self-contained, isolated happenings - News delivered in sketchy, dramatic capsules that make it difficult to see problem causes, historical significance and issue connection - audience has trouble thinking in abstract, logically integrated ways about political issues (trouble stating clear positions on issues, little fact retention, few connections between issues and easily changed opinions)
Chong and Druckman, "Identifying Frames in Political News": What was the logic behind their selection of time periods?
- The researchers chose a time frame for each issue in which there was active debate or discussion of the issue in the news, usually stimulated be an event such as a policy proposal, election or change of policy - Middle phases of the issue-attention cycle between discovery, enthusiastic discussion and gradual subsiding of public interest - Period when public opinion is most likely to be affected by media framing
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": According to Hershey, Trump used a false equivalence to shape media coverage of the Access Hollywood video. How so?
- Trump created a media event by bringing four of Bill Clinton's accusers into the second presidential debate as his guests - Equated the behavior of one candidate (Trump's comments about women) with the behavior of the other candidate's spouse (Bill Clinton's attack no accusers)
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": What were Trump's basic media strategies?
- Trump focused on generating drama and conflict to capture media attention - Unscheduled call-ins to cable talk shows and Sunday morning news programs - Social media- Twitter
Graber: "Foreign Affairs Coverage": Foreign Newsworthiness
- U.S. activities in foreign countries (war or visits) - Events that affect Americans directly in a major way (oil embargoes, international economic problems) - U.S. relations with potentially hostile states - Government upheavals and leadership changes in friendly states, European royalty - Dramatic, political conflicts (wars, revolutions, violent protests) - Disasters (loss of life, destruction of property) - Excesses of foreign dictators (brutality against political dissenters)
Laissez Faire Regulation
- US - relaxed government involvement by the FCC - self-regulated by competition, public interest
What are the regulatory forces affecting American campaign communications?
- US has weaker regulations regarding elections coverage. Candidates must purchase air time (30 second ads). - Other systems give free airtime and require a variety in coverage of different viewpoints- equal time and equal access - European systems- focused more on grassroots campaigning
Is media more or less important in US politics than in European politics? Why?
- US less regulated by FCC (violation of First Amendment) with competition seen as the more - More important because partisan nature of US politics/popular elections mean that media plays an important part in choosing/publicly showcasing candidates (vs. European systems where parties dictate candidate choices.)
Candidate Access to Media
- US- time must be available to candidate on equal terms (contingent on ability to pay) - UK requirement of time proportional to candidates, party broadcasts required to be aired on public and commercial - OECD: political parties granted blocks of free airtime
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": Ultimately, according to Hershey, how did "media's institutional needs" shape coverage of the Trump campaign?
- Worked to attract as many viewers and readers as possible, leading to increased attention on Trump - Led journalists to frame Trump's often-dangerous and demeaning campaign rhetoric as wacky or startling rather than as threats to democracy
How does indexing effect domestic coverage?
- Works well for domestic issues - Allows reporters to maintain their autonomy from any source - Variety of politically viable policy alternatives and a corresponding network of competing additional sources - Always a republic v. democrat conflict - Second team of sources- think tanks, former officials, policy entrepreneurs, academic researchers
Graber: "Foreign Affairs Coverage": Al Jazeera Effect
- demise of Western media's monopoly on creating political images that shape world affairs - Al Jazeera as trans-national orgnaization
Graber: "Foreign Affairs Coverage": Who reports on foreign affairs?
- foreign reporters now supply American media with news about their countries and regions (less expensive) - Parachute journalists: US journalists sent abroad for short trips to report on specific events - GlobalPost- member fees, individual stories and syndication/advertising fees to meet the needs of media companies, businesses, NGOs and nonprofits - Public relations campaigns/image management - Nonprofessionals who use websites and social media to report their observations from abroad and U.S. locations (role of tech, bloggers, live feeds and crowdsourcing, internet visit to foreign newspapers)
Gatekeepers
- media sets agenda, decides what gets covered
Graber: "Foreign Affairs Coverage": Bias by American Correspondents
- operate within the context of U.S. politics and political culture - Political Pressures (pressure to publish, host country censorship) - Media Diplomacy (journalists send messages to other countries, create image of gov.) - Economic Pressures (audience appeal at minimum cost) - Beat system (foreign affair news from D.C, official sources, biased coverage toward US friendly countries)
Party Strength in the US
- relatively weak political parties - parties have little say over selection of candidates - strong political parties don't rely on media as heavily - electoral outcomes depend on what media offers as news programing t inform decisions
Bennet: Dramatization Bias
- reporting form of stories or narratives (vs. analytical essays, political polemics or scientific-style reports) - Downplay complex information/government workings/power bases - lose sustained analyses of persistent problems (inequality, hunger, resource depletion, population pressures, environmental collapse, toxic waste, political oppression) - don't report on serious issues until they produce crises (crisis cycle) - Use of visuals - pushes news towards most outrageous, not most representative examples
Bennett: Personalization Frame
- tendency to downplay the big social, economic or political picture in favor of the human trials, tragedies and triumphs - instead of focusing on power and process, the media concentrate on the people engaged in political combat over the issues - Journalist fear that probing analysis will turn off audience members (vs. human interest) - Gives the news audience a distorted view of power and its political consequences, underlying causes and actual impacts ignored/not remembered - EX. Welfare reform, presidency
Journalistic Values
-Autonomy, objectivity and voice leads to Interpretive Journalism (Strategy frame, presence/voice of journalist, analysis) - horserace coverage (coverage of campaigns from the who's winning? perspective, entertaining, competitive, ability to remain objective) - Ad watches and fact-checking - Critical coverage, including feeding frenzy, when a political actor loses all control of media narrative
Why does the US system make it harder on challengers (rather than incumbents) and minor parties than European systems?
-Unlike the European system, the US is not required to give any party/candidate (majority or minority) air times. -Subsequently, US election coverage becomes pay-to-play in the format of 30 second ads. - Incumbents, generally the richer and party-associated, have an advantage of a higher budget and the ability to use the party-friendly US media system to their advantage.
Chong and Druckman, "Identifying Frames in Political News": What are the steps in identifying frames in communication?
1. An issue, person or event is selected 2. Researchers isolate a specific attitude toward the issue, person or event 3. An initial set of frames for an issue is identified inductively to create a coding scheme (specify how frame can be identified prior to coding) 4. Once an initial set of frames is identified, select sources for content analysis (mass media sources)
How does news coverage differ between commercial and public media systems in terms of quantity of serious political content?
1. Private- because of business aspect, focus on entertainment, stories that sell 2. Public- seen as state responsibility, more substantial content, required to report on public affairs
How does news coverage differ between commercial and public media systems in terms of freedom of press?
1. Private- journalists may not pursue stories that jeopardize their parent corporation. 2. Public- right of reply, required to report on public issues, questions about role of state as backer?
a. How does news coverage differ between commercial and public media systems in terms of quality of content?
1. Public- issue centric, longer and more substantive 2. Corporate interests encourage journalists to pursue entertaining stories.
What are the three main (pure) types of media systems?
1. Public- publically funded, sometimes state-owned (BBC), higher quantities of public affairs program, more substantive 2. Commercial- private, trustee ownership, low regulation (FFC), emphasis on entertainment/business 3. Mixed- combo of two (U.S.: PBS)
What are the three purposes of media in a democracy?
1. To provide a forum for candidates and political parties to debate their qualifications for office before a national office 2. To contribute to informed citizenship by providing a variety of perspectives on the important issues of the day 3. To serve as a watchdog, scrutinizing the actions of government officials on behalf of citizens- most of whom do not have the opportunity to closely follow the actions of politicians and the government
How does news coverage differ between commercial and public media systems in terms of breadth of content?
1. US/Private- decreased regulation of ownership results in large multinational corporations, meaning the diversity of voices represented and a more narrow, fixed set of views. 2. European- increased focus on international community
Hershey, "The Media: Covering Donald Trump.": How much more "free" coverage did Trump get than his opponents?
MediaQuant- In January/February of 2016 primary season Trump received approximately $1.9 billion in free media coverage
How has coverage of war evolved over time?
Shift from media pools (Operation Desert Storm) to embedded journalism
Aalberg "Media Systems and the Political Information Environment: Summary
The differences in structure and regulation, and ultimately the institutional goal of US media versus its European counterparts, effect the availability of news and current events programming offered during prime time. European countries air news programs in the heart of prime time, resulting in substantially increased viewership
