literature review of media coverage

Content Analysis in the Research Field of Political Coverage

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• First Online: 25 September 2022

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• Mariken A. C. G. van der Velden 6 &
• Felicia Loecherbach 6  

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Political knowledge is widely viewed as a foundation for democracy. Scholars of political communication have long argued that how citizens gain political information can only be understood by studying the media. After all, most countries have a representational form of democracy, meaning that citizens hardly interact with politics and politicians themselves, but learn about politics and its politicians through the media. The coverage of politics, and more specifically policies or political issues, in news media has been particularly and abundantly studied by scholars of agenda setting, an approach which will be the focus of this chapter.

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• Agenda Setting

1 Introduction

Political knowledge is widely viewed as a foundation for democracy (DelliCarpini and Keeter 1996 ). Scholars of political communication have long argued that how citizens gain political information can only be understood by studying the media. After all, most countries have a representational form of democracy, meaning that citizens hardly interact with politics and politicians themselves, but learn about politics and its politicians through the media. This phenomenon is also known as the mediatization of politics (for excellent overviews, see Stromback 2010; Esser and Stromback 2014 ). Thus, scholars of political communication have developed theories and empirical strategies to demonstrate how media coverage on politics affects political attitudes and behaviour.

The coverage of politics, and more specifically policies or political issues, in news media has been particularly and abundantly studied by scholars of agenda setting , an approach which will be the focus of this chapter (see for example, McCombs and Shaw 1972 , 1993 ; Baumgartner and Jones 2009 , 1991 ; Soroka 1999 ; Walgrave and Van Aelst 2016 ; Vliegenthart and Walgrave 2010 ; Walgrave and Van Aelst 2016 ; Baumgartner et al. 2006 ). Building on Walter Lippmann’s ( 1922 ) argument of the media’s ability to construct social realities in the public mind, agenda setting refers to the transfer of often covered topics in news media to its salience in the public agenda. McCombs and Shaw ( 1972 ) pioneered this field by surveying voters in North Carolina (USA) on the most important political issues and comparing these results to a manual media content analysis of nine local news media outlets. This has been coined the first-level agenda setting theory. Ever since the seminal study of McCombs and Shaw ( 1972 ), this finding has been replicated hundreds of times all across the world—ranging from other locations in the USA, to Europe, Asia, Latin America and Australia—for both election and non-election settings over a broad range of public issues and other aspects of political communication. Moreover, the agenda-setting theory has been extended from objects of attention to attributes, known as the second-level (McCombs 1992 ; McCombs and Shaw 1993 ; McCombs et al. 2014 ). From the second-level, it became apparent that “the media not only can be successful in telling us what to think about, they also can be successful in telling us how to think about it” (McCombs 2005 , p. 546, emphasis in original). To find evidence for the second level of agenda setting, scholars of communication science used various forms of manual and automated forms of content analysis to uncover frames in media coverage (for an overview, see e.g. McCombs et al. 2014 ). In the early 2010’s, the theory was extended with a third-level (Guo et al. 2012 ; Guo and McCombs 2011 ). This third level of the theory poses that news media bundle political issues and/or their attributes, and subsequently make the entire bundle of elements salient in the public’s mind. This implies a network-like structure: When news media mention e.g. a political issue and a positive attribute thereof together, the audience will perceive these two elements as interconnected. The emergence of the third level went hand in hand with the upsurge in computer-assisted content analysis. In this section, we will describe the state-of-the-art of agenda-setting theory for the coverage of politics, and especially policies and political issues in media in three trends. Thereafter, we discuss the most common used research designs (pp. 5–8), and we conclude with the limitations and possible future directions of the field (pp. 8–10).

2 Trends in the Field

As briefly mentioned above, over the 50 years of the existence of agenda setting theory, the original study of McCombs and Shaw ( 1972 ) has been replicated and extended many times. The extensions and replications of the original Chapel Hill study have been mainly performed using manual content analysis. In this paragraph, the newest trends of these extensions are discussed. Nownes ( 2019 ) demonstrated that political issues are even more salient in the public minds when celebrities ‘spotlight’ the political issues. Additionally, following the discussion on whether there is ‘news in soft news’ (Prior 2003 ; Baum 2003 ; Reinemann et al. 2011 ), Boukes ( 2018 ) demonstrates that satire—a form of soft news—also carry out an agenda setting function. Agenda setting has also shown to impact the public’s emotional state. Reporting crime news fuels fear among the public (Graziano and Percoco 2016 ; Burscher et al. 2015 ), whereas partisan reports on economic news drives polarization (Anson 2016 ), and reporting on violations of the campaign finance laws, as well as other political scandals drives anger (Gaskins et al. 2018 ). Besides, Liu et al. ( 2016 ) demonstrate for the environmental issue, that the media’s reporting on issues influences the policy solutions that are brought up. Another ‘new’ issue that extends the coverage of politics using agenda setting theory is looking at news coverage of demonstrations (for example, see Hutter and Vliegenthart 2016 ). The dynamic nature of agenda setting power not only holds for demonstrations, but also for post-referendum Brexit news coverage (Morrison 2019 ; McLaren et al. 2017 ), for political parties (Maier et al. 2017 ), and for consumer confidence (Vliegenthart and Damstra 2018 ). Next to these extensions, the theory has recently been replicated in third-wave and developing democracies. For example, Hughes and Mellado ( 2015 ) show that after the reintroduction of elections in Chile, the media performs as agenda setters. In addition, the theory has been shown to hold at local levels of politics too, such as the level of the German Federal elections (Bevan and Krewel 2015 ).

Another trend in this field is to extend the type of media data from traditional print media to the online environment. The rise of computational tools has allowed this type of research to blossom in the recent years. The studies discussed here rely upon both automatic and manual textual analyses. The findings of the agenda setting theory have been replicated for Google Trends data (Kalmoe 2017 ; Lee et al. 2015 ). Likewise, social media platforms have been studied. Combining Facebook data with web-tracking data (for an explanation of this design, see Common Research Designs and Results, pp. 5–8) in Spain, Cardenal et al. ( 2018 ) demonstrate that the use of Facebook as a news referral erodes the common public agenda, because it alters citizens’ perceptions of the most important problems in the country. This study thereby implies that the traditional (print) media’s agenda setting power has been limited by social media platfora, such as Facebook. Cardenal et al. ( 2018 ) alludes to the presence of populist leaders and populist messages being omnipresent at social media. The findings of Alonso-Muñoz and Casero-Ripollés ( 2018 ) underline this idea. The authors describe that European populist leaders use social media (i.e. Twitter) to increase or decrease saliency of political issues amongst their (potential) electorate. In contrast to Cardenal et al. ( 2018 ) and Alonso-Muñoz and Casero-Ripollés ( 2018 ), Feezell ( 2017 ) demonstrates experimental evidence that social media platforms as Facebook do have an agenda setting function, when participants are exposed to political information on Facebook. Moreover, the work by Kruikemeier et al. ( 2018 ) lays out that the traditional media and social media, looking at Twitter data, mutually influence each other when looking at political candidates. In a similar vein, the work by Banducci et al. ( 2018 ) also find considerable evidence of reciprocal media influence between television, newspapers and radio. A couple of years earlier, Conway et al. ( 2015 ) pioneered intra-media agenda setting using Twitter and traditional media, showing a symbiotic relationship between agendas in Twitter posts and traditional news. While traditional media follow candidates on certain topics, on other topics traditional political media coverage predicts the political agenda on Twitter. The study of Su and Borah ( 2019 ), however, brings in a new perspective on the traditional and online media relationship by illustrating that Twitter’s agenda is similar to the public opinion: Both follow the (print) media agenda. Banducci et al. ( 2018 ) results, nonetheless, indicate that inter-media agenda setting on leaders is complex and contingent, and seems to turn in part on the familiarity of the party leaders and the extent to which media coverage of them has established tropes prior to the campaign.

A third trend that can be observed in this field is to investigate how to get on the media agenda, given their immense agenda setting power. In this trend too, computational methods have found their way into the studies and allowed for both older questions to be tested using new methods as well as new questions to be answered. Carrying out an automatic content analysis of political parties’ press releases and media reports in Austria using plagiarism software, Meyer et al. ( 2017 ) demonstrate that systemic media and party system agendas affect which issues make the news, while individual parties’ issue strategies have limited autonomous impact. For the agenda setting theory, their finding implies that addressing issues that are important to the media and other parties help rank-and-file politicians and opposition parties, which lack the newsworthiness of their competitors in government. While Meyer et al. ( 2017 ) did not find any evidence that the media’s selection of messages is driven by a party’s issue profile or voters’ issue concerns, Zoizner et al. ( 2017 ) found that the portrayal of the politicians does matter: Those who view themselves as a conduit of the public (delegates) are more responsive to the media than those acting on their own judgment (trustees). Also, in contrast to Meyer et al. ( 2017 ), Maier et al. ( 2017 )—using a different analysis technique—show that Austrian parties were able to steer the media agenda on EU related issues. The same dynamic has been unfold by Jansen et al. ( 2018 ) and van der Pas et al. ( 2017 ). Looking at other organizations than political parties, Grömping ( 2019 ) demonstrates that first of all, the media institutions determine the room to manoeuvre, which is similar to the findings of Meyer et al. ( 2017 ), and second, Grömping ( 2019 ) shows that for human rights organizations individual strategies matter for their media attention, and thereby agenda setting power—i.e. in contrast to Meyer et al. ( 2017 ). This mixed bag of findings could be explained by the findings of Walgrave et al. ( 2017 ). The authors find evidence that the influence of media attention on political attention is non-linear: Agenda-setting operates differently when the media are in storm mode. That is, an explosive increase of media attention reinforces the effects of media coverage on the political agenda: When the news suddenly devotes a lot of attention to a topic, political actors go into overdrive too (e.g. increasing the number of hearings in the U.S. Congress about the topic at a much higher rate (Walgrave et al. 2017 , p. 550)).

Another way to get on the media agenda has been extensively studied by scholars looking into news values (for a recent overview, see Harcup and O’neill 2017 ). This concept aims to capture the features of stories that are considered news, which is also called the attribute agenda in the agenda setting literature (for an overview, see e.g. McCombs et al. 2014 ). The seminal work on news values was written by Galtung and Ruge ( 1965 ). They pioneered the question how do events become news. To answer this question, they first embarked on a thought experiment where they imagined the world to be an enormous set of broadcasting stations. If the emission of signals is continuous, there is a cacophony of sounds. To create a meaningful message out of this cacophony, “we have to select, and the question is what will strike our attention” (Galtung and Ruge 1965 , p. 65). This metaphor of the world as a radio, where events are likened to sounds, elicited eight logical implications that are answers to the question of how events are turned into news stories. Additionally, the authors conducted a content analysis on the presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. This resulted in four additional news values. Hence, Galtung & Ruge defined twelve characteristics that are important to categorize stories into news or not. Over the last give and take 50 years, many more scholars have developed news value criteria. The other seminal list of criteria on news values was developed by Harcup and O’Neill ( 2001 ), investigating whether or not Galtung and Ruge’s criteria are still up to date in 2001. Based on a scholarly literature review and a content analysis of three UK national daily newspapers, Harcup and O’Neill concluded that some of the 12 original news values where not exclusive, overlapping or shining light on an event solely from one angle. The vast majority of the studies, investigating which (combination of) news values are present in news on politics and specific policies, apply manual content analysis in which a list of news values is defined. Later work (e.g. Trilling et al. 2017 ; Al-Rawi 2019 ) however uses a range of computational methods—such as machine learning and topic modelling, elaborated on in the next section—to automatically, sometimes even without human input, derive these news values from the news coverage.

3 Common Research Designs and Results

There has been a wide variety of research designs when it comes to analyzing political content and policies. Most studies first start with the important task of identifying content as political: This either implies taking content that is inherently political due to the sources producing it or identifying part of content as political and other as non-political. The first approach resorts to documents drawn up by parties and politicians such as party manifestos and other policy documents (as discussed in Chapter by Castro, Gessler & Majo-Vazquez). Because these documents are considered political because of the actors that created the document, scholars typically use these documents to investigate how the content is conveyed. Questions such as which topics receive more attention and how are these topics framed are key to studying news coverage of policies and politics. The second approach is mostly related to news and social media content which is not inherently political but can exert an important influence on variables such as political knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour. Determining whether the content in this approach is political can be challenging (see next section). To establish media effects, the field increasingly moves to innovative ways of content analysis.

4 Political News Content

Apart from analyzing content directly produced by political actors, another challenge lies in identifying political content in other domains, such as news. Here, the first question is to (1) identify political content in news as opposed to other content and (2) how to do this in a (semi-)automated way.

The first point is related to mostly theoretical considerations about what constitutes political and can be part of creating manual codebooks as well as computer assisted forms of content analysis, such as key word searches, dictionaries, coding scripts and writing classifiers. One discussion that has been going on since Tuchman ( 1972 ) is a distinction between so-called “soft news” and “hard news” to distinguish politically relevant from less relevant content. In their literature review on the soft/hard news distinction (Reinemann et al. 2011 ) propose that for identifying “harder news” (which is usually associated with political information) three dimensions are needed: topic, focus, and style dimension (p. 232). This stresses that identifying political news content might not only be about the topic (is it political or entertainment content) but also a matter of framing and reporting style (similar to the idea of displayed in the second level of agenda setting). Hence, Heinemann et al. (2012) argue to incorporate both the first and second level of agenda setting when analyzing news content.

The second question regarding (semi-)automation especially becomes more of an issue in a time where content is constantly produced at scale. One example of using a mix of manual and automated content analysis in a supervised machine learning approach to identify different policy issues as well as frames in news content is Burscher et al. ( 2015 ), who annotated a large dataset manually to train a classifier on it that can be applied to other datasets and time contexts. Wiedemann ( 2018 ) proposed to use active learning for those approaches to reduce the amount of manual coding needed while not compromising the quality of results.

When having identified political content, the focus of research is often to identify parties and their positions in the news (e.g. Helbling and Tresch 2011 ). This strand of research is mostly aiming at questions related to visibility of actors and topics and is related to agenda setting research. Another focus is also put on identifying different perspectives or frames on issues (Borah 2011 ). Within this complex of questions, often normative considerations play a role, evaluating whether the news media are “balanced” or “biased” regarding certain actors, topics, or perspectives. This ties in with different understandings of diversity in news media (McQuail 1992 ; Bozdag and van den Hoven 2015 ; Möller et al. 2018 ).

5 Effects of Political (News) Content

One core question when studying political content in news media is to not only examine what is in the media (focus of content analytical methods) but also what influence it has on people. In order to do this, one very important question is finding out what content people were exposed to since only that can have a possible influence on variables such as attitudes, knowledge, or behavior.

The standard approach for judging the effect of (political, news) media content on political variables has been survey research—using self-reported media usage or media exposure as independent variable. The amount and type (newspaper, television, online) of media usage/exposure are crucial factors for studying media effects. This approach has been questioned early on as being only a mere proxy for the influence of the content and failing to account for individual-level differences (Price and Zaller 1993 ). Additionally, while being a feasible approach in a media environment with limited choices, the diversifying supply of content over the last decades decreased the usability of this methodological approach according to some scholars (for an overview, see Scharkow ( 2019 ).

From the 1990’s onwards, survey data was complemented by so-called linkage analyses (see e.g. Kleinnijenhuis 1991 ; Roessler 1999 and chapter by Castro, Gessler & Majo-Vazquez in this volume for an overview). While the issue of over-reporting of news use/exposure is not solved by the linkage analysis approach, scholars have argued that over-reports are of a systematic nature, and therefore can be dealt with statistically (see de Vreese et al. 2017 for an overview). Nevertheless, in a recent meta-analysis, Scharkow ( 2019 ) stresses that the reliability of self-reports is rather problematic and Scharkow and Bachl ( 2019 ) provide a very fine-grained description of errors in linkage analyses. Especially in a fast-paced, ever-changing (online) media environment, getting reliable and valid media exposure data remains a challenge. An important methodological development, therefore, is the usage of online trace data (e.g. browsing histories, donated data take-outs from social media accounts) with a subsequent content analysis of the collected content (Dvir-Gvirsman et al. 2014 ) or the usage of ad-hoc mobile surveys (Ohme et al. 2016 ).

6 Limitations of the Method & Future Direction of the Field

The core concepts of agenda-setting theory are an object agenda, attribute agenda—or in other theoretical traditions called news values and frames—and the transfer of salience between pairs of agendas. Especially the latter core—the transfer of salience between the pairs of agenda—has received attention recently, when the focus on causality in, especially, the field of politics, gained momentum. Sevenans ( 2017b ) notes that there is no consensus on the exact role these media play in the agenda-setting process. This in turn leads to diverse causal interpretations of the media’s role in the central theory of agenda setting. Sevenans ( 2017b ) identifies three controversies that hamper the causal claim that media attention leads to the importance of political issues on the public agenda. She fleshes out the potential risk of spurious relationships, possible endogeinity problems, and the lack of an integrated theory explaining why the media influence agendas.

For the latter issue, Sevenans ( 2017a ) takes stock and shows that a piece of information gets more attention from politicians when is conveyed via the media rather than an identical piece of information coming via a personal e-mail. This effect occurs largely across the board: it is not dependent on individual politician characteristics. Alluding to the same problem of lack of understanding of the media’s role, Shpaizman ( 2018 ) notices that non-decisions are excluded in each study. Non-decisions refer to the pre-decisional process whereby some issues are systematically blocked by powerful actors from being placed on the formal agenda. Without looking at these, Shpaizman ( 2018 ) argues that scholars have been looking at a biased sample to test their theory.

The first two limitations hampering causal interpretation in the agenda setting theory—i.e. spurious relationships and/or possible endogeneity—as identified by Sevenans ( 2017b ), could be the reason why some scholars have reported the media influences on mass opinion and behavior to be much weaker than commonly assumed (Greer 2019 ; Newton 2019 ). More specifically, Sciarini and Tresch ( 2018 ) show that the media’s influence on the issue salience among the public mainly holds for domestic issues, not so much for Europeanised issues. This might be because people could either respond to the real-world events, about which the media also provides coverage, or entering the ‘post-truth society’, the (mainstream) media, might have lost (parts of) its legitimacy (Guess et al. 2020 ; Lischka 2017 ).

Issue salience, the central focus in the accumulated research on agenda setting to date, has been operationally defined in a variety of ways on both the media agenda and the public agenda (McCombs 2005 ). The development of new methods, as well as the availability of new types of data, have created an opportunity for scholars interested in the interaction between the media, politics, and the public. Techniques like digital-tracking data (Dvir-Gvirsman et al. 2014 ; Cardenal et al. 2018 ) or the usage of ad-hoc mobile surveys (Ohme et al. 2016 ) allow researchers to rely on other measures than self-reports. This is an important development, as Scharkow ( 2019 ) show that the reliability of self-reports is rather problematic in terms of reliability and accuracy of the measure. Such new insight that these new data could bring, could also lead to further develop a theory on the exact role these media play in the agenda-setting process, for which Sevenans ( 2017b ) has made a start.

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van der Velden, M.A.C.G., Loecherbach, F. (2023). Content Analysis in the Research Field of Political Coverage. In: Oehmer-Pedrazzi, F., Kessler, S.H., Humprecht, E., Sommer, K., Castro, L. (eds) Standardisierte Inhaltsanalyse in der Kommunikationswissenschaft – Standardized Content Analysis in Communication Research. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-36179-2_8

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Media coverage of cancer therapeutics: A review of literature

Affiliations.

• 1 Division of Cancer Care and Epidemiology, Queen's University Cancer Research Institute, Kingston, Canada; School of Medicine and Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda; Department of Oncology, Rwanda Military Hospital, Kigali, Rwanda; Rwanda Cancer Relief, Kigali, Rwanda; Departments of Oncology, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada; Public Health Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
• 2 Division of Cancer Care and Epidemiology, Queen's University Cancer Research Institute, Kingston, Canada; School of Nursing, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
• 3 Rwanda Cancer Relief, Kigali, Rwanda.
• 4 Institute of Cancer Policy, King's College London, London, United Kingdom; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
• 5 Institute of Cancer Policy, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
• 6 Division of Cancer Care and Epidemiology, Queen's University Cancer Research Institute, Kingston, Canada; Departments of Oncology, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada; Public Health Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Electronic address: [email protected].
• PMID: 36871667
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jcpo.2023.100418

Background: Information and stories about cancer treatment are increasingly available to patients and the general public through lay media, websites, blogs and social media. While these resources may be helpful to supplement information provided during physician-patient discussions, there is growing concern about the extent to which media reports accurately reflect advances in cancer care. This review aimed to understand the landscape of published research which has described media coverage of cancer treatments.

Methods: This literature review included peer-reviewed primary research articles that reported how cancer treatments are portrayed in the lay media. A structured literature search of Medline, EMBASE and Google Scholar was performed. Potentially eligible articles were reviewed by three authors for inclusion. Three reviewers, each independently reviewed eligible studies; discrepancies were resolved by consensus.

Results: Fourteen studies were included. The content of the eligible studies reflected two thematic categories: articles that reviewed specific drugs/cancer treatment (n = 7) and articles that described media coverage of cancer treatment in general terms (n = 7). Key findings include the media's frequent and unfounded use of superlatives and hype for new cancer treatments. Parallel to this, media reports over-emphasize potential treatment benefits and do not present a balanced view of risks of side effects, cost, and death. At a broad level, there is emerging evidence that media reporting of cancer treatments may directly impact patient care and policy-making.

Conclusions: This review identifies problems in current media reports of new cancer advances - especially with undue use of superlatives and hype. Given the frequency with which patients access this information and the potential for it to influence policy, there is a need for additional research in this space in addition to educational interventions with health journalists. The oncology community - scientists and clinicians - must ensure that we are not contributing to these problems.

Keywords: Cancer; Cancer drugs; Hype; Media; Press.

Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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• Neoplasms* / therapy
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Visual Framing in the Media Coverage of the Hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh vs. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford

By kit hipple, literature review.

Framing as a Theory

Framing can be traced back to having its roots in psychology and sociology (Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007). These sociological foundations for framing were laid in previous research on the subject. Researchers argued that individuals lack the skills necessary to properly classify information and interpret the world around them in a meaningful way (Goffman, 1974). That is why framing supposedly provides individuals with a primary set of frameworks to aid them in achieving these things. Scheufele and Tewksbury state that framing “is based on the assumption that how an issue is characterized in news reports can have an influence on how it is understood by audiences” (Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007: 11).

Framing has rapidly developed since the 1960-s, which has allowed for further study into the effects of different types of media on a wide variety of audiences. When it comes to sharing information and conveying ideas, whether visually or through text, communications professionals, and specifically journalists, have to tell a story within certain constraints such as time, while also making it interesting and accessible to a wide audience. They do this by structuring the information and creating a framework that allows the audience to comprehend and digest the message (Ardèvol-Abreu, 2015).

The intention of framing is to set up information to be interpreted in a certain way, but individual interpretation is also affected by certain cultural and societal norms. While framing can be used with a desired outcome for the interpretation of the content to which it’s applied, these interpretations will still vary between individuals who consume the media.

Visual Framing

While the theory of overall framing and the framing of the text in media, has been widely studied, research into visual framing and its specific effect on viewer comprehension and interpretation has not been as common, and there is still a need to integrate both textual and visual aspects into research overall (Brantner, Lobinger and Wetzstein, 2011).

Readers consume visual media differently than print media and other aspects of journalism. Visuals are being used in news stories with increasing frequency, often accompanied by minimal text as a way to capture and maintain the interest of the reader in a more dramatic way. Framing the story in this visual manner then intrigues the reader and draws them in, making it more likely for them to read the article. Images are framed as early as the time during which they are being captured, because while a photojournalist may be simply shooting the scene, they already have an idea of how they want the photos to look when printed for a media outlet and how they want them to be interpreted by the readers. Afterwards, by carefully selecting these photos, the editors are framing the story because the photos they choose to print are the first visual connection that the reader will have with that story, which could influence their overall perception (Powell, Boomgaarden, De Swert and de Vreese, 2015).

Visual frames are important because they carry “excess meaning,” since they activate ideas and thoughts that have a shared meaning within a group of people. Images are also powerful framing tools because they are less intrusive than printed words. It does not take our brain as much work to decipher and interpret them like it does with text, therefore audiences are more likely to accept visual frames without question. When viewing the two, photographs also seem closer to reality than text, which can evoke more emotion and a more immediate reaction in a reader (Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011).

Properties of Visual Frames

Visual frames also have three distinguishing properties that can pose opportunities as well as challenges when framing news and events. The first property is the analogical quality of the images. This means that the audiences task of recognizing the objects and/or subjects in a photo does not necessarily require them to have specific prior knowledge or familiarity with certain visual representations. Because of this property the visual content is easier for the viewer to digest. The second property is the indexicality of images. This means that photos are often interpreted as being closer to the truth than other forms of communication. As opposed to text, the reader gets a straightforward and clear image of what is being framed, therefore it is what they believe to be true. The third property is the lack of propositional syntax in images. Visuals cannot explain propositions and ideas as easily as text, which may pose more of a challenge in identifying frames (Messaris and Abraham 2001).

Structural Features of Visual Framing

There are different structural features of visuals that affect visual framing. One of these is camera angle, which can be categorized in three different ways. If the camera angle is at eye level/straight, then that is interpreted in a neutral manner. If the angle is shot from above, then that is interpreted in a negative manner. Finally, if the camera angle is shot from below then it is interpreted in a positive manner. Camera distance is another structural feature used in visual framing. A photo that is shot from close up or just of the head and shoulders of a subject is interpreted as a positive camera distance. A photo that is a long shot with the full figure of a subject is seen in a negative manner. Finally, a medium distance shot from the waist up is seen as a neutral camera distance (Coleman, 2009). Shot focus is another structural feature that affects visual framing. This feature refers to how many aspects of a photograph are in focus. It can also be related to theatrical performances, since actors are mindful of where they stand in proportion to the audience. Essentially, “the closer the subject, the more important it seems” (Monaco, 2000). In relation to photos, if the subject is the only aspect of the photo that is in focus then they are regarded as more powerful. However if the rest of the photo is in focus as well, then they are not seen as being as prominent. Viewers do not need to learn anything new in order to understand and interpret these features in this manner, since these conclusions have been reached through research on para proxemics, or social distance (Coleman, 2009).

Framing of Sexual Assault in the Media

The hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford details a case of sexual assault, and the specific incident was discussed in media coverage in addition to the hearing itself. Therefore it is useful to use the coverage of previous sexual assault/rape cases in order to identify patterns and frames present themselves in the coverage of these cases. Very few of these cases receive substantial news coverage, if any at all, since the high-profile cases are usually the ones in the spotlight. When these events do receive news coverage they frequently perpetuate rape myths, which are false and contain prejudiced views/ideas that seek to discredit the victim. This feeds a culture that hosts an environment that contributes to rape culture, which includes the stigmatization of victims, the objectification of women and justifications for rape (Pennington and Birthisel, 2015). While the intention of media coverage on these cases is to communicate information with the audience, this reporting is often detrimental to the situation because it “serves to render female victims mute; they have no agency in the stories detailing the crimes committed against them” (Pennington and Birthisel, 2015: 2438).

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Lit Review: media and elections

• by nilesmedia
• November 16, 2011 January 18, 2014

Literature Review: How local media coverage of elections can help turn out more and better informed voters

Introduction.

Media effects research clearly shows some level of correlation between media consumption and voter turnout. The premise of this literature review is that such findings can be used by media outlets to help shape their own campaign coverage, with the goal of improving issues knowledge among the general public and inspiring audiences members to vote in greater numbers.

The following review of scholarly work will start with research into media effects on audience behavior, especially related to political election coverage and voting patterns. A brief survey of the evolution of media effects concurrent with the development of new media platforms will also be presented.

The special role of local media will also be considered. Following a thread from credibility to the business viability of high-quality, issues-based news coverage, this section is especially relevant to media outlets that otherwise might be under financial pressures to deliver horse-race campaigns.

A review of literature correlating content, audience perception of media, and civic engagement will follow. This includes consideration of the younger voting demographic, along with studies that challenge traditional notions of the civic impact of political cynicism, and research into the role of polling in election coverage.

As this literature review is based largely on the assumption that quality news coverage engenders deeper audience understanding of political issues, definitions of and research into issues knowledge will be offered. The review also suggests potential for strategically timing different types of campaign coverage for maximum impact according to audiences’ decision-making patterns.

The literature review closes with consideration of audiences themselves, since all the media research in the world is meaningless without understanding the people for whom news is ostensibly designed and how they use it. This begins with an analysis of the timing of voting decisions and goes on to analyze some reasons that people disengage with election coverage. The review closes after the elections, so to speak, with research into improved voter turnout data.

Specific recommendations are offered for consideration about how media outlets may shift their approaches to election coverage to both meet business imperatives and help fulfill journalism’s potential contribution to democracy. Notes are also made on areas for further research that will help media find financial viability by answering this call for accountability to the public interest.

Literature Review

Media effects.

There is much research documenting the agenda-setting effect of media. Studies indicate that simply covering topics as news can introduce those topics into audience discourse, essentially getting people to talk about or care about what they otherwise may not be likely to. This effect was documented by Iyengar and Kinder’s 1987 book News That Matters, in which the authors presented evidence “that the media actually precedes public agenda” (Sparks 156). The book details an experiment in which people were exposed “to one of three different presentations of the news over a 4-day period. … (T)he researchers found that the experimental groups expressed greater concern about the issue that had been featured in their respective newscast.”

Level of media exposure is sometimes considered as a factor in media effects research, as it was for Fridkin, et all in their multi-methodological approach to understanding the impact of media coverage following the final presidential campaign debate of 2004. The group conducted a content analysis of television, internet and newspaper coverage in the immediate 24-hours following the debate (Fridkin et al.). They paired this with data from a public opinion survey and conducted an experiment tracking the “stability” of attitudes about the candidates among individuals who either were or were not exposed to the debate. A notable observation in the context of this literature review is that the extreme level of media saturation following a presidential debate gives very few citizens a chance to escape the common news agenda. In the case of the post-debate coverage, which these researchers concluded to be one-sided, favoring George W. Bush over John Kerry, more potential exists for media effects to influence public opinion. “Thus, theoretically, the coupling of intense media coverage and a one-sided story should influence citizens’ attitudes of the competing candidates” (31).

A case study of a 2004 poll by the Los Angeles Times illustrates the potential for a single news report to achieve high levels of exposure and, consequently, potentially influence public opinion. Hardy and Jamieson found that the specific wording of the poll and the subsequent report about it not only influenced the newspaper audience’s perceptions of the two presidential candidates at the time, George W. Bush and John Kerry. Coverage of the poll also swayed the conversation of the nation after being picked up by the Associated Press and carried nationwide (Hardy and Jamieson 731). Looking back on 2004, the authors analyzed data from a rolling cross-sectional survey from the National Annenberg Election Survey to document what others before them had long posited, “that poll results may prime character traits through attribute agenda-setting” (739-740). In this case, a small but “detectable change in the public’s assessment of both Bush’s stubbornness and his steady leadership” was found.

Conversely, consider the “spiral of silence” theory, which describes public opinion as an essential human trait, spanning societies and millennia, and exerting its own influence on both governments and individuals. In related research that spanned decades, Noelle-Neumann determined that humans’ social nature leads people to fear isolation, which is threatened by society in reaction to unpopular “opinions and behaviors” (Noelle-Neumann; Sparks 157). In response to popular public opinion, Noelle-Neumann asserts, citizens learn silence to avoid isolation. In her discussion of numerous tests of the spiral of silence theory by other researchers, Noelle-Neumann claims any failure of the theory has been tested without taking the tenor of the media into account. “Rather than refuting the theory of the spiral of silence, the ‘silent majority’ shows how strongly the mass media must be seen to influence the process of public opinion. The tenor of the media generates a threat of isolation.” (Noelle-Neumann 276)

Media Evolution

It’s also important to remember that media effects are the product of a dynamic relationship with the media themselves. A review of related scholarly studies reveals a landscape of effects that is evolving as rapidly as new media platforms are being developed and appropriated for news.

Prior to the emergence of the Internet as a dominant media force, Simon suggested that newspapers, rather than television, radio or magazines, are related to the likelihood that a person will vote. Tapping data from the ongoing National Election Study survey during the 1992 presidential campaign, Simon created “an index that measured two dimensions: exposure to the medium (whether a person had received any campaign information from the medium) and intensity of use (how much attention the person paid to campaign stories in that medium)” (Simon 28). He then analyzed voter turnout patterns, taking into account demographics, political variables and the subject’s level of personal dialogue about the campaign. He found that “New News outlets,” an umbrella under which he included radio and television talk shows, exposed more people to campaign events than otherwise may have learned about them. However, this exposure did not result in increased rates of voter turnout among those citizens. “Only adults who said they followed the campaign through newspapers were found to be more likely to vote” (30).

Druckman developed his methodology in pursuit of evidence that newspaper audiences commanded more political knowledge than television viewers due to a fundamental difference in the depth of coverage that each medium offered (Druckman 464-465). He cites previous studies that alternatively support the correlation between newspaper readership and issues knowledge or else complicate the question with the introduction of prior political knowledge as a factor to weigh. Conducting content analysis and exit polling about a single campaign in a single market, Druckman concludes that newspapers more than television at the time did hold a more influential, although potentially limited, role in informing the electorate.

Now fast-forward to the age of the internet, when Drew and Weaver’s fifth in a series of presidential election-year telephone surveys indicated that attention not to newspapers, but to television news, televised debates, and online news were the “important predictors, or at least correlates, of voter learning of candidate issue positions and voter interest in the election campaigns.” Their study also related to perceptions of voter apathy, studies of which are discussed below. Regarding political involvement among audiences, the research indicated a slightly waning influence of newspapers compared to previous years. The authors also expressed their own surprise at “the consistency of attention to radio news as a predictor, or at least a correlate, of campaign interest in the last four U.S. presidential elections” (38).

Local Media

While many research studies examine the effects of mass media, some consideration of local news outlets can also be found. Responding to their own personal observations of the 2000 presidential primary race in South Carolina, Vinson and Moore set out to discover if local and national coverage of the subject was, indeed, as divergent as it had seemed to them — and if so, what implications that held for local and national audiences, respectively. The ensuing content analysis created a basis for comparison among local and national media coverage and campaign communications by and on behalf of the candidates themselves. The researchers found a stark disconnect between what the campaigns versus media emphasized in the race (Vinson and Moore 397), but also between what local and national media conveyed (401). They interpreted that local reporters, by incorporating local contacts and their own knowledge and understanding of the state into their stories, more accurately reflected the reality of the campaign for residents where the campaign was actually taking place. Local reporters correctly predicted the lack of impact the cancellation of the Democratic primary would have on crossover votes and “provided a somewhat more accurate account of the negative campaigning.” Vinson and Moore also found a “significant difference between the two levels of media in their coverage of character. Most of the character coverage … occurred in the local press. … It did not even make the top 10 issues for the national media.”

Extending their study to exit polls in both South Carolina and Michigan, where the Republican primary was conducted just three days later, Vinson and Moore found what they presented as evidence of this divergent coverage’s impact on voter behavior. Taking other factors into account, they conclude that Michigan voters, basing their ballot decisions largely on national media coverage, came away from the South Carolina primary with a very different perspective than their counterparts in South Carolina, who had more access to local coverage (406). The authors also opine that national coverage of locally conducted campaigns, built primarily on first impressions and borrowed press frames, results in reporting that is not completely inaccurate, but also certainly not complete.

Newhagen and Nass also touch on some differences between mass and local media in their scholarly review and exploration of credibility. The authors arrive at a negative relationship between distance and credibility, in which local news outlets, being closer to their readers, enjoy comparatively more credibility with local audiences than mass media, who have to overcome both perceived and physical distance between the institutions and their readers in any given locality (279).

Despite this perception of credibility among local news sources, some critics accuse local television news of being no more than a “vast wasteland” based on content analyses that reveal hyperfocus “on crime, murder, car chases, and mayhem, particularly in lead stories” (Belt and Just 194). After a five-year content analysis of local news in 50 markets, in which Belt and Just examine the relationship between content sophistication and business viability, the two suggest that true credibility actually can — and should — be earned. “We come to the surprising conclusion that quality is not merely good practice but good for the bottom line” (195). The authors do not suggest that stepping up the quality and relevance of local news is without its challenges; rather they maintain that such investment is worthwhile, for the sake of getting and keeping the public’s interest in the news, fulfilling the basic function of journalism in society, and at the same time achieving economic success (209).

Content and Perception

Essential to exploring the sophistication of election news is the ways different types of news influence audience decisions about how — and even if — to vote. Many studies, in fact, define civic engagement as a dependent variable influenced at least in part by news frames and news content. Following common concerns among scholars that negativism discourages political participation (Pinkleton and Austin 332), several studies in the 1990s and beyond have begun to challenge — or at least complicate — that notion.

The population segment long the subject of apathy discussions is young people. Since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote in 1971, 18- to 24-year-olds have been the electoral cohort least likely to exercise that right (319). Administering a paper-and-pencil survey to 420 college students, Pinkleton and Austin attempted to dissect the age group’s media use in order to understand their low levels of public affairs involvement. The authors’ expectation that cynicism positively correlated with apathy was confirmed, but to a lesser extent than what had been suggested by researchers before them (331). Pinkleton and Austin concluded that cynicism may have a short-term negative impact on news media use and long-term damaging relationship with political efficacy, but that in itself cynicism does not diminish political participation in young people. The study also indicated that, contrary to popular opinion, apathy was not related to negative campaigns. “If cynicism affects negativism, but negativism does not affect apathy (and cynicism affects apathy only slightly), scholars will need to look beyond the convenient excuse of frustration with media, campaigns, and institutions to explain nonparticipation among young citizens” (332).

These findings are backed up somewhat by de Vreese, who details the mixed methodologies and results of cynicism studies in his detailed review of “strategy” and “game frame” or “horse-race” definitions and analyses (284-287). Attempting to refine these definitions, along with Capella and Jamieson’s entire “spiral of cynicism” theory, de Vreese determined based on his two-wave panel survey that the relationship of strategic news and audience cynicism is a matter of degrees. The study “only partially confirms that strategic news … does indeed fuel cynicism about politics.” (293) He found that relationship to be dependent on the level of strategy present in the news — implying that press frames are not always black and white, but can be hybrids of varying ratios. “In the context where strategy news was relatively less present, exposure to news in fact contributed to a decrease in the level of cynicism. This finding calls for a reconsideration of the spiral of cynicism hypothesis” (293).

de Vreese furthermore suggests that “the positive relationship between political sophistication and cynicism” reported in his and others’ findings could mean that cynicism is not a sentiment to be avoided, but instead is “perhaps little more than an indication of an ‘interested and critical citizenry’” (294).

Polls and Horse Races 

A topic that can scarcely be avoided when surveying the impacts of horse-race election coverage is political polling. “As early as 1984, Lang and Lang suggested that poll results can reinforce majority opinion, a process akin to Noelle-Neumann’s ‘spiral of silence’” (Hardy and Jamieson 725). What some scholars say has changed in recent years, however, is how polls are reported by the press.

Frankovic maintained that very little about poll methodology changed in 2004, although more individual state polling, particularly in “battleground” states, and more Internet polling through private organizations started taking place around 2000 and 2004 (Frankovic 682). Concerned that starting in 2004, however, the public was subjected to as many debates about the polls as they were poll results, Frankovic took a closer narrative look at polling coverage, including frequency of reports about polls, use of polls in political campaigns, an increased level of scrutiny into polling methods, and finally criticism of the polls. She concluded that, while polls still hold value as “a mirror to let the public understand itself…. polls also provide attention for the organization doing them” (694). This, along with Frankovic’s observation that pollsters themselves in 2004 were often attacked by partisans, might eventually undermine journalists’ tradition of relying on polls as the “expert” on public opinion, Frankovic predicts. But she ends with the salvo that, “at least for now, journalists (and politicians) still need to believe in the ‘precision’ of polls to keep doing their jobs” (695).

Patterson is less forgiving in his article, which sets out to “show that journalists continue to craft superficial images tied to the candidates’ support in the polls and … construct election narratives rooted in the candidates’ positions in the race” (716). He calls it “feeding the horses,” and claims that polls keep press frames centered on the game angle of election coverage, to the detriment of issues coverage and ultimately to the detriment of the American public. “The policy issue that Americans said they cared the most about in 2004 — the economy — received less than 5 percent of the total coverage” that year (Patterson 719).

Patterson also took aim at the concept of precision polling, which Frankovic merely hinted at as an elusive ideal. Patterson wrote that a combination of misunderstanding margin of error in poll reporting and misinterpreting small movements in polls as meaningful trends leads journalists to misrepresent what is otherwise a useful tool, ultimately serving to confuse the public it is trying to inform (719). “Paradoxically, surveys heighten journalists’ attention to the candidates, rather than to the voters themselves” (720). Patterson maintained that poll-driven stories are ultimately distortions of reality that promote negative public opinion at the expense of more valuable issues education.

Issues Knowledge

Related to the issue of content, credibility and audience perceptions of media discussed above, D’Angelo and Lombard studied the impact on issues knowledge of what they call “conduit, strategy and accountability” press frames (D’Angelo and Lombard). They borrowed from cognitive science (8-13) in constructing the theory behind their between-subjects experiment in which subjects were given pre-stimulus and post-stimulus questionnaires, concluding that only “participants exposed to the strategy frame” associated the press with negativity. They drew what they called “disturbing conclusions” from this: “In particular, it seems that individuals in our study have internalized the antagonistic relationship between candidates and the press corps” (25). This is a much more dramatic view than that taken by de Vreese and even Pinkleton and Austin. D’Angelo and Lombard cited other research to propose that these media perceptions matter not only for the sake of a media’s brand, but also because a media’s credibility, or lack thereof, in part determines the potential “knowledge gain” of its audience (2).

But knowledge, too, can be evaluated in different ways, according to Hollander in his study on recognition and recall from late-night entertainment programs (Hollander). “Whether viewers of entertainment-based programs learn about public affairs is reminiscent of earlier concerns about the informative power of television news as compared to print sources, most often newspapers” (403). Based on his study of data from the 2004 Political Communications Study by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, Hollander said that “what viewers glean from such programs may be a function of many factors: the cognitive effort expended, political interest and sophistication, and exactly what kind of knowledge is tapped in surveys or questionnaires” (403). He argued that late-night shows such as Jay Leno or The Daily Show promote political recognition more than recall, and that this is a valid but far from complete contribution to issues knowledge, especially for younger viewers. “(H)ow competent it leaves them to participate in a meaningful manner remains an open question,” he concluded (412).

Miller and Orr, on the other hand, argued for a new way to even measure political knowledge, much less evaluate it. They proposed eliminating the “Don’t Know” response option from political knowledge questionnaires in order to eliminate non-random psychological factors such as confidence from the survey pool. They found that self-reported political knowledge estimations were higher in the absence of the “DK” (stands for “Don’t Know”) response, the reason being that some people, despite less actual knowledge, are more inclined than others to either think they do know something, or guess (769). The researchers administered a set of three random sample web surveys to test their hypothesis, but without “fanfare” announcing the absence of the DK option. They found that eliminating the option did indeed yield higher knowledge estimates, “both on a per-item and aggregate basis for political and general knowledge” (775).

Whether higher knowledge estimations are a good thing depends on “whether one values validity over reliability … (and) whether one believes that DK responses actually conceal partial knowledge.” Miller and Orr point out that other researchers have argued not giving respondents an way to opt out of a question they do not know the answer to encourages blind guessing, which in turn reduces reliability (776). The authors argue, “This loss in reliability comes with an associated gain in validity, however, since unsystematic variance stemming from blind guessing replaces systematic variance based on the propensity to guess.” They also point out the option to encourage, rather than omit, the DK option in order to reduce the “trade-off” between reliability and validity.

Timing of Voting Decisions

Aside from the question of measuring political knowledge is the timing of when that knowledge gels into a political decision. Bowen turned the cloudy debate about the impact of political advertising on its head with his study of when voters choose whom to vote for. He approached his study into the time of voting decision from the perspective of advertising. Based on research before him, Bowen concluded that early deciders partake of political communications, but mostly to “reinforce existing preferences” (666). Late-deciders may be less invested in the campaigns, but also may be more persuadable and less savvy about political news. Voters who decided during the campaign, research showed, tended to make the most use of the greatest range of political communications (667).

Bowen’s post-election survey after a senate race in Washington state showed roughly 23 percent of voters decided early, 22 percent decided in the middle of the campaign, 25 percent decided late, and almost 31 percent made up their minds during the primary. “General news accounts” were cited as the overall most helpful information to voters, followed by political advertising (671).

In his study, “negative (advertising) spots were highly recalled but worked against their sponsors,” and media coverage of such spots were seen to be very effective in “deflecting their influence” (674). Bowen notes that media coverage is not as likely for down-ticket races such as auditors, commissioners, and the like. He extrapolates that last-minute negative ads, therefore, may be more effective in those cases where and when “there is no opportunity for rebuttal” (674).

Voter Turnout

A more extreme but hardly uncommon case of absent media coverage is presented by Lipsitz and Teigen, who studied “orphan counties.” The authors approximated that 33 million Americans live in counties that aren’t served by their local media, due to incongruities between media markets and state boundaries (178). Not only did these potential voters not receive election information to help them choose their own political representation in the midterm election studied; they actually were exposed to campaign coverage that was irrelevant to their districts. The latter, the authors found, was the most damaging to the audience’s likelihood to become civically engaged.

Lipsitz and Teigen drew considerable worry from this study on the part of candidates in states with orphan counties, given the hurdles identified in the study to both reach these voters and mobilize them to the polls. The authors also express concern for “those who believe that spending campaign dollars will spur citizens to vote” (195).

Some residents of orphan counties and the younger demographic discussed earlier are certainly not the only Americans who do not exercise their right to vote. Yet comparisons of self-reported voter turnout and actual ballot numbers have frequently shown that individuals report to the American National Election Study that they voted, when in fact they did not (Duff et al. 67-68). The NES began experimenting with survey questions, in addition to its introductory script that acknowledged socially acceptable reasons for not voting, in 2000 and 2002. Duff et al sought to learn more from the 2002 experiment, which “randomly assigned half its respondents to the new version of the turnout question and half to the traditional version” (68). The researchers concluded from their analysis of the survey data that the new question did reduce over-reporting by approximately 8 percent.

The authors went on to access what data they could from the NES survey to uncover potential biases in the traditional or new turnout questions. They were struck by the extent to which they found the traditional turnout question had masked the actually low voter turnout rates of the poorest, least knowledgeable and least politically effective individuals. They determined that the new turnout question revealed these social trends in voter turnout in a way the previous question never could have.

A further observation the authors draw from their analysis is that the “social desirability effect is very deep in some spots and very shallow in others” (88). They conclude that the new survey question did not do well in improving accuracy “where the sense of social desirability runs deep.”

The most important lesson to be learned from this review of election-related research spanning decades — especially with the goal of improving journalism’s impact going forward — is that things change. They always have, and they will continue to do so. New institutional systems and reporting practices developed today, therefore, will have to adapt tomorrow in order to stay current and stay ahead of the curve of media and political evolution. Journalists and media managers would do well to build models that are structurally nimble in order to respond most effectively to both business and editorial imperatives. Frequent and regular surveys of a media’s own efficacy and its relationship with its subjects, supporting businesses, and audiences would also be wise to help journalism anticipate and even direct some of this inevitable change, rather than remain stuck in the less effective emergency-mode of having to catch up.

The preponderance of research into presidential campaigns is also notable in this review — although not surprising and certainly not without explanation. The scope of many research studies is no doubt limited in terms of both finances and human resources. Nonetheless, more research into statewide, local and down-ticket elections would be helpful for media, advertisers and audiences alike. Although “local” media outlets by their nature only serve a relatively small number of individuals and businesses, collectively their numbers are great and offer data samples sizable enough to detect meaningful trends. Some of the literature reviewed here also points to local media as holding the best hope for improved service in the public interest. More navigational notes would be helpful in creating a new roadmap to success for smaller media ventures.

That said, the countless configurations of media effects by media type, size, region, audience demographic and infinite other factors can only take a media outlet so far. Outside studies are helpful, but should not be considered a replacement for a newsroom’s own understanding of its audience — in all the shades, shapes and sizes of their perceptions, needs, levels of political efficacy and reasons for engaging (or not) with their community. As the newer trend of community outreach by media continues to evolve, it would be interesting for future researchers to measure and describe the ways these new practices are helping to push newsrooms and journalists along their own evolutionary path.

This literature review assessed the field of election coverage with the express goal of improving editorial content as a way to increase public civic participation. Studies such as Bowen’s and even Lipsitz and Teigen’s, written more from the perspective of advertisers than editors, can nonetheless be useful for informing editorial decisions. Similarly, Noelle-Neumann “spiral of silence” theory of public opinion is equally applicable to newsrooms as it is to audiences. As Belt and Just intimate (206), even newsrooms are not immune from their own spirals of silence. Media managers would do well build checks against such social pressures into the systems they create in order to maintain an atmosphere open to the type of innovation that will be needed to keep journalism relevant in an ever-changing society.

Bibliography

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2 thoughts on “Lit Review: media and elections”

I have been studying the effectiveness of media coverage and elections especially voter education. I agree with the timing of voter decisions and final candidate policy trends that can totally change the voter turnout eg. USA 2016 Elections.

Thanks for reading and taking a moment to comment, Fred. Where are you based?

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