Color-Coding Politics

Benjamin Gross

doi:10.1177/2158244013476053

Abstract

During the 2000 Presidential election between George H. W. Bush and Al Gore, journalists often used the terms blue states and red states to describe the political landscape within the United States. This article studies the framing of these terms during the years 2004 through 2007. Using latent and manifest qualitative content analyses, six different news media frames were found in a sample of 337 newspaper articles. Two hypotheses were also tested indicating that framing patterns varied slightly by time period and article types. However, the argument that increased levels of political polarization in the United States have been created by predominantly conflict-oriented coverage may not be true. Instead, these terms became journalistic heuristics that were used to organize how people think about politics in a way that fit with contemporary media practices, and there is no single agreed upon interpretation of these terms within this reporting.

Highlights

The highly contested U.S Presidential election between George H
By illustrating how these terms were used over a 4-year period which included a presidential election, it is expected that this article can shed some light on this topic
The news media in the United States have an impact on society that goes beyond this content analysis of newspaper articles, though what that impact is goes beyond most studies

Summary

Introduction

The highly contested U.S Presidential election between George H. W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 turned the television network color-coding schemes of red and blue states into a shorthand system for describing political differences throughout the United States. It is clear that these labels have become part of the political lexicon in many circles, it is unclear whether they define a political reality, a media artifact, or are a shortcut to describe political divisiveness. By illustrating how these terms were used over a 4-year period which included a presidential election, it is expected that this article can shed some light on this topic

Literature Review

Findings

Discussion and Conclusion