Trends in Media Framing of Issues in the 2018 Midterm Election

Abstract

The literature about midterm elections emphasizes that voting is influenced by approval of the incumbent president and two or three national issues. Various models of what happens at midterm elections have analyzed presidential campaigning for candidates. The influence of idiosyncratic local information and conditions have been presented. Voters inability to rationally evaluate legislative performance is acknowledge. Theory has been developed about the existence of a collective or aggregate rationality that emerges from midterm elections. This paper is directed at contrasting how the immigration, health care, and economy issues were framed in 2014 and 2018. Issue framing in American politics has long been thought to be substantially influenced by mainstream media. As information technology has developed, social media has gained influence in the issue framing. In 2014 and 2018, mainstream media and social media contended for influence. The interaction between mainstream media and social media in issue framing is analyzed because this process is thought to reveal much about U.S. political reality. Theoretical sampling was used to create image sets presenting the immigration, healthcare, and the economy issue in 2014 and 2018. Qualitative method’s interpretivism was then employed to contrast issue framing these two years. This use of interpretive practice was successful in producing some conclusions about trends. Conceptual developments about trends could be analyzed. Secondary data presented the profound influence of social networking. An observable trend away from elite issue framing toward backbencher and articulate citizen issue framing was found. Cognitive heuristics figured in a second trend found in the data. Literature discusses cognitive heuristics as affecting bounded rationality. The mere exposure cognitive heuristic occurs when people positively valence something on the basis of much information about the subject. The increasing sophistication of information devices between 2014 and 2018 was accompanied with more vivid and HDR strength graphics. This was concluded to mean that social networking was gaining in strength with voters through the mere exposure heuristic. The predominantly qualitative methods of the paper concluded with a reflexive suggestion for future research. Cognitive mapping was suggested as a possible improvement capable of producing better understanding of how interpretivism analyzed qualitative data to research conclusions. A cognitive map with an elite/leadership to backbencher/articulate citizen continuum for one axis was suggested. A traditional images to vivid, HDR images continuum was proposed as the second axis on the cognitive map. Coding the image data sets could be accomplished my placing miniature images at appropriate locations on the cognitive map. An example of what such a cognitive map would look like was included in the paper. The suggestion was made to use several coders and then to follow inter-coder reliability issues.