Campaign News Research Articles

Toronto-area Ethnic Newspapers and Canada's 2011 Federal Election: An Investigation of Content, Focus and Partisanship

AbstractCanada's political class is embracing ethnocultural news media with increasing zeal, highlighting the need to understand the role of these news organizations in the political process. This study investigated coverage of Canada's 2011 federal election in five Toronto-area ethnocultural newspapers. The publications, which carried campaign news to varying degrees, provided coverage that was distinct in many ways from mainstream media. Content such as the focus on ingroup candidates had the potential to strengthen community bonds while more general election news equipped readers with information that would facilitate participation in society through informed voting. Analysis of reporting about the Conservative Party of Canada, which pursued an aggressive ethnic media strategy, identified no clear pattern of stories with explicitly biased content. In most newspapers, however, the CPC did enjoy an advantage in that it received more coverage than the competition.

Ambivalent Versus Univalent Voters: Perceived Media Influences and Third-Person Perceptions

By differentiating “ambivalent” from “univalent” voters, this study argues that ambivalent voters need information to reach a decision, which implies they are more open to persuasion through media coverage than are univalent voters. In turn, they may infer that election coverage exerts a greater influence on them, resulting in smaller self–other perceptual discrepancies in terms of their coverage susceptibility. Conversely, univalent voters have made their voting choices early during the campaign; for them, only when the intended influence seems desirable does the perceived influence of campaign news on them increase, leading to a smaller self–other perceptual gap. In other words, ambivalent voters engage in motivated inferences to reduce their ambivalence-aroused discomfort, whereas univalent voters engage in motivated inferences to avoid dissonance. The results of a survey conducted during the official campaign for the 2012 Taiwanese presidential election support these predictions, demonstrating the utility of categorizing voters as ambivalent or univalent when examining the perceived effects of election campaign news.

Metacoverage and Mediatization in US Presidential Elections

This article develops a theoretical model consisting of three mechanisms that link metacoverage, a type of election campaign news, to mediatization, a meta-process in which media organizations influence politics. The mechanisms hinge on the point that metacoverage—consisting of both topics and frames—constitutes a rich set of process-oriented cues that influence how campaign organizations adjust to the media logic in the course of performing functions associated with the office-seeking political campaign logic. A case study of 2012 US presidential election news was conducted to illustrate how metacoverage influences campaign strategies.

Who's Afraid of Conflict? The Mobilizing Effect of Conflict Framing in Campaign News

The ability of the news media to mobilize voters during an election campaign is not well understood. Most extant research has been conducted in single-country studies and has paid little or no attention to the contextual level and the conditions under which such effects are more or less likely to occur. This study tests the mobilizing effect of conflict news framing in the context of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. The unique multi-method and comparative cross-national study design combines a media content analysis (N = 48,982) with data from a two-wave panel survey conducted in twenty-one countries (N = 32,411). Consistent with expectations, conflict framing in campaign news mobilized voters to vote. Since the effect of conflict news was moderated by evaluations of the EU polity in the general information environment, conflict framing more effectively mobilized voters in countries where the EU was evaluated more positively.

News, Discussion, and Associative Issue Ownership

Associative issue ownership refers to one of the prerequisites for representative democracy—public awareness of the issue priorities of competing political parties. This article addresses the question of how the instability of associative issue ownership at the micro level of individual voters, which could be due in part to election news and political discussion, adds up to the relative stability of associative issue ownership at the macro level. The data come from a panel survey and a content analysis of newspapers and television news bulletins in the 2010 Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign. Cross-nested multilevel logistic regression models were applied to estimate the impact of political news and political discussion on different respondents for different parties and issues. The findings show how contagion, by traditional issue ownership associations, explains the relative stability at the macro level in spite of volatility at the micro level. Campaign news and political discussion increase the likelihood of contagion by traditional issue priorities of political parties, while also evoking change due to their convergence on the issues of the campaign, from which the parties that own these issues take advantage, among others the VVD and the PVV in the 2010 campaign.

Campaign News Genres, Audience Characteristics, and Media Perceptions

This study builds on theories of “relative hostile media perceptions” to assess how audience characteristics and the ideological content of programming interact to shape media perceptions across different news genres. It uses a field experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to watch coverage of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses on broadcast network evening news ( ABC World News), a conservative-oriented political talk show (Fox News Channel’s Hannity), or a political satire show (Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). Partisanship and age shaped evaluations of coverage across these different genres: Partisans held more favorable views of news aligned with their own views, older participants favored network news, and younger participants favored political comedy. Additionally, viewing network news or political satire—but not conservative opinion talk—fostered more positive evaluations of the news media in general. The results illuminate how viewers form media perceptions in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Debates and the Disincentives of Democracy

News norms and routines explain many of the factors influencing political news coverage today. In satisfying competitive pressures and the 24-hour news hole, scholars cite growing—albeit troubling—trends in campaign news coverage including negativity, soft news, and cynicism. This paper extends the theoretical conventions of news norms and routines to the spectacle of mediated presidential debates. Using a sample of transcripts from US presidential debates, 1992–2012, this qualitative content analysis explores the extent to which news norms and values in the new news environment influence moderator debate agendas, extending previous research to span multiple election cycles. I find that news routines condition journalists moderating debates to pose soft news, cynical and conflict-driven debate questions which may ultimately crowd out more informative policy-related content.

Tweeting Conventions

This study explores the use of Twitter by political reporters and commentators—an understudied population within the rapidly growing literature on digital journalism—covering the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. In particular, we want to know if and how the “affordances” of Twitter are shaping the traditional norms and routines of US campaign reporting surrounding objectivity, transparency, gatekeeping, and horse race coverage, and whether Twitter is bursting the “bubble” of insider talk among reporters and the campaigns they cover. A sample derived from all tweets by over 400 political journalists reveals a significant amount of opinion expression in reporters' tweets, but little use of Twitter in ways that improve transparency or disrupt journalists' (and campaigns') role as gatekeepers of campaign news. Overall, particularly when looking at what political journalists retweet and what they link to via Twitter, the campaign “bubble” seems at the moment to have remained largely intact.

Clinton and the playing-the-gender-card metaphor in campaign news

This article offers a critical discourse analysis of the use of the playing-the-gender-card metaphor in US campaign coverage, with a focus on its use in Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign for president in 2007. I argue that the media use the gender-card metaphor to stand in for a variety of complex arguments about women in politics. The essay serves as a case study to validate how political metaphors can be used to obscure socially unacceptable and empirically unsupportable arguments. It also reveals that it is taboo for women candidates to talk about sex discrimination on the campaign trail and that the culture operates to silence its legacy of proscribing women from the political field. Finally, the essay encourages future women candidates to plan rhetorical responses to the gender-card metaphor by understanding the latent arguments and connotations buried in it.

Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage

The proportion of votes cast before election day has risen steadily over the last two decades. Previous research asked how early voting has impacted voter participation. In this article, we ask how early voting has affected the flow of information to voters through the mass media. By increasing the number of days voters are able to vote, are we also increasing the number of days that candidates and campaigns continuously disseminate campaign-related information to the news media? Is news coverage of campaigns quantitatively and qualitatively different when opportunities to vote early are available and utilized? Our expectation is that early voting significantly influences the volume and nature of campaign news coverage. We study the effects of early voting on campaign news coverage of gubernatorial and Senate races in 2006 and 2008. Our findings reveal that the volume and content of campaign news coverage is significantly influenced by early voting. [Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: Appendix for Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage—Alternative Model Specifications.]

A Cross-Section of Political Involvement, Partisanship and Online Media in Middle America During the 2008 Presidential Campaign

This study examined the relationship between the political involvement and online media use from a Midwestern statewide sample during the 2008 presidential election. A series of analyses of variance indicated that the increased use of weblogs, social networking sites, online video sites, and candidates' websites for news and campaign information purposes was moderately but positively related to political involvement. When controlling for social and political demographics as well as other media use characteristics, only two online media variables achieved statistical significance: general Internet use and frequency of weblog use. Using the Internet for campaign news was related to an increase in political involvement but regularly using blogs actually predicted lower levels of political involvement. These results were further moderated by partisanship, which suggests that the political influence of online media was positive only for certain segments of the population during this presidential campaign.

He Wrote, She Wrote

This study examines the intersection of journalist gender and campaign news coverage across legislative and executive political offices in a gender-prominent context: mixed-gender elections—those with at least one woman and one man. Based on a content analysis of U.S. newspaper coverage, this study focuses on “masculinized” and “feminized” political issues and character traits, and explicit references that highlight a candidate’s novelty. Results revealed no direct relationship between journalist gender and news coverage; however, when type of office was considered, there were significant shifts and differences in the focus of coverage by female and male journalists.

Identifying Antecedents of the Strategic Game Frame

Although election news framing is a burgeoning area of research, empirical studies of what factors influence frame building remain rare, especially in non-Western countries. This study investigates the use of the strategic game frame and the relationship between that frame and system-level and organizational-level factors. The analysis focuses on the coverage of campaign news in six elite Bulgarian newspapers between 1990 and 2009. Results show that the type of electoral system, number of parties in government, and newspaper specialization are significant predictors of game frame use. The results are discussed in relation to framing research in Western Europe and the United States.

Explaining Campaign News Coverage: How Medium, Time, and Context Explain Variation in the Media Framing of the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections

It is an open question why news media cover political campaigns the way they do. Framing elections in terms of conflict or strategy or focusing on horse-race framing and the role media and journalists themselves play in elections is commonplace, but this study investigates the factors that explain the variation in campaign news coverage. The context of our study is the 2009 European Parliamentary elections, and we use a cross-national media content analysis (N = 52,009) conducted in all 27 European Union member states. Findings show that time, country, and media characteristics all matter in explaining the way news media frame elections, however, to different extents and with different emphasis. Especially the variation in conflict framing is contingent upon the medium, the electoral system, and public aversion against the EU. We conclude with a discussion of our findings in the light of the ongoing debate on the role and impact of media framing during election campaigns.

Campaign Interest and Issue Knowledge: Did the Media—and Negative Political Advertising—Matter in “Battleground Ohio”?

A statewide survey (N = 564) before Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial election examined issue knowledge, campaign interest, campaign news attention, debate exposure, and attention to political advertising and negative political advertising. Attention to campaign news on television and in the newspaper predicted interest in the campaign as well as knowledge about the issues. However, attention to campaign news online predicted interest in the campaign above and beyond that of newspaper and television attention. In turn, campaign interest predicted knowledge. In addition, attention to political advertising predicted interest in the campaign but not knowledge of campaign issues. Attention to negative political advertising did not significantly predict campaign knowledge or interest.

Media Ownership and Story Tone in Campaign News

The focus of this article is to understand the determinants of negative, positive, or neutral tone in campaign news coverage. Much of the extant literature suggests, to some extent, the negativity bias often seen in political news stems from profit making objectives. This article asserts that news outlet ownership structures and economic incentives, coupled with political context, influence the likelihood of positive, neutral, or negative tone in campaign news. The findings presented herein suggest that corporate, chain, and nonlocal ownership all have consequences for campaign news tone.

Creating Effective Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns

Based on the schema and attribution theories, this study examined hypotheses addressing the effects of cause-brand fit and campaign new source on consumers' attitudes toward a cause-brand alliance by modifying consumers' perceptions of the brand's motivation to engage in the alliance. An online experiment was conducted with a national sample of 742 college students using a 2 (cause vs. brand message source) x 2 (low vs. high cause-brand fit) between-subjects design based on hypothetical cause-brand alliance scenarios. Findings indicate that cause-brand fit influences cause-brand alliance attitude by increasing consumers' perceived altruistic brand motivations, whereas campaign news source did not have a significant impact on cause-brand alliance attitude. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

When Race, Gender, and the Media Intersect: Campaign News Coverage of Minority Congresswomen

The news media often serves as an intermediary between elected officials and constituents, informing voters of the ways in which they are being represented. While the media plays a critical role in allowing representatives to communicate with constituents, previous research indicates that coverage of women and minority members of Congress may be unfavorable. Contrary to previous research, I find that being either a woman or a minority alone does not negatively impact coverage. However, faced with the “double barrier” of race and gender, minority congresswomen often receive more negative and less frequent media coverage than all other representatives.

When the World Outside Gets Inside Your Head

Citizens are variably influenced by information flow depending on their location within a social structure. One method of understanding this influence is through an assessment of multiple levels of analysis. Although many scholars have called for such analyses, few have heeded that call. This research addresses the relevance of “context” to the study of media effects on perceptions of public opinion. Survey data from the American National Election Studies are combined with a content analysis of campaign news in 24 regional newspapers, as well as advertising data, in order to parse out contextual media effects. Results show that perceived public opinion varies significantly across media markets. Newspaper use and personal candidate preference had a significant effect on the likelihood of perceiving Kerry to be the state-winning candidate. There was also a significant cross-level interaction between media context and political discussion on perceptions of public opinion.

Negatively shaping the asylum agenda? The representational strategy and impact of a tabloid news campaign

This article examines coverage presented in a news campaign (on asylum and immigration) by the UK tabloid newspaper, the Sun, from January to March 2003. The analysis reveals how tabloid news conventions rather than government definitions or viewpoints frame the character and contours of campaign representations, an observation that throws into sharp relief existing explanations of elite influence or authority skew. This campaign includes portrayals of the asylum seeker as ‘the other’ or ‘folk devil’, a moral framework explaining their deviant intentions and actions, as well as expressions of irreverence at elite decision-making and government UK asylum policy. Yet it is striking how accompanying tabloid representations of public opinion, featuring consistently through the coverage, offer additional hostility to asylum policy and government officials. The article outlines how such representations and appeals garner the attention of the political elite and elite media on this occasion and develop new concerns over the newspaper’s role in negatively shaping the asylum agenda.