Campaign News Coverage Research Articles

Stepping Stone to the White House or Tombstone on Presidential Ambition: Why Senators Usually Fail When They Run for the White House

Studies divide over which offices are the best position from which to seek the presidency. This study looks at how candidates from various backgrounds perform in the competition for resources and votes in presidential nomination campaigns. The study also sheds light on Burden’s (2002)“candidate pool “and “candidate investment” hypotheses. As a group, senators are found to be relatively weak fundraisers, receive less campaign news coverage, and attract less public support than presidential candidates from most other backgrounds. Senators as a group are more variable than other groups of office-holders, but not significantly so. Most but not all senators who enter the race appear to invest themselves in their campaign.

News Coverage of Negative Political Campaigns

The present experiment examines the effects of negative campaigns on voting participation and preference over which previous studies have provided inconsistent findings. This study focuses on the impact of negative campaigns covered in the news rather than those delivered in political advertising. Findings do not support an across-the-board “negativity-demobilization” hypothesis but demonstrate that the focus of campaign (i.e., policy-versus personality-focused) moderates the impact of campaign attacks on the likelihood of turning out to vote. While policy-based attacks covered in the news slightly stimulate voter turnout, personality attacks significantly depress one’s participatory intention. The data also indicate that negative strategies generally do not benefit the sponsoring candidates, and it is even more so when attacks concern personal matters. In general, voters appear to prefer a policy-appealing candidate over a personality-appealing one.

Newspaper Coverage of Presidential Debates

Research has established that news coverage of presidential campaigns tends to emphasize “horse race” coverage (who is ahead in the polls). However, much less is known about news reports of campaign messages, such as presidential debates. This study compared the content of presidential debates from 1980 to 2000 with newspaper coverage of those debates. Debates and newspaper coverage were content analyzed for functions (acclaims or self-praise, attacks or criticism, and defenses or refutations of attacks) and topics (policy and character). Newspaper coverage consistently and significantly over-represented attacks and defenses but under-represented acclaims. Newspaper accounts generally stress character more, and policy less, than the debates, but this relationship was not consistent across campaigns. Journalists served a gate-keeping function, reporting about 8% of what the candidates said in the debates.

Consumer Demand for Election News: The Horserace Sells

Reports on the state of the horserace and analysis of the candidates' strategies are pervasive themes in news coverage of campaigns. Various explanations have been suggested for the dominance of strategy-oriented news over hard news. The most frequently identified factors are the length of the modern campaign, the built-in conflict between journalists and campaign operatives, and the pressures of the marketplace. This article provides a test of the market hypothesis. Given access to a wide variety of news reports about the presidential campaign during the weeks immediately preceding the 2000 election, we find that voters were drawn to reports on the horserace and strategy. Strategy reports proved especially popular among readers with higher levels of political engagement. In closing, we consider what journalists might do to make stories about the issues more relevant and marketable.

Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Coverage

Building on the notion of "gendered mediation," we argue that conventional news frames construct politics in stereotypically masculine terms, and we examine the implications of these news frames for the coverage of female party leaders. Content analysis of reported speech in television news coverage of the 1993 and 1997 Canadian elections, combined with the results of an experiment, reveals that the speech of the three women leaders was subject to more interpretation by the media and was reported in more negative and aggressive language. The study concludes that gendered mediation may hinder women's chances of electoral success.

The Local Contours of Campaign Coverage

Research on presidential campaign coverage has mostly focused on national news sources. This article examines the more local contours of campaign coverage. News coverage of the nominating campaign in 16 top-circulating state newspapers is analyzed throughout one 10-week period in a campaign and found to vary considerably both in overall amounts and the amounts provided to individual candidates. A multivariate model that includes multiple layers of influence is estimated, and candidate coverage amounts are found to vary systematically in state newspapers depending on candidates' state-level reactions to the campaign environment, constraints at work in individual news organizations, and the shared professional norms of journalists about what makes a campaign story newsworthy. The results suggest that, depending on where they live, some citizens are provided a great deal of information about the campaign and others are provided much less. The implications of these findings for researchers studying the nature of campaign news coverage and its effects on learning are explored.

News Coverage, Economic Cues, and the Public's Presidential Preferences, 1984-1996

Much research demonstrates the importance of national, rather than personal, economic conditions on voting behavior, yet relatively unexplored is how citizens develop what scholars have called "rough evaluations" of the economy. We argue that campaign news coverage about the nation's economic health provides cues to the public; in turn, these cues supply the criteria for sociotropic voting, thereby shaping presidential preferences during the course of campaigns. Examining news stories in each of the past four presidential elections, we (1) categorize coverage as economic or noneconomic, (2) measure its volume and valence, and (3) model candidate coverage against presidential preference polls. Results suggest that economic candidate coverage, although accounting for only a fraction of content, strongly and consistently predicts variation in presidential preference during all four elections, suggesting that voters gain sociotropic criteria for evaluating candidates from news media coverage of campaigns.

The Political-Media Complex at 50

Placing the 1996 presidential campaign in its broader historical and institutional context reveals changes taking places in the “political-media complex.” These changes include a shift in control of political communication away from mainstream news media in what might be described as a progressivist reformation; the inability of mainstream news media to resolve both their commercial needs and their professional needs, leading to a decline in their influence; and the need for both candidates and journalists to respond to public dissatisfaction with campaigns and campaign news coverage.

Terrorism, the media, and the Northern Ireland conflict

In order to achieve permanent peace in Northern Ireland, major changes to all aspects of life are required. Discussion has increasingly focused on the news media and coverage of terrorist campaigns. It is widely recognized that propaganda is a crucial element of terrorist campaigns and, therefore, media coverage is vital. As a result, searching questions have been asked about the role, behavior, and capability of the media when dealing with manipulation by terrorist organizations. These organizations are becoming more and more adept at using the media to their own advantage and, consequently, strict guidelines have been issued to which the media must adhere. This has, in turn, led to heated discussion. Many people insist that freedom of the press is essential for the maintenance of a liberal democracy, while others believe that there is an urgent need for journalists to be curtailed when reporting on terrorism.