US News Media Research Articles

Reinstating Impartiality over Taking a Stance: Repairing Journalism Amid Right-Wing Attacks

ABSTRACT Two incidents of disputed reporting rocked the US news media in January 2019, one on the Trump-Russia investigation and the other on a confrontation involving a group of Covington High School students. This study explored how the center-left and the right-wing media spheres contested with each other in establishing a meta-journalistic discourse. We found that a center-left media sphere, debating on a paradigm shift for morally-engaged journalism, was up against a belligerent right-wing media sphere with an explicit ideological commitment to undermining the legitimacy of mainstream journalism. The discourse of paradigm repair dominated the center-left media response while the discourse for moral principles to support social justice was marginalized. Despite journalists’ well-intentioned efforts to repair professional norms around objectivity, such discourse in fact fueled more right-wing vitriol and hardened the narrative of media bias.

Multinational and Multimodal Character Framing of Political Candidates in Online News: Do Political and Media System Classifications Matter?

An evolving body of research generally referred to as visual politics has brought the heavy research focus on linguistic modalities of political communication closer to parity with visual emphasis. The study reported here transcends this schism by joining momentum toward multimodality as an ontological departure point for research. We expanded an existing visual instrument into a multimodal one and provided evidence that it reliably captures character framing of political candidates (stateliness, compassion, mass appeal, ordinariness, and sure loser) in German, Polish, and United States commercial online news. We focused on election coverage in these countries because they represent three distinct political and media systems (democratic-corporatist, polarized-pluralist, and hybrid) of the Global North. The quantitative content analysis sample we used spans 2,688 online news stories with seven political candidates identified in 6,560 cases across six modalities (still images, moving images, frozen video images, text, audio, and superimposed text). We found support for the hypothesis that political and media system latencies affect how news media frame the character traits of political candidates in both visual and linguistic modalities. Specifically, the competitive tendencies of majoritarian democracies manifested more clearly as candidate-centered, simplistic, and polarizing character framing in US media content than in journalistic output of multiparty consensus democracies. For example, US news media were more consistent in their portrayal of election winners and losers than German and Polish news media, emphasizing stateliness, compassion, and ordinariness in the winner while unambiguously assigning the negative sure loser frame to the election loser.

Covering the Start of the Anthropocene: The US News Media and 1950s H-Bomb Tests

ABSTRACT The 1950s H-bomb tests by the United States are a turning point in the history of technology—and today are seen by some scientists as the start of the Anthropocene, the current geological era of human planetary dominance. This paper examines how US news organizations covered the scientific debates surrounding fallout risks. Journalists were caught between official secrecy and growing scientific concern over global health dangers that later played a role in emerging anti-nuclear, environmental, and climate movements.

Sharing News Left and Right: Frictions and Misinformation on Twitter

Abstract On 20 October 2020, prior to the US presidential election, Twitter modified its user interface for sharing social media posts. In an effort to reduce the spread of misinformation on the platform, the new interface nudged users to be thoughtful about the content they were sharing. Using data on over 160,000 tweets by US news media outlets, we show that this policy significantly reduced news sharing, but that the reductions varied heterogeneously by political slant: sharing of content fell significantly more for left-wing outlets relative to right-wing outlets. Examining Twitter activity data for news-sharing users, we find that conservatives were less responsive to Twitter’s intervention. Lastly, using web traffic data, we document that the policy significantly reduced visits to news media outlets’ websites.

Tracing the Flow of Climate Change Frames: Intermedia Agenda Setting Between Twitter and News Media in the US and the UK

This study integrates agenda setting and framing theory to explore the transmission of climate change frames between newspapers and Twitter in the US and the UK. A set of computational methods was applied to identify five prevailing climate change frames—cause, impact, action, real, and hoax—in 230,000 tweets and 20,000 news articles from 2016 to 2021. At the cross-national level, a symmetrical relationship was found on Twitter between the US and the UK, which indicates their mutual influence on social-media discussions of climate change. Within each country, the US news media had a stronger agenda-setting influence on public climate change discussions on Twitter, whereas news coverage and social-media discussions in the UK were relatively isolated. The use of the cause frame in the US media coverage often led to the presence of the hoax, action, impact, and cause frames in Twitter conversations, whereas the action frame in the UK media coverage led to the presence of the hoax, real, and impact frames in Twitter discussions. The findings have implications for the dynamics of framing processes that shape public attention and the understanding of climate issues cross-nationally.

Police Violence in Health Care Settings in US Media Coverage

Hospitals do not collect or share data tracking their policing and security activities despite their reliance on police and security personnel, including armed officers. Thus, little is known about how hospital security is associated with patient and staff safety. To examine the harms exerted by health care-affiliated police and security personnel. For this qualitative study, data were collected using a systematic Media Cloud search for US news media coverage from January 2011 to May 2022. A total of 18 987 articles on policing and hospitals were screened and a content and thematic analysis of articles that met the search criteria was conducted, which involved incidents that revealed harm to patients, patients' families, and staff. Data were analyzed from October 2022 to April 2023. Incident year, incident location (hospital name, city, state), survivor and victim characteristics (race and ethnicity, presence of mental illness), and a narrative description of the incident focusing on outcomes of harm exerted by police and security personnel in the health care setting. A total of 48 unique stories across 25 US states were included. The median (range) year published was 2017 (2009-2022). Harms reported to have been perpetuated by health care-affiliated police and security personnel were identified within 5 domains from 48 unique incidents: (1) patients shot by police or security personnel (17 patients); (2) patients subject to excessive use of force (17 patients); (3) patients arrested (7 patients); (4) patients subject to sexual assault (2 patients); and (5) hospital personnel or those considered collateral damage shot, injured, or arrested (5 individuals). Most survivors and victims were Black, although the race and/or ethnicity of involved individuals was not routinely reported across the news stories. Mental illness was the most documented medical condition among patients injured or killed by health care-affiliated police and security personnel. This qualitative study of US news media found that police and security personnel in hospitals were reported to have perpetuated harm via excessive force, sexual assaults, injuring patients and health care workers, and fatal shootings. Compounded by a lack of transparency and accountability mechanisms, this may represent an underrecognized manifestation of structural racism at the organizational level. Policy suggestions include introducing accountability measures, deescalation techniques, and removing arms from hospital security personnel to reduce harm and fulfill health care's healing mission.

Representations of Pro-Choice Protesters in US News Media

Abstract In June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and, with that decision, revoked access to safe abortion for many women across the country. The decision was anticipated and immediately followed by protests from pro-choice campaigners, who challenged the decision, arguing that it would pose a threat to the health of women across the US and compound existing inequalities relating to ethnicity and social class. In this article, we use a corpus-based approach to Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the representation of the protests in US national newspapers between May and July of 2022. Focussing in particular on the representation of the protests’ worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment, we find that generally the protests are afforded legitimacy in the coverage, with only the representation of worthiness bucking this trend. Following the analysis, we consider the possible motivations for this somewhat complex picture and consider the broader implications and future directions for similar such protests and women’s reproductive rights more generally.

Partisan US News Media Representations of Syrian Refugees

We investigate how representations of Syrian refugees (2011-2021) differ across US partisan news outlets. We analyze 47,388 articles from the online US media about Syrian refugees to detail differences in reporting between left- and right-leaning media. We use various NLP techniques to understand these differences. Our polarization and question answering results indicated that left-leaning media tended to represent refugees as child victims, welcome in the US, and right-leaning media cast refugees as Islamic terrorists. We noted similar results with our sentiment and offensive speech scores over time, which detail possibly unfavorable representations of refugees in right-leaning media. A strength of our work is how the different techniques we have applied validate each other. Based on our results, we provide several recommendations. Stakeholders may utilize our findings to intervene around refugee representations, and design communications campaigns that improve the way society sees refugees and possibly aid refugee outcomes.

US news media’s framing of the ‘North Korean crisis’ under the Trump administration: The new ideological foreign affairs paradigm

On 11 February 2017, North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of the Trump administration. Over the ensuing year the North Korean government continued to defy international pressures through the intensification of its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. During this time frame, an escalation of adversarial rhetoric between the Trump administration and the Kim Jong-un military government gained widespread media attention for its potential to escalate into military aggression. This study analyzes USA Today coverage of the ‘North Korean crisis’, and its subsequent de-escalation following the announcements of diplomatic talks in March 2018 in order to gain insight into the nature of mainstream US media framing of the issue. The study found that US news media appropriates ingroup/outgroup dichotomies in the service of US interests. Analysis also revealed that the coverage embraced an ideologically-based narrative predicated on the rejection of an international system based on the moral imperatives of democracy and human rights in favor of a realpolitik interpretation of the international system in which actors compete for advantage.

Exemplification of child abduction in US news media: Testing media effects on parental perceptions and assessment of risk

Exemplification of child abduction in US news media: Testing media effects on parental perceptions and assessment of risk

American Politics and Media Relations

The American news media plays a vital role in the American political activities. It has long been regarded as the "fourth power" to exercise supervisory functions beyond administrative, legislative and judicial functions, and the "fourth branch" in cooperation with the actions of government, Congress and the Supreme Court. However, the freedom of the press in America is not unlimited. Media can influence politics, but the same government can influence, restrict and use media. Therefore, studying the connection between the US news media and the government, by clarifying the relationship between the two, we can partly grasp the limited reasons for the US press freedom and help a better understanding of American politics.

UNDERSTANDING ALTERED REALITY BY INDIAN NEWS MEDIA SPECIFICALLY IN CONTEXT OF BAUDRILLARD’S CONCEPT OF HYPERREALITY

Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and a postmodern critic, gave the concept of hyperreality in his work Simulacra and Simulation (1985). He criticised the US news media for covering the hyperreal and fake news. Similarly, this research scrutinizes the Indian news channels and their news topics. This empirical study also analyses the disadvantages of showing hyperreal news. A comparison between two news channels and their news headlines are also analysed to show the propaganda behind defaming the one community. This study is just a try to resuscitate news channels and to show how politics ruined the entire structure of news media for political benefits

US Media, Selective Exposure, and the Promotion of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Black and Latino Communities

Through selective exposure, this study examined the role the US news media played in encouraging or discouraging minority races from getting vaccinated. Through content analysis and focus groups, we were able to demonstrate that most media messages focused on prior beliefs in their reporting, therefore, discouraging the black and Latino minorities from getting the COVID-19 vaccinations. Further, while blacks and Latinos based their fears of the vaccines on health effects, white respondents were more concerned about government surveillance and the desire to go back to “normal” life after the quarantine. Ultimately, white respondents were more positive about vaccination arguing that they were tired of the quarantine and wanted normal life back.

Currents of Revolution: The Cuban Revolution’s Impact on the US News Media Industry, US Spanish-Language Media, and Latina/o Consumption

This article explores how the US news media was impacted by events in mid-twentieth century Cuba, namely, the 1959 Revolution and the demise of Havana as a Latin American media capital. This study argues that the Cuban Revolution and its exiles influenced the US news media industry in three significant ways: 1) propelled the expansion of US Spanish-language media, particularly the news, by incorporating Cuban media professionals and serving immigrant audiences from Cuba and later other Latin American nations; 2) removed and limited programs that angered the Cuban community by accommodating Cuban exile activists; and 3) dramatically increased coverage of Cuba and its refugees with an often anti-revolution position. By weaving together primary source materials and scholarly literature, this study reverses the conceptual direction of influence from the US shaping the Caribbean to the Caribbean’s impact on the US for a fuller picture of their transnational exchanges.

Image of the EAEU in the Leading U.S. News Media Outlets

At a time when representation in the digital and information environment becomes one of the most important factors in the development of the territories, as well as a full-fledged tool for achieving geopolitical and economic goals, the work on the formation of foreign policy images of the regions in foreign media space takes on special importance. In this article, based on the analysis of theoretical and methodological aspects of its use, the author distinguished between the concepts of "image" as a chaotically forming set of audience perceptions and "image" as a purposefully structured work on the formation of specific ideas about the territory. Taking into account that the measures stipulated by the Strategy for the Development of Eurasian Economic Integration until 2025 aimed at providing broad audience access to information about the Union are focused only on the population of the participating countries, and there is no purposeful work to form the image of the EAEU in foreign media, the author analyzed the image of the Eurasian Economic Union created in the leading American Internet media. The results of the frequency content analysis of the materials of the USA leading online news media, conducted within the study, as well as the emotional tone of these publications, demonstrate that the Eurasian Economic Union is in dire need of focused effort to create and consolidate a sustainable foreign policy image in the media space of the West. Already in 2017, the negative image of the integration association associated with Russia's aggression, actively formed by the leading US news media in 2014–2016, has lost relevance as uninteresting to the American audience and was deleted from the agenda.

Climate change risks and global warming dangers: a field analysis of online US news media

ABSTRACT Studies have shown that contrasting understandings of climate change (CC) and global warming (GW) are associated with political identities in the US, however, less is understood about how these differences are represented in news media. This study examines how the problem names CC and GW are associated with risk-related keywords in a field of online US news media. Results show that the contrast between CC and GW corresponds with a distinction between risk and danger, with newspapers and left/liberal media linking risk with CC and cable news and right/conservative media linking danger with GW. A secondary contrast between mainstream and alternative media shows mainstream news sites connecting both CC and GW to risk-related knowledge (uncertain, probability) while alternative left- and right-wing sites connect CC and GW to risk-related action (endanger, threaten). This study contributes to the understanding of climate risk by identifying how CC and GW are framed and politicized in the media through the use of risk-related keywords. These findings can inform how climate communicators and researchers engage with diverse and divergent audiences.

The Media Matters: Muslim American Portrayals and the Effects on Mass Attitudes

Muslim Americans are increasingly stigmatized and may be experiencing a backlash in the American news media and by the public. No study to date, however, has empirically assessed the sentiment of Muslim American cable news coverage over an extended period of time and evaluated its effects on mass attitudes. I address the following questions: How has the US news media portrayed Muslim Americans in its coverage? And, to what extent do these media portrayals affect American public opinion? I demonstrate that the media coverage of Muslims and Muslim Americans is negative and has increased over time. Compared to that of Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans, I find that Muslim American coverage is more negative. In a series of survey experiments, I find that negative news portrayals of Muslims and Muslim Americans increase hostility toward Muslim Americans and increase support for stringent policies targeting them, while positive portrayals have relatively weaker effects.

Homicide Incidents Involving Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder as Victims Reported in the US News Media, 2000-2019.

Recent research indicates that children with autism are at increased risk of maltreatment. We examined news media reports on homicide incidents involving children with autism as victims in the United States between 2000 and 2019. Of the 52 victims studied, 47 (90.4%) were male. Age of victims ranged from 2 to 20years (mean = 10.4 ± 5.3years). Parents and other caregivers accounted for 63.5% and 13.5% of the perpetrators, respectively. The leading injury mechanism was gunshot wounds (23.1%), followed by drowning (19.2%), and suffocation, strangulation, or asphyxiation (19.2%). The most commonly cited contributing factor (47.1%) was overwhelming stress from caring for the autistic child. These results underscore the importance of supporting services for caregivers of children with autism.

Energy, energy, read all about it: A thematic analysis of energy insecurity in the U.S. mainstream media from 1980 to 2019

We use thematic analysis to examine US news media articles (n = 575 from 192 outlets) about household energy insecurity issues from 1980 to 2019 as conveyed through extreme heat and cold-related events. The coverage tells stories of changes in climate patterns; rising costs of energy and changing energy landscapes; and potential for greater social and health inequality in tandem with a shrinking social safety net to support basic human needs. We found that media not only provides a body of evidence to substantiate academic and policy claims, but often precedes scholarly research in opening up new avenues for issue awareness, and highlighting lived experiences of energy insecurity. We highlight a triangular relationship across media coverage, policy output, and public interest, in which media plays a key role in germinating public response to policy, and influencing the nature of this response. We also offer critiques about how media has covered these issues that may have adverse policy implications.An overarching goal of this study is to demonstrate that there are insights to be gleaned from media coverage that confirm, extend, and challenge current policies and the scholarly and lay audience understanding of energy insecurity. These insights include, but are not limited to: making explicit the sociopolitical factors that both influence, and are exacerbated by, energy insecurity; including missing voices of those experiencing the compounding impacts of energy insecurity; and in turn, ways in which media coverage could propel policy to better address inequity dimensions of energy insecurity that current measures overlook.

Behind the Veil of Decentralization: Analyzing Blockchain Frames and Sponsors in US News

In recent years, “blockchain” has emerged as an industry buzzword, a technology that can solve pressing problems in economic inclusion, democracy, humanitarian aid, sustainability, and supply chain management among other things. Whether effective or not, this little-understood technology is championed as a way to change socio-economic power structures and democratize and decentralize established institutions like the financial system and government. However, these claims are often unsupported. The hype generated in the news and popular discourse about this technology often obscures questions of whether power relations are actually changing and how. Understanding the visible media frames as a proxy for the power contests that went into shaping discourse, this paper critically examines US news media coverage of blockchain between 2013 - 2018. It examines the news frames used to talk about blockchain, the sponsors of these frames, and how these factors have changed over the five-year period. The paper finds that blockchain-related news coverage is framed in six general ways: Disruptive, Harnessing, Skepticism, Community, Understanding, Menace. These frames, especially the disruptive and harnessing frames are mainly sponsored by big banks (like J.P. Morgan), big technology (like IBM and Microsoft), and Silicon Valley investors. Using this data, the paper argues that the narrative of blockchain as a democratizing/decentralizing technology is mainly pushed by these established institutions and that it is a smokescreen to prevent a critical examination of the use of the technology.