Slanted Objectivity? Perceived Media Bias,Cable News Exposure,and Political Attitudes*

Objectives. This research explores the consequences of a fragmented television news audience. The recent proliferation of a wide array of television news sources has influenced the manner in which a large number of Americans get their information about politics and government. The political consequences of media fragmentation and the polarization of the U.S. television news audience are explored. Methods. I analyze data on television news‐gathering habits and political attitudes collected from several surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center during the 2004 presidential election campaign. Results. The Fox News Channel has been the main beneficiary of television news fragmentation by appealing to those individuals who have become disillusioned with what they perceive as a liberally‐biased mainstream media. The findings show that the Fox News audience has a distinct set of political attitudes regarding President Bush and his opposition. Evidence also indicates that the Fox News audience has distinct voting behavior patterns, even when controlling for party identification. Finally, the results illustrate that Fox News watchers have perceptions of political reality that differ from the rest of the television news audience. Conclusions. The television news audience is divided along political lines. This division could contribute toward further political polarization among the U.S. mass public as the content of television news coverage of politics becomes less and less homogenized.     

Exploring the Gender Gap in Support for a Woman for President

The gender gap in support for a female presidential candidate gathered much media attention with Hillary Clinton as a frontrunner for the 2008 democratic presidential nomination. Two common explanations for this gap are that women have more liberal gender role and political attitudes. We contend that another important, and distinct, factor for heightened support among women is a shared social identity. We tested these three explanations across two studies. In Study 1, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both attitudes toward women and sex independently predict a significant proportion of the variance in willingness to elect a woman for president. In Study 2, hierarchical regression analyses showed that when entered together, attitudes toward female authority and sex independently predict support, but when political attitudes was entered, only sex and political attitudes predicted support for Clinton. Finally, as expected, when primed with their gender identity, women increased their support for Clinton and men decreased their support, and women perceived her more favorably and men less so. In sum, these studies strongly support the arguments that the gender gap in support for female presidential candidates stems in part from women's more liberal gender role and political attitudes, and also from women sharing the same gender social identity as a female candidate for commander in chief .     

Measuring Media Bias: A Content Analysis of Time and Newsweek Coverage of Domestic Social Issues, 1975–2000*

Objective. This study is an effort to produce a more systematic, empirically‐based, historical‐comparative understanding of media bias than generally is found in previous works. Methods. The research employs a quantitative measure of ideological bias in a formal content analysis of the United States' two largest circulation news magazines, Time and Newsweek. Findings are compared with the results of an identical examination of two of the nation's leading partisan journals, the conservative National Review and the liberal Progressive. Results. Bias scores reveal stark differences between the mainstream and the partisan news magazines' coverage of four issue areas: crime, the environment, gender, and poverty. Conclusion. Data provide little support for those claiming significant media bias in either ideological direction.     

State-level personality and presidential vote share in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections

Recent research has examined how variation across the states in the “Big Five” personality trait taxonomy helps explain the proportion of votes the presidential candidates receive in the states, concluding that state personality traits had a direct effect on presidential vote share in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential elections. The current study has three goals: First, to examine the influence of personality traits on Barack Obama's vote share in the 2008 and 2012 elections; second to test whether the influence of personality traits on vote share holds under stricter controls for political factors and white racial prejudice; and, third, to test for potential meditating effects of state-level political characteristics and white racial prejudice in linking state-level personality traits with Obama's vote share. The findings indicate that two state personality traits – conscientiousness and openness – had indirect effects on Obama's 2008 and 2012 vote share through their influence on state ideology, partisanship, and white racial prejudice.     

Journalists as first responders

ABSTRACT

Covering terrorist attacks has posed numerous challenges to mainstream media across the world. Bringing information to the public quickly remains a primary goal for news media, but the journalistic duty to tell the truth comes with an increased responsibility for the accuracy of reports. When news is broken by civilian eyewitnesses and is posted by social media before it has even gone through the barest of verification checks, news media editors struggle to fulfil the task of informing the public while reporting on stories that hold the potential to alarm the audience. This paper offers some insights into the ways the New Zealand news media organised reporting on the March 15th terrorist attack in Christchurch. Based on face-to-face interviews with selected editors of major news organisations in New Zealand, it investigates the ways they operated in this situation. It explores key moments in editorial decision making on 15 March 2019, the first day of coverage of the terrorist attack. It focuses on the ‘first responder’ elements of news media work – speed and accuracy in providing information about the mosque attacks – to identify how journalistic norms are adapted and changed to report this breaking news.     

The Coingate effect: The impact of scandal on attitudes toward,state and federal political actors

What happens when a major, well publicized state-level scandal occurs? Do opinions of federal politicians improve because of relative comparisons to state politicians caught in the scandal? Do attitudes toward all politicians suffer? Little work has been done to investigate about how scandals related to one level of government affect attitudes about political actors at other levels. We investigate what happens when a major and well publicized state-level scandal occurs. Using individual-level public opinion data collected during the summer of 2006, we analyze the impact that a state-level scandal had on citizen approval of state and federal political actors, considering the mediating impact of exposure to media coverage of the scandal. Overall consumption of news coverage of state governors boosts approval of the governor relative to the president. At the same time, however, citizens exposed to negative scandalous news coverage of their governor show a decline in relative gubernatorial approval.     

自然灾害与政治信任：基于汶川大地震的自然实验设计

在当代中国,自然灾害如何在短期内影响公众的政治信任,其作用机制如何？本文使用在汶川大地震发生前后收集的调查数据,试图通过自然实验设计来回答上述问题。本研究发现：在时间维度上,外生的自然灾害会在短时间内提升公众的政治信任;在结构上,地震对公众政治信任的边际增长效应呈现差序性特征,即对区县政府政治信任的正向作用最强,而对中央政府政治信任的强化作用最弱。在此过程中,国家主导的媒体宣传起到了关键的中介作用,即公众接收官方媒体信息的频率越高,其政治信任在短时间内提升的幅度越大。研究表明,灾后短期内的政府动员与鼓舞性的媒体议程设置是提升公众政治信任的重要影响因素,但从长远来看,切实加强政府的长效治理能力建设始终是巩固政治合法性的关键。     

Political opinion leadership and advertisement attitude: The moderating roles of cognitive and affective responses to political messages

Political opinion leadership is a type of viewer involvement measure that may be relevant to predicting the viewer's attitude toward an advertisement with political content. This study was designed to investigate if cognitive and affective responses to political messages in fashion advertisements play any moderating roles in the relationship between political opinion leadership and advertisement attitude. The results suggest that effectiveness of political content in the advertisement for politically involved consumers may be determined by how clearly the message is communicated to the viewers. Discussions were also made as to the distinction between textual and pictorial messages and to how the viewer's recognition of a pictorial message can be a factor affecting the impact of political opinion leadership on attitude toward advertisement with political content.     

“寄希望于台湾人民”的两岸新闻交流政策诠释

两岸新闻交流的深入开展是落实“寄希望于台湾人民”对台政策的应有之义，也是两岸关系和平发展的重要保障。“寄希望于台湾人民”的新闻交流政策，体现了当局对台湾人民的“尊重、信赖、依靠”，也彰显了台湾人民在两岸新闻交流中的重要地位，更为两岸新闻交流提供了良好的契机。历史与现实表明，两岸媒体能够在促进两岸人民间的理解与沟通，消除误解与隔阂，增进诚意与善意，不断凝聚共识，夯实互信基础，以期为两岸最终实现统一发挥良好的舆论环境作用。当前，两岸已实现在经贸、文化、体育、学术、政治等宽领域、多层次的交流合作，同时，两岸媒体的报道也从过去的特殊化“宣传”逐渐发展到以“新闻专业”为原则的常态化交往。这正是两岸人民交往与新闻交流实现互动的显现。     

Touching Consumers,engaging the Senses in Consumption

ABSTRACT

For years, the Campbell's Soup Company advertised their brand of soup through a message of “Mmm, Mmm, Good.” This slogan reached mass audiences primarily through visual and auditory media messages of television and print. Campbell's recently switched to a new form of advertising to consumers through an IAd application. The format works through Apple iPhones by first showing an interactive ad teaser, “You're getting warmer,” then when clicked through asks consumers to download cooking applications individually to their iPhones. This shift represents a change in appealing to consumers' senses and social sensibilities. The former media approach appealed to a rational social sensibility and mass audiences of eating soup at home as an enjoyment shared with others. The latter iAd slogan and iPhones media approach appeals to a more tactile sense and individualistic sensibility. This article explores the particular confluence of social, sensory, and media factors that intersect with a marketed food brand, and discusses its implications for the way manufacturers mix and blend new sensory messages and mobile media channels to appeal to a new sensibility in people's changing eating habits.     

The incredible shrinking president and the economy

This paper employs regression analysis to investigate alternative explanations of presidential approval ratings. Since perhaps the greatest determinant, actual performance, is not readily measurable, the analysis is restricted to the first and fourth month of each term, a period sufficiently short that performance might not be expected to be clearly established. Strong empirical evidence is found to support: (1) the importance of economic conditions, especially those projected for the upcoming quarter; (2) a handicap in approval ratings today of about 11 points when compared to 1948; (3) an advantage (of about 5 to 13 points) enjoyed by Republican Presidents; and (4) the existence of a honeymoon (of about 6 points) in the first month of a presidential term that dissipates by the fourth month. Perhaps most important, strong evidence is found to discount the value of one and four month approval ratings as an accurate reflection of public evaluation of a President’s abilities or performance. Instead, those ratings are almost entirely explained by factors outside the control of the individual Presidents.     

Mediated Political Communication in Australia: leading issues,new evidence

New 2007 survey data on political communication is used to study the relation between commercial and ABC/SBS television consumption and Australian political and civic culture. The first section outlines the demographic characteristics of viewers who rely, respectively, for their news and current affairs, on commercial as compared with public service television. This is followed by a profile of popular views on the concentration of media ownership in Australia. The paper then shows that levels of trust in other people are higher for those who rely on public service television. Similarly, knowledge about basic constitutional facts is shown to be positively related to a preference for public service television news consumption. The same holds for civic engagement. The conclusions imply that Australians generally favour stronger public interest regulation of commercial television broadcasting. The conclusion explains that media regulation in Australia generally lags behind public preferences for a more explicitly democratic regulatory regime.     

Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media

The media is often referred to as a social institution in that it is a major element of contemporary Western society. Through the media, social processes create narratives or stories within interpretative frameworks that are embedded in the cultural and political assumptions of the wider society. Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001, the media has played a crucial role in the developing discourse on contemporary terrorism. In the Australian context, this discourse has emerged as one which implicates Australian Muslims, constructing them as a homogenous monolith with an underlying implication that Islam, and by association Australian Muslims, is secular resistant and at odds with the values of the liberal democratic state. Several textual analyses attest to the bias against Muslims in the popular Australian media discourse. However, there have been no studies into how Australian Muslims are interpreting and responding to this discourse. Based on research into the attitudes and perceptions of the media among Australian Muslims, this paper argues that the interpretation of the media discourse as defiantly anti‐Muslim and the perception of the media as a powerful purveyor of public opinion has impacted on the construction of Australian Muslim identity. In responding to this discourse, Australian Muslims are creating new narratives of belonging which either reinforce or reject the underlying messages that situate them outside mainstream Australia.     

Conservative Ideas and Social Policy in the United States

This article explores social policy development in the United States since the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency. Starting from an analysis of the discourse about compassionate conservatism at the centre of the 2000 presidential campaign and proceeding to a discussion of the meaning of the more recent ownership society blueprint, it underlines the fragmented nature of the conservative policy agenda in the United States. Yet, the article suggests that, despite this fragmentation, the ideological dominance of the right and the related absence of needed reform in key policy areas are of great significance for the future of federal social policy. Overall, the article shows how paying close attention to the nature of conservative ideas improves our understanding of social policy development in the United States. As argued, the old liberal and the traditionalist sides of American conservatism have inspired distinct yet related blueprints and reform proposals that both promote a scaling-down of existing federal social programmes and a return to traditional forms of economic security (i.e. charity and personal savings). The article underlines the relationship between these blueprints and policy drift.     

Parties,Institutional Control,and Trust in Government*

Objectives. Partisanship should affect evaluations of Congress just as it affects evaluations of the president, and these institutional evaluations should affect political trust. We argue that the relationship between partisanship and trust is dependent on partisan control of Congress and that much of party identification's influence on trust occurs indirectly through approval of governmental institutions. Methods. Using data collected before and after the 2002 congressional elections by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut, we examine changes in frequency distributions and mean values for trust and institutional approval. We use multivariate regression models and a path model to estimate the causes of political trust and self‐perceived change in trust. Results. We find evidence that party control of government and party identification are important in explaining trust and institutional approval. The Republican takeover of the Senate led Republicans to evaluate the Senate more favorably and to become more trusting of the government, while having the opposite effect on Democrats. Conclusions. The changes in approval and trust resulting from the 2002 elections suggest that at least some segment of the population is cognizant of changes in the political environment and updates its views of government when the political environment changes.     

Political information,gender and the vote: the differential impact of organizations,personal discussion,and the media on the electoral decisions of women and men

Although there are many demonstrated ways in which men and women approach politics differently, we know very little about how sources of political information, e.g., mass media, political organizations, differentially influence the vote choices of men and women. Using a rich, contextual dataset containing measures not only of respondent perceptions of political information, but actual content coding of those sources of political information, we estimate how television, newspapers, personal discussants, organizations, and political parties may have impacted the voting of men and women in the 1992 U.S. presidential election. We find that women’s vote choices are more likely than men’s to be influenced by the organizations to which they belong. Women are also more likely to respond to television news with a hostile media bias—they see television newscasts as definitively favoring the candidate that they oppose. We address possible explanations for these patterns of results and point towards directions for additional research.     

Online news diffusion dynamics and public opinion formation: A case study of the controversy over judges’ personal opinion expression on SNS in Korea

On the Internet, the line between news and opinion becomes blurred in terms of content and form. In this sense, the processes of news diffusion on the Internet and online public opinion formation are integrated. This study selects one Korean example about the private tweet of a judge about government social network service (SNS) regulation and analyzes citation networks from one news/opinion to another news/opinion. By relying on social network analysis (SNA) methods, this study examines how news/opinions diffuse and how they interact and influence each other's ideological frame within agencies sharing the same ideology and between agencies whose ideologies contrast. The results show that public discourse on the Internet is clearly polarized and fragmented along political ideological lines. Additionally, the findings show that the winner is the conservative bloc because it succeeds in achieving within-bloc solidarity and ensures the resonance of news frames with the cultural values of Korean society. Implications for these findings in modern democracy are also discussed.     

When Does the Public's Issue Agenda Affect the Media's Issue Agenda (and Vice-Versa)? Developing a Framework for Media-Public Influence*

Objective. The agenda-setting literature has demonstrated the media's ability to set the issue agenda for the public. One byproduct of this work is that researchers have produced some evidence suggesting that the audience will, on occasion, set the issue agenda for the media. Given disparate sets of findings, researchers do not have a framework to better understand on which issues the media will set the agenda for the public and on which issues the public will set the agenda for the media. It is the goal of this article to provide empirical support for a framework suggesting that the events comprising issue areas predetermine the direction of influence between the media's and the public's issue agendas. Methods. I construct a historical data set comprised of 35,000 stories from the nightly network news and responses to Gallup's Most Important Problem question. I look for evidence of causal influence between news issue content and public issue concerns using Granger analysis and vector autoregression. Results. Issue areas comprised of spectacular events, such as defense, will be reported by the media and subsequently affect the salience the audience assigns to those issues. In issues not normally comprised of spectacular and singular events, such as energy and environment, public issue concerns appear to drive issue coverage in the news. Issues such as transportation and education, which comprise few spectacular events and little public concern, will receive sparse coverage in the media. Conclusion. The findings provide support for a framework based on events; the types of events that typically comprise issue areas will affect the likelihood of those issues coming on the news agenda. This then affects the direction of influence between the public and the media. The framework supported here allows for the integration of the media effects and media content literatures. This has implications for understanding how the news agenda is constructed and how the commercial media meets democratic ideals.