Frame-changing in the media coverage of a school shooting: The rise of Columbine as a national concern

This essay explores the media frame-changing process in the news coverage of the 1999 Columbine shootings, clarifying the news discourse focus on Columbine's national importance. The study applies the van Dijk/Bell scheme of media analysis to 683 news articles from print and broadcast media published within 30 days following the incident. Insight is offered into the thematic content of the Columbine coverage, including the school shooting event itself, reactions, and commentaries. Analysis indicates that the initial focus of the coverage was what happened at Columbine, but over time the news increasingly highlighted Columbine's national salience.     

Living in the Moment: Lags,Leads, and the Link Between Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy*

Objectives. Based on sharply divergent interpretations about the nature of the politics of organized interests, three competing perspectives imply that organized interests variously lead, lag, or are contemporaneous with legislative agendas. Methods. We contribute to this debate by presenting data using a short‐term timeframe to assess the sequence of the relationship between legislative agendas and lobbying activity; we examine the lags and leads in the relationship between legislative agendas in 1995, 1997, and 1999 and the density of state lobbying communities in 1997 using Gray and Lowery's (1996) energy, stability, area (ESA) model of interest system density. Results. The analysis provides little support for the lagging and leading hypotheses and strong support for the contemporaneous hypothesis. Conclusions. Although this analysis will not end all debates over the sequential relationship between legislative agendas and lobbying activity, it suggests that legislative agenda and interest system density are largely governed by within‐session dynamics.     

Organized Interests and Political Extortion: A Test of the Fetcher Bill Hypothesis*

Objectives. Although the Fetcher Bill Hypothesis, which is that legislators introduce bills in order to extort campaign contributions from organized interests, has been given new prominence by suggestions that it can provide a general explanation of the composition of legislative agendas and the structure of interest communities, tests of the hypothesis are narrow, rare, and indirect. We provide an alternative test to more directly assesses its core implications. Methods. We test the hypothesis using single‐year and pooled‐regression analyses of 1995, 1997, and 1999 data on lobby registrations by organized interests in the American states—a venue providing substantial variation in legislative activity, the density of lobbying organizations, and the campaign finance systems that are presumed to drive rent seeking. Results. The tests provide little evidence that policy agendas induce lobby registrations. Conclusions. These results indicate that the Fetcher Bill Hypothesis cannot provide a sufficient account of the composition of either legislative agendas or lobbying communities.     

Agenda Setting,Public Opinion,and the Issue of Immigration Reform*

Objective. Agenda‐setting theory is used to motivate hypotheses about how media coverage of immigration influences public perceptions of its importance. The authors seek to offer a more complete explanation of public opinion on immigration by exploring differences in the effects of immigration news in border and nonborder states. Method. This article employs content analyses of newspaper coverage of immigration and Gallup public opinion data over a 12‐month period (January–December 2006). Respondents' identification of immigration as a “Most Important Problem” is modeled as a conditional relationship between border state/nonborder state residence and media coverage, ethnic context, and individual‐level demographics. Results. Media attention to immigration is greater in border states than in nonborder states; as a result, residents of border states are more likely to identify immigration as a most important problem than are residents of nonborder states. Conclusions. The analyses point to the importance of geography and news coverage in explanations of public opinion on immigration.     

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.     

When Southern Symbolism Meets the Pork Barrel: Opportunity for Executive Leadership*

Objectives. Many empirical studies have sought to explain executive‐legislative relations at the federal level; however, much less research on this topic is available at the state level. This article examines legislative‐gubernatorial relations in Georgia using the highly visible, emotion‐laden, and politically costly issue of changing the state flag. Methods. Using probit models, estimated probabilities for various sets of hypothetical legislators are constructed to explain the vote in each house of the Georgia General Assembly. Results. In the absence of executive pressure, constituency characteristics, specifically district racial composition, dominated legislative decision making on the governor's initiative. In the Senate, where there was adequate time for lobbying before the vote, the carrot of additional school construction funding weighed heavily in legislators' vote calculus. Conclusions. This study demonstrates that governors can, and do, use district‐specific benefits as a tool to help ensure the success of their legislative agendas.     

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.     

An Experimental Test of the Effects of Fictional Framing on Attitudes*

Objectives. Most studies of media effects in political communication focus on news media. A smaller body of work extends theories of news media effects to fictional entertainment media. Just as news media engage in priming and agenda setting, these studies suggest that fictional media do as well. In this study, we deal with fictional media's framing of issues. No research has sought to test the effects of framing in explicitly fictional media on political opinions. We develop the outlines of a theory we call “fictional framing” and test it in an experiment. Methods. Participants in our treatment group watched the film Cider House Rules. The movie frames the issue of abortion in the case of incest in a pro‐choice way, and frames morality in terms of following one's own conscience. Results. The film influenced opinions in ways consistent with the framing of these issues. Conclusions. Since abortion opinions and moral values tend to be entrenched, we consider this a strong first test of the effects of fictional framing.     

Creative connections: parenting capacity, reading with children and practitioner assessment and intervention

This paper presents some findings from a study of the views of 33 parents from a diversity of backgrounds with children between 0 and 12. Twenty‐two parents were using family support services. They were asked about their views on ‘parenting capacity’ based on the dimensions of The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and Their Families (Department of Health et al.) which are now incorporated into the Common Assessment Framework used in Every Child Matters (Department for Education and Skills). They were also asked about reading with their children and how this enhanced their parenting capacities. Their responses were analysed using the parenting capacity dimensions of The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and Their Families. It became apparent that this common activity (parent/child reading) contributed much to children's development and to the quality of the child/parent relationship. It also enhanced parenting capacity as described in the parenting capacity dimensions. This paper presents that part of the findings which illustrates the creative connections that exist between the activity of parents and children reading together and the parenting capacity dimensions social workers use in assessment and intervention. These findings are relevant to practitioners working within current policy and practice agendas in children's services, which promote multidisciplinary working and non‐stigmatizing assessments and interventions.     

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress*

Objective. Despite the increasingly diverse legislative records of African‐American members of Congress, much of the population continues to believe that African‐American legislators are interested only in minority issues. If African‐American House members are becoming more like their nonblack colleagues, then why do many citizens continue to hold these stereotypes about African‐American legislators? Methods. We examine local television news coverage of House members and compare the coverage received by African‐American and nonblack incumbents. Results. We find that local television newscasts devote more coverage to African‐American members of Congress but this coverage is also more race oriented, especially in less diverse markets. In fact, local television stations produce more race‐oriented coverage of African‐American legislators regardless of their legislative records on minority issues. Conclusions. Local television news stations may be partially responsible for the prevailing stereotype of African‐American House members who are narrowly focused on race‐oriented issues.     

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.     

A political-economic theory of relevance: Explaining climate change inaction

Why have societies failed to effectively respond to climate change? We address the question of climate change inaction by (1) examining how an unambiguously ominous report about climate change (IPCC 2018) was made palatable by news media and (2) explaining why climate change is typically unthematized in everyday life. Drawing on Adorno and Schutz, we develop a political-economic theory of relevance. The imperative to accumulate capital is not only a social-structural reality but also shapes why particular facts are regarded as relevant in experience (topical relevance) as well as how relevant material is interpreted (interpretative relevance) and acted toward (motivational relevance). Applying this framework, we (1) argue that media popularizations of the IPCC's dire Global Warming of 1.5°C (2018) are constituted by relevance systems conditioned by a capitalist social context and (2) strengthen Ollinaho's (2016) Schutzian explanation for climate change inaction by examining how productive relations and the culture industry perpetuate climate change irrelevance in everyday life. Schutz's framework helps conceptualize the intricacies of ideology and, when revised with Adorno's sociology, shines new light on an old question: the relations between social conditions and knowledge.     

The Politics of Expertise in Congress and the News Media

Objective. Experts are increasingly active in U.S. policymaking, but what accounts for their varied visibility is unclear. The agenda-setting and media studies literature suggest that experts are generally neutral, distant actors in policymaking whose products are made visible by Congress and the news media when helpful. This study examines how and when the intentional efforts of experts can also affect their relative visibility and whether a proliferation of expert organizations, as has occurred in American policymaking in recent decades, is correctly viewed as creating conditions for more rational, thoughtful decisionmaking, as some existing scholarship might suggest. Methods. I consider the conveyance of expertise among a sample of 66 public policy think tanks in congressional testimony and three national newspapers between 1991 and 1995. In a multivariate analysis, I evaluate what accounts for the quantity of congressional and media visibility. I then use a content analysis to examine differences in the nature of visibility received by think tanks. Results. Washington-based think tanks and think tanks of no identifiable ideology have some advantage in gaining congressional and media visibility overall. Think tanks deemed credible receive more, and more substantive, visibility than those that are ideological and marketing-oriented. Conclusions. Cumulatively, my findings suggest that more credible, staid, not identifiably ideological expert organizations are slightly favored by congressional staff members and journalists to provide guidance on issues and news stories. More ideological and marketing-oriented sources of expertise, by contrast, are more relied upon to build support for ideas, either in staged congressional hearings or on the editorial pages of newspapers. Expert organizations can affect their relative visibility; the evidence is mixed on whether their proliferation makes policymaking and decisionmaking better informed or more rational or thoughtful.     

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.     

Determinants of presidential position taking in Congress, 1949–1995

In this paper we seek to explain the activity presidential position taking on roll call votes in the House. Position taking may help presidents pursue their policy agendas, but time and available resources constrain their ability to take positions. Even though position taking is a discretionary presidential action, it occurs in the legislative arena and, thus, presidents must consider elements in both institutions as well as outside conditions when making this decision. Accordingly, we posit a multiple perspectives approach to explain the number of presidential positions on votes in the House. Our multivariate two-stage least squares regression reveals that variables from all three environments (executive, legislative and exogenous) within our multiple perspectives approach are necessary to adequately explain presidential position taking overall and when divided according to domestic and foreign policy positions.     

受众的细分对媒体定位的作用

准确的定位是新闻媒体生存与发展的基石。在市场经济条件下 ,受众因素对媒体发展的影响越来越大。新闻媒体要做到定位准确、风格鲜明 ,就必须对受众群体做细致的分类研究 ,引用受众的细分原则 ,使其在新闻传播中发挥应有的作用     

The Core Executive's Approach to Regulation: From 'Better Regulation' to 'Risk-Tolerant Deregulation'

This article examines changes in the New Labour core executive's approach to regulation and its relationship with risk, through analysing documentary, legislative and press sources concerning approaches to regulatory decision‐making. It claims that an initial commitment to ‘better regulation’ has gradually been replaced by explicit support for deregulation. A reduction in the scope of regulation was also promoted by the Thatcher and Major governments. The New Labour core executive shares previous (Conservative) administrations’ concern to include business in deregulatory decision‐making. However, the article claims that there is one significant difference in the New Labour deregulatory approach: a new toleration of risk. Deregulation is, now, described as a corrective to regulators’ over‐reactions to perceived risks, which, it is claimed, are holding back economic and technological progress. However, this new approach excludes competing views concerning how risk should be regulated. In particular, it does not engage with widespread popular views that governments should continue to protect against risk.     

English‐ and Spanish‐Language Media Coverage of Immigration: A Comparative Analysis*

Objective. We apply economic theories of news to explain differences between English‐ and Spanish‐language newspaper coverage of immigration. Methods. Using content analysis and contextual data, we examine newspaper coverage of immigration as a function of economic incentives of news organizations and the language of the newspaper outlet. Results. The results indicate that Spanish‐language news outlets generate a larger volume of coverage and more positive coverage of immigration when compared to English‐language news outlets. Conclusions. This specific topic is important and politically relevant because of the potential implications variability in media coverage of this issue hold for public opinion on immigration.     

信息能力与压力型立法(英文)

基于媒体话语的压力型立法是立法者信息能力不足的产物。如果立法者的信息能力不能有效应对现代法律规制活动的知识挑战,那么将无法抵御媒体话语过度渗透,导致立法与媒体之间的关联过于紧密,形成一旦媒体热议、立法就积极跟进的压力型立法现象。法律制度是具有恒常性的规则,而压力型立法往往失却应有的冷静、客观、慎重与全面,展现出背离理性立法的内在机理的决策特点,引发一系列既不公平、也无效率的再分配效应。压力型立法凸显了信息在公共政策选择和制度设计中的重要性,应当实施立法绩效评估制度,以此为立法者重塑信息能力提供充分的激励,确保立法的科学性与合理性。     

Local newspapers,House members,and source usage

Political communication scholarship has established the standard operating procedures for national media sourcing of government and politicians. The literature shows a strong reliance by the news media on official and national-level news sources that support the status quo. This paper investigates the less known subject of local newspaper sourcing practices on local House members. House members rely on the local media to communication with constituents but we have little insight into who provides the source material for coverage. Results show that local papers often parallel the national political media by depending on official and nonlocal sources for reporting ostensibly local political angles. Further, members’ press releases, papers’ size, and presence of a Washington bureau help explain local papers’ sourcing practices.