Fake News Is Real: The Significance and Sources of Disbelief in Mainstream Media in Trump’s America

Are appeals to discredit mainstream media reporting of political news in the guise of “fake news” merely a diversion from more fundamental threats to democratic politics and policymaking? Or is the emerging belief in “fake news” itself a looming threat? Using data from the Voter Study Group’s panel survey, we examine the relationship between disbelief in mainstream media and a wide range of social attitudes and policy preferences. We find that in December 2016, just after Trump’s election, belief in fake news wields an outsized influence, independent of partisanship, ideology, media consumption, and other established foundations of public opinion. The effects of fake news beliefs are especially pronounced on key elements of Trump’s rhetoric as candidate and as president—hostility toward immigrants, racial and religious minorities, gender equality, perceptions of America’s “greatness,” and even support for democratic norms and institutions itself. We also find some evidence that by January 2019, the belief in fake news has become even more focally associated with Trump. These findings portend the possibility of an emerging exclusionary, populist variant of American conservatism, of which disbelief in media institutions is a key component.     

Making the Lead: Article and Contextual Correlates of Front-Page Coverage within the Immigration-Crime Debate

Abstract

While an abundance of literature demonstrates that immigration is associated with lower rates of crime, public opinion expects the opposite. There remain many reasons for such incongruity, including crystalized political ideologies and structural barriers to assimilation. The current study examines another important dimension: media narratives among the most prominent immigration and crime news articles. Specifically, we explore how news outlets narratively describe or “frame” the link between immigration and crime and, in turn, how such frames influence the prominence of news stories. Using content analysis of over 3,800 articles from 2008 to 2012 geo-located and paired with a host of macro-level data, multi-level models reveal that (1) one-third of local stories describe immigration as crime-increasing; (2) articles that link immigration to rising rates of crime are more likely to appear on the front page of newspapers, as are stories describing immigration’s impact on the justice system or the rights of immigrants within it; and (3) articles published in places with lower rates of crime, higher median household incomes, and smaller foreign-born populations are more likely to feature on the front page. We conclude with implications for ongoing public policy debates and research on immigration and crime.     

CONSTRUCTING A POLITICAL SPECTACLE:

Murray Edelman (1988) argued that media accounts evoke a spectacle that is a construction — an interpretation reflecting the social situations of the agents that produced it. Events take on meanings that perpetuate political roles, statuses and ideologies. Examining this perspective, this study compares the accounts of the “Crisis in the Gulf” constructed by a leading American newspaper, The New York Times, and a leading Indonesian newspaper, Kompas. The research bears on two related questions. First, is the account of this political event offered by each of these newspapers better understood as a symbolic representation of political reality or as a symbolic construct reflecting and serving political, economic and ideological interests? Second, do the accounts offered by the two newspapers differ in this regard?The New York Times operates within the context of a “free press” system while Kompas operates as a “developmental press.” Comparison suggests whether formal media system norms affect media news content.     

Political scandals, “black materials,” and changing backstage imaginary in the Hong Kong press, 2001–2015

This article examines changes in political communication in Hong Kong in the past 15 years by analyzing the portrayals in mainstream newspapers of the political “backstage,” that is, the part of the political process that is kept from public view. Specifically, the empirical analysis focuses on how the media have utilized the phrase “black materials” in association with political scandals. Based on the qualitative textual analysis of news and commentary articles published in six local newspapers, the findings showed that a significant change occurred in media portrayals of “black material collection” during the study period. Before 2012, the practice was largely ad hoc or tied to elections, and the collection of black materials followed largely legal means. After 2012, the practice was portrayed as routinized, pervasive, and illegal. The changes in the media portrayals both reflected and constructed China as a powerful state with increasing levels of intrusion on Hong Kong affairs.     

Exploring the formation of the “leave-it-to-experts” storyline during the initial outbreak of the 2013 smog hazard in Beijing

Beijing’s smog hazard is one of the most urgent issues on China’s public agenda. Drawing on the recently developed dynamic discourse coalition (DDC) approach, this article examines the ways in which the hazard’s initial outbreak in early 2013 was reported by four news sources: the Xinhua News Agency; China Daily; South China Morning Post; and the Associated Press. The findings suggest that although domestic and overseas media first provided different explanations for the hazard, these were eventually consolidated into the same problem-solving discourse of “leave-it-to-experts.” This discourse included a proposal to address the hazard under the current political economic structure of industrial capitalism. The proposal, however, was constrained by an elitist bias that downplayed China’s existing social and regional inequalities. The article argues that environmental challenges such as the smog hazard call for not only a sustainable model to direct China’s future development, but also the explicit recognition of the country’s existing environmental injustices.     

A comparison of “black” and “white” integration attitudes on a deep‐south campus: A research note

A survey of “racial” attitudes on a deep‐South university campus indicates that both “black” and “white” students strongly support desegregation—equality of political and economic rights including access to public facilities. Although “blacks” are receptive to integration also, the majority of “whites” reject “blacks” socially.     

Media use and political learning: Comparing Trump supporters to celebrity candidate voters

This study examines whether political media use behaviors of voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election align with those of “celebrity candidate voters” portrayed in the literature. The study used a national online survey (N = 1,608) conducted during the 2016 primary, and findings reveal that Trump supporters, more than other voters, are driven by entertainment motivations and follow campaign news using entertainment media: specifically, the video-sharing site YouTube. Although Trump voters are interested in the campaign, their level of political knowledge is lower than other voters, and no one media outlet made a significant contribution to their learning. A comparison group of other voters showed significant knowledge gains from news websites and Twitter. Results for Trump voters are consistent with scholars’ characterization of the celebrity candidate audience, particularly in studies suggesting that celebrity politicians may increase citizens’ engagement through entertainment gratifications rather than by a desire to become informed.     

The use of political motherhood in Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising and aftermath

ABSTRACT

Political motherhood, which uses traditional motherhood to mobilize and sustain women’s political participation, is understudied in political science. Women played a significant role in Egypt’s Arab Spring and its aftermath by “bargaining with patriarchy” and strategically using traditional motherhood to access the political sphere. In this article, we develop a theoretical argument based on the work of Gentry, Carreon and Moghadam and Amar. We illustrate it with examples drawn from news articles on women’s political activism and social media posts by Egyptian activists. Our argument explores how women’s agency and the larger political context in which women operate reveals how political motherhood takes the particular shape that it does. In the context of Egypt, we examine how the state’s choice to highlight women as “hypervisible” citizens, worthy of protection, backfired. Through a bottom-up political motherhood, women used their respectability as mothers in need of state protection against the state, thereby legitimizing anti-Mubarak and anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations and challenging these governments.     

Women’s Political Firsts and Symbolic Representation

ABSTRACT

The extent to which politics is still a “man’s game” is made evident every time a top political office has a female holder for the first time. These incredibly revealing moments may give a new social meaning to women in politics—women’s political presence—and women and politics—gendered social constructions about women’s capacity to rule. This article explores the types of gendered mediation underpinning the representation of first-ever women serving in historically male-dominated political offices in Spain. It shows that gender media frames are pervasive, which may lead to an effective annihilation of women’s symbolic representation.     

Finding the Truth in Politics: An Empirical Validation of the Epistemic Political Efficacy Concept

Self-efficacy theory suggests that one’s perceived ability to successfully find facts may motivate political information seeking. A telephone survey of voters in a presidential campaign attempted to further validate the concept of epistemic political efficacy (EPE), or belief one can discover the “truth” in politics, and applied it to modern information-seeking behaviors. This study of North Carolina registered voters (N = 605) demonstrates that EPE adds predictive power beyond commonly used measures such as individual political efficacy for contemporary media use variables like online information seeking and partisan cable viewing. EPE was a stronger positive predictor of online information seeking than individual political efficacy. In addition, viewing partisan cable shows had a stronger relationship with EPE than mainstream TV news viewing, and EPE significantly predicted MSNBC viewing, even after controlling for partisanship. In a word, voters who are high in the belief that political facts or “truths” exist take steps to find and understand them.     

Framing and immigration through the trump era

For the last decade, undocumented or illegal immigration has been one of the most contested policy issues in the United States, with significant news attention on policies affecting the undocumented population, ranging from deportations to comprehensive immigration reform, the DREAM Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite these prominent and multifaceted policy debates, scholarship on media framing and public opinion remain more focused on the portrayal of immigrants rather than policies affecting them. In general, scholars find that policy frames are far more consequential to public opinion than equivalency frames (variations in how news media describe unauthorized immigrants, either as “illegal” or “undocumented”) or episodic frames (whether news articles are heavy on human‐interest stories rather than policy facts and statistics). Also, negative frames generally have stronger effects than positive frames, and these effects sometimes vary by partisanship and family migration history. Finally, the relative infrequency of powerful frames in news stories, like a life spent in the United States, provides opportunities for advocates to move public opinion on immigration policy. These findings have important implications for future battles over immigration policy in the United States, which show no signs of abating.     

Diverging patterns of interaction around news on social media: insularity and partisanship during the 2018 Italian election campaign

ABSTRACT

The paper considers how social media ecologies are affecting partisan engagement around political news and online attention economies by investigating the case of the 2018 Italian general election. By analyzing Twitter and Facebook interactions around political news in the lead-up to the election, we shed light on levels of insularity characterizing sources preferred by different partisan communities and investigate how specific patterns of active attention emerge around different sources and around stories proposing different framing of specific political actors. Our findings indicate that, on Twitter, sources mainly shared by supporters of populist parties (the Five Star Movement and the League) are characterized by higher levels of insularity compared to those shared by supporters of other parties. We also find that, on Facebook, news items published by highly insular sources receive a higher number of shares per comment. Finally, our analyses show that news presenting a positive framing of the Five Star Movement – the unique ‘cyber party’ in the system – receives a higher number of shares per comment compared to items presenting the Movement in a negative light, while the opposite is true for stories on all other political parties.     

Media Diet Homogeneity in a Fragmented Media Landscape

This study assesses the nature of selective exposure and avoidance behaviors among political liberals and conservatives using a survey of 351 American citizens obtained through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Analyses of a new “homogeneity of media diet” measure suggest that although liberals and conservatives consume a comparable total number of media sources, the homogeneity of those media sources is higher among liberals than it is among conservatives. In the sample examined here, liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to selectively attend to ideologically onsonant media sources and were significantly more likely than conservatives to selectively avoid ideologically discrepant media sources. Analyses include a validity test of the self-reported selective exposure used by Pew and others, as well as an examination of partisan perceptions of the ideological leanings of various media sources. Results indicate that conservatives are more likely than liberals to rate neutral media sources (e.g., CNN, USA Today, and network news broadcasts) as ideologically biased. Meanwhile, liberals are more likely than conservatives to perceive the bias in their ideologically consonant media sources. Implications for future studies of selective exposure and avoidance—and democratic theory in general—are discussed.     

The representation of women and girls of color in United States crime news

There is a large body of literature examining the media portrayals of white females as both victims and offenders in crime news, but very little is known about how minority females—including Black, Latina, Middle Eastern, Native American, and Asian women and girls—are portrayed in these roles. In this literature review, I discuss general stereotypes surrounding women of color and their depictions within crime news stories as both victims and offenders. An examination of crime news media portrayals of minority females reveals that outdated and harmful stereotypes provide media personnel frames with which to write their stories. The negative portrayals of minority women and girls—as both victims and offenders—serve to reinforce racist beliefs and affect how consumers view political issues.     

Paternal domination and the mafia state under post-communism

This review essay discusses Bálint Magyar’s most recent book, Stubborn Structures: Conceptualizing Post-communist Regimes (Budapest: CEU Press 2019). Bálint Magyar first published in Hungarian in 2015 (published in English by CEU Press in 2016) a path-breaking book on The Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary. This was the first major attempt to move beyond political controversies and offer a systematic critique of post-communist states. The book also went beyond the usual accusation of “corruption.” Magyar’s key point is that—at least in Hungary—a mafia style of “upper-world” was created, with a “godfather” at the top of it and an “adopted family” below it. This fascinating idea was followed by edited books that included contribution by other scholars. The latest such book is Magyar’s Stubborn Structures: Conceptualizing Post-communist Regimes (CEU Press 2019), which includes articles applying the “mafia state theory” to a great variety of post-communist countries.

     

The effects of traditional news,partisan talk,and political satire programs on perceptions of presidential candidate viability and electability

This study examines how exposure to network news, partisan opinion talk, and political satire programs during the 2012 Iowa presidential caucuses affected viewers’ perceptions of candidate viability (likelihood of capturing the party nomination) and electability (likelihood of winning the general election). Programs representing these genres—ABC World News, Fox News’s Hannity, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—all framed the same candidate as the front-runner for the nomination, though each framed this candidate’s general election prospects in distinctive ways. A randomized field experiment assigned respondents to view one (or none) of the three programs as they aired. Assessments of the front-runner were significantly shaped by assignment to view television coverage, hence demonstrating the potential importance of all three media genres for the presidential nomination process.     

Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates' Tragic Relationships

We analyze how twenty graduates of a Batterer Intervention Program constructed autobiographical stories about their relationships with women they assaulted. We focus on the presentation of gendered selves via narrative manhood acts, which we define as self‐narratives that signify membership in the category “man” and the possession of a masculine self. We also show how graduates constructed self‐narratives as a genre that was oppositional to organizational narratives: rather than adopting the program's domestic violence melodrama or preferred conversion narrative, graduates used the larger culture—especially “bitch” imagery and sometimes racialized discourse—to construct tragedies. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative analysis for research on batterers' accounts and manhood acts, and also shows how oppositional genre‐making can be a method to resist organizational narratives.     

“A Statistically Representative Climate Change Debate”: Satirical Television News,Scientific Consensus,and Public Perceptions of Global Warming

Satirical television news programs provide the public with potential sources of information about climate change. This study uses a segment from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver as a test case for exploring how coverage from such programs that features consensus messaging may influence viewers’ perceptions of global warming. The segment presents a “statistically representative climate change debate” to affirm the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and satirize television news coverage “balancing” this consensus with skeptics’ arguments. Results from a randomized experiment demonstrate that watching the segment increased viewers’ own belief in global warming, as well as viewers’ perceptions that most scientists believe in global warming. The latter effect was stronger among participants with low interest in the environment and global warming than among those with high interest. The segment’s impact on perceptions of scientists’ views may have mediated its effects on viewers’ own beliefs about global warming.     

The saga of the Crown Pilot: framing,reframing, and reconsideration

In 1996, Nabisco discontinued production of its longest running product, the Crown Pilot cracker. This move prompted public protest and subsequently garnered widespread media attention. Based on the sustained news coverage and a barrage of telephone calls, e-mails, and letters, Nabisco eventually relented and resumed production of the Crown Pilot.This case study focuses upon the “frames” used in the media coverage to help audiences interpret news stories about the Crown Pilot situation. The research attempts to explain how the public relations efforts of both the protesters and Nabisco influenced the framing. Because framing choices are among the most critical strategic decisions in the public relations process, the study has ramifications for public relations researchers interested in the concept and practitioners concerned with publicizing a variety of issues.