scholarly journals Using the president’s tweets to understand political diversion in the age of social media

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Lewandowsky ◽  
Michael Jetter ◽  
Ullrich K. H. Ecker

Abstract Social media has arguably shifted political agenda-setting power away from mainstream media onto politicians. Current U.S. President Trump’s reliance on Twitter is unprecedented, but the underlying implications for agenda setting are poorly understood. Using the president as a case study, we present evidence suggesting that President Trump’s use of Twitter diverts crucial media (The New York Times and ABC News) from topics that are potentially harmful to him. We find that increased media coverage of the Mueller investigation is immediately followed by Trump tweeting increasingly about unrelated issues. This increased activity, in turn, is followed by a reduction in coverage of the Mueller investigation—a finding that is consistent with the hypothesis that President Trump’s tweets may also successfully divert the media from topics that he considers threatening. The pattern is absent in placebo analyses involving Brexit coverage and several other topics that do not present a political risk to the president. Our results are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables and examination of several alternative explanations, although the generality of the successful diversion must be established by further investigation.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Lewandowsky ◽  
Michael Jetter ◽  
Ullrich K. H. Ecker

(This paper is in press, Nature Communications). Social media has arguably shifted political agenda-setting power away from mainstream media onto politicians. Current U.S. President Trump's reliance on Twitter is unprecedented, but the underlying implications for agenda setting are poorly understood. Using the president as a case study, we present evidence suggesting that President Trump's use of Twitter diverts crucial media (The New York Times and ABC News) from topics that are potentially harmful to him. We find that increased media coverage of the Mueller investigation is immediately followed by Trump tweeting increasingly about unrelated issues. This increased activity, in turn, is followed by a reduction in coverage of the Mueller investigation---a finding that is consistent with the hypothesis that President Trump's tweets may also successfully divert the media from topics that he considers threatening. The pattern is absent in placebo analyses involving Brexit coverage and several other topics that do not present a political risk to the president. Our results are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables and examination of several alternative explanations, although the generality of the successful diversion must be established by further investigation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 255-275
Author(s):  
Yiqin Ruan ◽  
Jing Yang ◽  
Jianbin Jin

Biotechnology, as an emerging technology, has drawn much attention from the public and elicited hot debates in countries around the world and among various stakeholders. Due to the public's limited access to front-line scientific information and scientists, as well as the difficulty of processing complex scientific knowledge, the media have become one of the most important channels for the public to get news about scientific issues such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). According to framing theory, how the media portray GMO issues may influence audiences’ perceptions of those issues. Moreover, different countries and societies have various GMO regulations, policies and public opinion, which also affect the way media cover GMO issues. Thus, it is necessary to investigate how GMO issues are covered in different media outlets across different countries. We conducted a comparative content analysis of media coverage of GMO issues in China, the US and the UK. One mainstream news portal in each of the three countries was chosen ( People's Daily for China, The New York Times for the US, and The Guardian for the UK). We collected coverage over eight years, from 2008 to 2015, which yielded 749 pieces of news in total. We examined the sentiments expressed and the generic frames used in coverage of GMO issues. We found that the factual, human interest, conflict and regulation frames were the most common frames used on the three portals, while the sentiments expressed under those frames varied across the media outlets, indicating differences in the state of GMO development, promotion and regulation among the three countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Pignetti

This article relies on survey data I collected from the Hiddleston fandom in June of 2018, to gauge their long-lasting impressions of the highly publicized three-month relationship between Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift in 2016. Their responses reflect three significant (and overlapping) anti-fan expressions: extreme dislike of Taylor Swift, frustration with the media coverage of the ‘Hiddleswift’ spectacle and acknowledgement that it was difficult to be a fan of Hiddleston during that time. By pairing with Swift, an act many survey respondents felt was played for publicity, and simultaneously distancing himself from social media, he became inaccessible to those who had been loyal to him early in his career. I interrogate Hiddleston’s own references to himself as an ‘authentic’ public figure and then conduct close readings of the only two extended profiles that have been published since his relationship with Swift ended in 2016: one in GQ (2017) and another from the New York Times (2019). Although it was neither publication’s intent, both pieces led to further media scrutiny and mockery, which only exasperated his fans further. Ultimately, I argue that Hiddleston’s name remains pejoratively linked to Swift’s, but not vice versa, thereby proving the negative impact this short-lived romance had upon his celebrity narrative and fandom.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 845-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hawdon ◽  
James Hawdon ◽  
Atte Oksanen ◽  
James Hawdon ◽  
Atte Oksanen ◽  
...  

Abstract Although considerable research analyzes the media coverage of school shootings, there is a lack of cross-national comparative studies. Yet, a cross-national comparison of the media coverage of school shootings can provide insight into how this coverage can affect communities. Our research focuses on the reporting of the school shootings at Virginia Tech in the U.S. and Jokela and Kauhajoki in Finland. Using 491 articles from the New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat published within a month of each shooting we investigate how reports vary between the nations and among the tragedies. We investigate if one style of framing a tragedy, the use of a “tragic frame,” may contribute to differences in the communities’ response to the events.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Nuriely ◽  
Moti Gigi ◽  
Yuval Gozansky

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults (YAs). It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations. Design/methodology/approach This was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years. Findings Most YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings. Originality/value Contrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media.


Author(s):  
Stefaan Walgrave ◽  
Peter Van Aelst

Recently, the number of studies examining whether media coverage has an effect on the political agenda has been growing strongly. Most studies found that preceding media coverage does exert an effect on the subsequent attention for issues by political actors. These effects are contingent, though, they depend on the type of issue and the type of political actor one is dealing with. Most extant work has drawn on aggregate time-series designs, and the field is as good as fully non-comparative. To further develop our knowledge about how and why the mass media exert influence on the political agenda, three ways forward are suggested. First, we need better theory about why political actors would adopt media issues and start devoting attention to them. The core of such a theory should be the notion of the applicability of information encapsulated in the media coverage to the goals and the task at hand of the political actors. Media information has a number of features that make it very attractive for political actors to use—it is often negative, for instance. Second, we plead for a disaggregation of the level of analysis from the institutional level (e.g., parliament) or the collective actor level (e.g., party) to the individual level (e.g., members of parliament). Since individuals process media information, and since the goals and tasks of individuals that trigger the applicability mechanism are diverse, the best way to move forward is to tackle the agenda setting puzzle at the individual level. This implies surveying individual elites or, even better, implementing experimental designs to individual elite actors. Third, the field is in dire need of comparative work comparing how political actors respond to media coverage across countries or political systems.


Jurnal ICMES ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Hilal Kholid Bajri ◽  
Nugrah Nurrohman ◽  
Muhammad Fakhri

This article is a study of the involvement of the United States (US) in the Yemeni War thas has already taken place since 2015 by using the 'CNN Effect' theory. The authors analyzed documents and mass media coverage and conducted discourse analysis on US mainstream media news, namely CNN and the New York Times. The result of this research shows that CNN and the New York Times did not report the Yemeni War proportionally so that public opinion ignored this war and did not encourage further action from the US government and United Nations to stop the war. This way of reporting is in line with US’ economic-political interests in Yemen and US support for the Saudi Arabia.


2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Almeida ◽  
Mark Lichbach

We compare activist-based internet data with four other media sources—Lexis Nexis Academic Universe, The Seattle Times, Global Newsbank, and The New York Times—on their coverage of the local, national, and international protests that accompanied the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Third Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington in late 1999. Using the Media Sensitivity-Protest Intensity Model of event reporting, we find that activist-based web sites report a greater number of transnational protest events at the local, national, and international level. We also find that activist-based websites are less positively influenced by the intensity properties of protest events. In the age of globalization, research on transnational movements should therefore combine conventional media sources and activist-based web sources.


Author(s):  
Laurits Harmer Lassen ◽  
Søren Kjellberg Ishøy

The article describes the American presidential election in the two largest American and Danish newspapers: USA Today, New York Times, Jyllands-Posten and Politiken. Two weeks of news about the election have been analysed and showed that around 60 to 70 percent of all stories focused on the political processes contrary to the political substance. At the same time the analysis show that in broad terms the Danish and American newspapers coverage are quite similar. On the basis of theories of democracy the article makes a critique of the media coverage and give possible explanations of, why the focus is more on the political game than on the political substance.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tung Manh Ho

In June 2018, the news of the violent riot that happened in Binh Thuan, the province on the southeastern coast of Vietnam, shook up the domestic media. This paper attempts to understand the media coverage of the event under the lens of the theories of mediatization, connective turn, mediality, and witnessing. First, it will explore the propaganda and anti-propaganda that take place in the Vietnamese state media and the foreign-based Vietnamese media outlets. The paper then employs these concepts to analyze how the state is mediatized, and how citizen journalism together with social media influence and challenge the narrative on both sides of the media. The paper suggests a consistent ideology is on display in both sides of the media and the patterns in which the media report this kind of unusual socio-political events are unlikely to change.


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