One Bias Fits All? Three Types of Media Bias and Their Effects on Party Preferences

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 1125-1148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob-Moritz Eberl ◽  
Hajo G. Boomgaarden ◽  
Markus Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Bias ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political News ◽  
Party Press ◽  
Using Data

Bias in political news coverage may have a profound influence on voter opinions and preferences. However, the concept of media bias actually encompasses different sub-types: Visibility bias is the salience of political actors, tonality bias the evaluation of these actors, and agenda bias the extent to which parties address preferred issues in media coverage. The present study is the first to explore how each type of bias influences party preferences. Using data from the Austrian parliamentary election campaign of 2013, we combine an online panel survey ( n = 1,285) with measures of media bias from content analyses of party press releases ( n = 1,922) and media coverage in eight newspapers ( n = 6,970). We find substantial effects on party preferences for tonality bias and agenda bias, while visibility bias has no clear impact. Voters who are less politically sophisticated and lack a party identification are more susceptible to bias, and media bias can also reinforce existing partisan identities.

Are Perceptions of Candidate Traits Shaped by the Media? The Effects of Three Types of Media Bias

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob-Moritz Eberl ◽  
Markus Wagner ◽  
Hajo G. Boomgaarden
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Bias ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Media ◽  
Party Press ◽  
Candidate Perceptions ◽  
The Impact

Media coverage can influence how citizens think about their political leaders. This study explores how three types of media bias (visibility bias, tonality bias, and agenda bias) affect voter assessments of politicians’ traits. Bias effects should be stronger for political traits (such as competence) than for nonpolitical traits (such as likability). Biases may also interact in their effects: Specifically, visibility bias should moderate the impact of tonality bias. Combining media, party, and survey data through manual content analysis of newspaper coverage ( N = 2,680) and party press releases ( N = 1,794), as well as a three-wave voter survey ( n = 927) during the 2013 Austrian election campaign, we find substantial effects of tonality bias and agenda bias on political trait perceptions. The effects are less clear for nonpolitical trait perceptions. Although visibility bias has no direct impact, there is evidence that it moderates effects of tonality bias on candidate perceptions.

Media Malaise and the Decline of Legitimacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Van Aelst
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Political News ◽  
Negative Tone ◽  
Election News ◽  
Over Time

This chapter analyzes media malaise theories and their consequences for legitimacy. These theories argue that the increasing availability of information through new and old media and increasingly negative tone of media are to blame for declining legitimacy. The chapter examines these claims by providing a systematic review of empirical research on media and political support. It first investigates whether news coverage has become more negative over time, and then examines the micro process that might explain the link between media coverage and political support. Empirical evidence suggests that where coverage has become more negative, this occurred before the 1990s and has levelled off since, and is concentrated primarily in election news. Negative political news does have a modest impact on political support once controlled for level of education, but that effect can be positive and negative, depending on the medium, the receiver, and the indicator of political support.

Explaining Public Support for the Use of Military Force: The Impact of Reference Point Framing and Prospective Decision Making

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Perla
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Public Support ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article examines the determinants of public support for the use of military force. It puts forward a Framing Theory of Policy Objectives (FTPO), which contends that public support for military engagements depends on the public's perception of the policy's objective. However, it is difficult for the public to judge a policy's objective because they cannot directly observe a policy's true intention and influential political actors offer competing frames to define it. This framing contestation, carried out through the media, sets the public's decision-making reference point and determines whether the policy is perceived as seeking to avoid losses or to achieve gains. The FTPO predicts that support will increase when the public perceives policies as seeking to prevent losses and decrease when the public judges policies to be seeking gains. I operationalize and test the theory using content analysis of national news coverage and opinion polls of U.S. intervention in Central America during the 1980s. These framing effects are found to hold regardless of positive or negative valence of media coverage.

Framing the Candidates in Presidential Primaries: Issues and Images in Press Releases and News Coverage

1998 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Mark Miller ◽  
Julie L. Andsager ◽  
Bonnie P. Riechert
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Presidential Primaries ◽  
Computerized Content Analysis ◽  
Elite Newspapers

Media coverage of presidential primaries is crucial to voters, and candidates often complain that news coverage fails to present their positions. This study used computerized content analysis to examine how the 1996 GOP presidential candidates framed themselves in press releases and how elite newspapers covered them. The analysis reveals that (1) candidate images were distinct in press releases and news stories; (2) candidate positions were represented differently in both; and (3) candidates were differentially successful in getting news media to reflect their positions. News media covered substantive concerns that were not included in candidate press releases.

scholarly journals The Incumbency Bonus Revisited: Causes and Consequences of Media Dominance

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen ◽  
Peter B. Mortensen ◽  
Gunnar Thesen
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Government Responsibility ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political News ◽  
News Broadcasts ◽  
Elite Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
Societal Problems ◽  
Radio News

The literature on political actors’ media appearances has repeatedly documented the so-called incumbency bonus (that parties and politicians in government have more media coverage than those in the opposition). This bias is normally attributed to news criteria that reflect political power, such as relevance and the elite status of actors. Supplementing existing perspectives, this study puts forward a new explanation of the incumbency bonus. The article argues that variations in the media dominance of incumbents are the result of the interplay between journalistic norms and political context. Outside election campaigns, political news is driven by the ‘watch dog’ norm. Thus the media focus on societal problems, which produces a critical emphasis on incumbent actors. But when party competition intensifies, either during campaigns or when issues become salient, the norm of objective and impartial journalism results in a more balanced coverage where challengers increase their presence. The argument receives support through multivariate models of incumbent and challenger appearances in Danish radio news broadcasts over a twenty-year period. Finally, in terms of democratic implications, the importance of the watchdog norm challenges the assumption that the incumbency bonus constitutes an electoral asset. Since media dominance is closely related to government responsibility for all kinds of problems, incumbent support is found to dwindle with increased media appearances.

How Newspapers Reveal Political Power

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (04) ◽  
pp. 661-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Ban ◽  
Alexander Fouirnaies ◽  
Andrew B Hall ◽  
James M Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Power ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Relative Power ◽  
State Party ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political News ◽  
Strong Indicator ◽  
Word Frequencies

Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage—in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers—to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877–1977. We define and discuss a measure of power we develop based on observed word frequencies, and we validate it through a series of analyses. Overall, we find that the relative coverage of political actors and of political offices is a strong indicator of political power for the cases we study. To illustrate its usefulness, we then apply the measure to understand when (and where) state party committees lost their power. Taken together, the paper sheds light on the nature of political news coverage and offers both a new dataset and a new measure for studying political power in a wide set of contexts.

scholarly journals In climate news, statements from large businesses and opponents of climate action receive heightened visibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (32) ◽  
pp. 19054-19060
Author(s):  
Rachel Wetts
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New York ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Plagiarism Detection ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Wall Street Journal ◽  
To Receive

Whose voices are most likely to receive news coverage in the US debate about climate change? Elite cues embedded in mainstream media can influence public opinion on climate change, so it is important to understand whose perspectives are most likely to be represented. Here, I use plagiarism-detection software to analyze the media coverage of a large random sample of business, government, and social advocacy organizations’ press releases about climate change (n= 1,768), examining which messages are cited in all articles published about climate change inThe New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, andUSA Todayfrom 1985 to 2014 (n= 34,948). I find that press releases opposing action to address climate change are about twice as likely to be cited in national newspapers as are press releases advocating for climate action. In addition, messages from business coalitions and very large businesses are more likely than those from other types of organizations to receive coverage. Surprisingly, press releases from organizations providing scientific and technical services are less likely to receive news coverage than are other press releases in my sample, suggesting that messages from organizations with greater scientific expertise receive less media attention. These findings support previous scholars’ claims that journalistic norms of balance and objectivity have distorted the public debate around climate change, while providing evidence that the structural power of business interests lends them heightened visibility in policy debates.

19. Political Communication

2020 ◽  
pp. 336-358
Author(s):  
Frank Esser ◽  
Barbara Pfetsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political News ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Message Production ◽  
Usage Patterns

This chapter examines the dimensions of the political communication system. It first explains the rationale for a comparative study of political communication before discussing relevant models of relationship between media and political institutions, as well as differences in political communication cultures among media and political elites. It then reviews findings on country-specific reporting styles in political news coverage and evaluates divergent approaches in government communication and election communication. On the side of the citizens, the chapter explores cross-national differences in the consumption of political news, along with the positive contribution of public service broadcasters for informed and enlightened citizenship. Finally, it looks at political information flows, comparing message production by political actors, political message production by media actors, usage patterns of political information, and effects of political communication.

Who Gets into the Papers? Party Campaign Messages and the Media

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 281-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Meyer ◽  
Martin Haselmayer ◽  
Markus Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Party Strategies ◽  
Campaign Messages ◽  
Potential Success ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Party Press ◽  
Shed Light

Parties and politicians want their messages to generate media coverage and thereby reach voters. This article examines how attributes related to content and sender affect whether party messages are likely to get media attention. Based on content analyses of 1,613 party press releases and 6,512 media reports in a parliamentary, multiparty context, we suggest that party messages are more likely to make it into the news if they address concerns that are already important to the media or other parties. Discussing these issues may particularly help opposition parties and lower-profile politicians get media attention. These results confirm the importance of agenda setting and gatekeeping, shed light on the potential success of party strategies, and have implications for political fairness and representation.

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