Courting Coverage: Rhetorical Newsworthiness Cues and Candidate-Media Agenda Convergence in Presidential Primaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 107769902110587
Author(s):  
Zachary Scott

What can political candidates do to make their agenda more enticing to journalists? This study argues that the answer lies in appealing to newsworthiness values—specifically conflict, human interest, and simplicity—via rhetorical newsworthiness cues. Using an original data set of announcement speeches and national news media coverage from 1984 to 2016, this study tests this argument and finds that candidates whose speeches include more anger and candidate-based appeals, which appeal to journalists’ preference for conflict and human-interest stories, have their issue agenda covered with greater proportionality. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of these incentives on the electorate.

Author(s):  
Marcus Maurer

Political agenda setting is the part of agenda-setting research that refers to the influence of the media agenda on the agenda of political actors. More precisely, the central question of political agenda-setting research is whether political actors adopt the issue agenda of the news media in various aspects ranging from communicating about issues that are prominently discussed in the news media to prioritizing issues from the news media agenda in political decision making. Although such effects have been studied under different labels (agenda building, policy agenda setting) for several decades, research in this field has recently increased significantly based on a new theoretical model introducing the term political agenda setting. Studies based on that model usually find effects of media coverage on the attention political actors pay to various issues, but at the same time point to a number of contingent conditions. First, as found in research on public agenda setting, there is an influence of characteristics of news media (e.g., television news vs. print media) and issues (e.g., obtrusive vs. unobtrusive issues). Second, there is an influence of characteristics of the political context (e.g., government vs. oppositional parties) and characteristics of individual politicians (e.g., generalists vs. specialists). Third, the findings of studies on the political agenda-setting effect differ, depending on which aspects of the political agenda are under examination (e.g., social media messages vs. political decision making).


Author(s):  
Maria Rieder ◽  
Henry Silke ◽  
Hendrik Theine

Chapter 6 at first introduces the design of the empirical study (research agenda, approach, and methods adopted) of newspaper coverage of economic inequality in four countries. It describes the key selections and methods which defined the corpus of empirical materials at the heart of the authors’ original primary research. It then provides a summary overview of key aspects of our empirical research findings. Next, there is a summary discussion of the overall findings from the authors’ corpus of news media materials and data collection strategies. The chapter proceeds to examine the particular arguments in Piketty’s book which are either highlighted or neglected by the coverage in the newspaper articles forming the corpus of primary materials. It then moves on to present overall assessments of the coverage of Piketty’s book by the selected news media in the four countries. The authors identify and discuss how individual newspapers in the sample tend to agree or disagree with the key themes and argument in Piketty’s book. Responses engaging with the methods and data informing Piketty’s research and publications are also considered. Next, the chapter considers the newspapers’ engagement with discourses on economic inequality and the authors’ stances on whether or not economic inequality is problematic for the economy and society. An initial summary overview of trends in the discussion of Piketty’s policy proposals is presented, and the chapter concludes with the importance of sourcing. The following tables/graphs and figures—unless otherwise declared—are derived out of our empirical project and refer to original data generated throughout the project.


1998 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Mark Miller ◽  
Julie L. Andsager ◽  
Bonnie P. Riechert

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.


Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 1552-1569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A Ehmer ◽  
Ammina Kothari

This study investigates how Burmese refugees were framed by Fort Wayne’s The Journal Gazette located in one of Indiana’s cities where refugee resettlement has taken place over the last two decades. We analyzed 335 stories and 286 accompanying images to identify salient textual and visual frames. Results show that the human interest and attribution of responsibility were most salient textual frames, while the visual frame of exotic was dominant. Feature stories were more likely to have a human interest frame and, if an image is included, to reflect the visual frame of Burmese as being exotic. As a global refugee crisis continues to unfold, this study presents implications for how media coverage of future refugees in the United States will evolve based on public opinion.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (13-14) ◽  
pp. 2283-2313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Jennings ◽  
Clare Saunders

This article argues that the agenda-setting power of protest must be understood in dynamic terms. Specifically, it develops and tests a dynamic theory of media reaction to protest which posits that features of street demonstrations—such as their size, violence, societal conflict, and the presence of a “trigger”—lead protest issues to be reported and sustained in the media agenda over time. We conduct a unique empirical analysis of media coverage of protest issues, based upon a data set of 48 large-scale street demonstrations in nine countries. Time-series cross-sectional analysis is used to estimate the dynamic effects of demonstration features on media coverage of the protest issue. The findings show that violence can increase media attention in the short term and larger protest size sustains it over the longer term. The agenda-setting power of protest is structured in time.


2020 ◽  
pp. 233264922094818
Author(s):  
Kailey White ◽  
Forrest Stuart ◽  
Shannon L. Morrissey

The recurring, horrific deaths of minority residents at the hands of police officers and vigilantes have led social movements and international protests to amplify the charge that whereas the loss of White lives is seen as tragic, the loss of Black and Hispanic lives is treated as normal, acceptable, and even inevitable. Building on and advancing theories of “color-blind racism,” the authors examine the process by which the news media uphold and reify the devaluation of Black and Hispanic lives through ostensibly race-neutral language, story lines, and cultural narratives. Drawing on an original data set containing all news articles ( n = 2,245) written about every homicide victim ( n = 762) in Chicago, Illinois, during 2016, the authors use multilevel models to assess the extent to which victims’ race and neighborhood racial composition are associated with the level of attention, or “newsworthiness,” devoted to their deaths. Using two measures of newsworthiness—the amount of coverage and recognition of “complex personhood”—the authors find that victims killed in predominantly Black neighborhoods receive less news coverage than those killed in non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people. Our analyses underscore the importance of place, especially the racialization of place, in determining which victims are treated as newsworthy. These findings carry important implications for understanding and addressing color-blind racism, news-reporting practices, and territorial stigma in the reproduction of racist ideologies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariam F. Alkazemi ◽  
Wayne Wanta

A path analysis tested an agenda-building model in which three real-world indicators—price of crude oil, U.S. production and U.S. consumption of oil—would lead to discussions of oil in Congress and media coverage of oil. The model showed the level of U.S. oil production produced the strongest path coefficients. Congress and the news media formed a reciprocal relationship. The model worked better when oil was framed as an economic issue than as an environmental issue.


2000 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Van Belle

This article analyzes U.S. news media coverage of foreign disasters, using a new data set on disasters, and incorporates variables representing several possible contextual influenceson the amount of coverage. The most notable aspect of the results produced in this analysis is that when the magnitude of the event is controlled for, the only contextual influence that demonstrates the expected relationship with the amount of coverage is the distance from the United States. Several of the other contextual factors that have been argued to be significant determinants of international flows of news are not significant in the analysis.


1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 139-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Rybák ◽  
V. Rušin ◽  
M. Rybanský

AbstractFe XIV 530.3 nm coronal emission line observations have been used for the estimation of the green solar corona rotation. A homogeneous data set, created from measurements of the world-wide coronagraphic network, has been examined with a help of correlation analysis to reveal the averaged synodic rotation period as a function of latitude and time over the epoch from 1947 to 1991.The values of the synodic rotation period obtained for this epoch for the whole range of latitudes and a latitude band ±30° are 27.52±0.12 days and 26.95±0.21 days, resp. A differential rotation of green solar corona, with local period maxima around ±60° and minimum of the rotation period at the equator, was confirmed. No clear cyclic variation of the rotation has been found for examinated epoch but some monotonic trends for some time intervals are presented.A detailed investigation of the original data and their correlation functions has shown that an existence of sufficiently reliable tracers is not evident for the whole set of examinated data. This should be taken into account in future more precise estimations of the green corona rotation period.


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