Contesting Strategic Narratives in a Global Context: The World Watches the 2016 U.S. Election

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph Kluver ◽  
Skye Cooley ◽  
Robert Hinck
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Innovative Technology ◽  
Global Order ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
The U.S

National media narratives often embody “strategic narratives” that embody national consensus on geopolitics. The 2016 U.S. presidential election was an event of intense international interest, both for its internal drama, but also for the policy positions of both of the major candidates. This paper presents a comparative analysis of how media in four key regions covered the U.S. presidential election and its immediate aftermath. Researchers utilized an innovative technology that allowed the teams to harvest media content, from almost seventy-five global news sources, in Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and Russian. This paper utilized the theoretical construct of strategic narratives to demonstrate how the U.S. election is incorporated into narrative constructions of global order. Theoretically, this project seeks to deepen our understanding, from a comparative methodology, of how “events,” such as the U.S. presidential election, provide the raw material for global contestations of the global order. The essay also provides a mechanism for analyzing and evaluating these narratives using Fisher’s narrative paradigm. Finally, the paper demonstrates an innovative methodological approach to comparative analysis from disparate cultural and news traditions, languages, and patterns of access to media.

Fake It “Till You Make It”: Debunking Fake News in a Post-Truth America

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-133
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
American People ◽  
Fake News ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media ◽  
The U.S

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attacks on the media have been relentless. “Fake news” has become a household term, and repeated attempts to break the trust between reporters and the American people have threatened the validity of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In this article, the authors trace the development of fake news and its impact on contemporary political discourse. They also outline cutting-edge pedagogies designed to assist students in critically evaluating the veracity of various news sources and social media sites.

scholarly journals A Data-Driven Framework for Coding the Intent and Extent of Political Tweeting, Disinformation, and Extremism

Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 148
Author(s):  
Mahdi Hashemi
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The U.S

Disinformation campaigns on online social networks (OSNs) in recent years have underscored democracy’s vulnerability to such operations and the importance of identifying such operations and dissecting their methods, intents, and source. This paper is another milestone in a line of research on political disinformation, propaganda, and extremism on OSNs. A total of 40,000 original Tweets (not re-Tweets or Replies) related to the U.S. 2020 presidential election are collected. The intent, focus, and political affiliation of these political Tweets are determined through multiple discussions and revisions. There are three political affiliations: rightist, leftist, and neutral. A total of 171 different classes of intent or focus are defined for Tweets. A total of 25% of Tweets were left out while defining these classes of intent. The purpose is to assure that the defined classes would be able to cover the intent and focus of unseen Tweets (Tweets that were not used to determine and define these classes) and no new classes would be required. This paper provides these classes, their definition and size, and example Tweets from them. If any information is included in a Tweet, its factuality is verified through valid news sources and articles. If any opinion is included in a Tweet, it is determined that whether or not it is extreme, through multiple discussions and revisions. This paper provides analytics with regard to the political affiliation and intent of Tweets. The results show that disinformation and extreme opinions are more common among rightists Tweets than leftist Tweets. Additionally, Coronavirus pandemic is the topic of almost half of the Tweets, where 25.43% of Tweets express their unhappiness with how Republicans have handled this pandemic.

scholarly journals The Influence of the ‘Tomos Narrative’ as a Part of the Ukrainian National and Strategic Narrative

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Artem Zakharchenko ◽  
Olena Zakharchenko
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Search Term ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
Electoral Campaign ◽  
Search Data ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
Google Search

One of the most prominent parts of the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election was the mediatized topic of achieving Ukrainian church independence, and its symbol, the tomos document received from the Ecumenical Patriarch in January 2019. This process was a part of incumbent president Petro Poroshenko’s electoral campaign. Narrative analysis of this topic showed that it had a structure similar to that of classic Hollywood plots. It is unlike most other media narratives present in the information space. We prove that this topic had a major influence on its audience: media attention to the topic of Tomos was found to be closely correlated to Google search data associated with the ‘tomos’ search term and with electoral support for Poroshenko. However, this narrative`s audience was limited to the patriotic electorate, thus Poroshenko did not win the election. Nevertheless, the Tomos story became so influential that it can be considered a part of national and strategic narratives.

scholarly journals Issue Salience in the U.S. Elections: “Partisan Domestication” between South Korean Newspapers

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Jae Sik Ha ◽  
Uche Onyebadi ◽  
Dong-Hee Shin
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Issue Salience ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
Presidential Election Of 2008 ◽  
South Korean ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Significant Divergence ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Distant Region ◽  
The U.S

This study examines how two newspapers in South Korea, one conservative and one liberal, covered the U.S. presidential election of 2008. The study found that there was a significant divergence in the emphasis placed on certain types of issues between the two ideologically polarized newspapers. While the liberal Hankyoreh Daily placed more emphasis on social justice issues –such as racial equality and the abolition of social discrimination, the conservative Chosun Daily highlighted “human interest” issues, focusing on more trivial topics such as the candidates’ gender, family, and fashion preferences. There was also a difference in the types of news sources used by the two newspapers. The Hankyoreh Daily sought to represent the voices of the South Korean elite, while The Chosun Daily used American politicians as one of its major source of information. This study argues that a news organization’s ideological orientation is an important factor, which influences South Korean newspapers’ “domestication” of the U.S. election, which was staged in a distant region.

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