scholarly journals Roaring Candidates in the Spotlight: Campaign Negativity, Emotions, and Media Coverage in 107 National Elections

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 576-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Maier ◽  
Alessandro Nai
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Fear Appeals ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Media System ◽  
Emotional Appeals ◽  
Marked Preference ◽  
The Media ◽  
Negative Tone

We argue that, above and beyond the usual suspects, some campaign strategies are more successful in attracting media coverage. We specifically focus on two elements of campaign content: the tone of the campaign (i.e., whether or not to go “negative” on opponents) and the use of emotional appeals (fear and enthusiasm messages). We argue that both negativity and emotions matter for media coverage. We rely on an original comparative data set about the campaign strategies of 507 candidates having competed in 107 elections in 89 countries worldwide between 2016 and 2019. The data set is based on a survey distributed to samples of national and international experts. Confirming our expectations, the analyses reveal that candidates using a more negative tone and, especially, candidates making a greater use of emotional appeals receive a greater media coverage; the effect of emotional appeals dwarfs all other drivers of media coverage. Our analyses also show that media coverage is significantly higher for candidates who go negative and use fear appeals, and when candidates go positive and use enthusiasm appeals. Finally, media coverage is significantly greater for candidates who go negative in countries where the media system has a marked preference for infotainment and sensationalism.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Unintended Effects ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
News Content ◽  
Media System ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Media

This chapter introduces the argument and analyses. It explains the broader political importance of media coverage and public opinion during policy debates. The chapter also discusses how structural and institutional factors in the media system can contribute to often unforeseen or unintended effects on news content, and can ultimately shape the ideological direction of public opinion. It summarizes the book’s data and key claims about corporate news media’s role in rising economic inequality across the neoliberal era, and discusses the broader implications of the book’s argument and evidence for American democracy. The chapter ends by previewing the structure of the book.

scholarly journals Functions of Hybrid Media: How Parties and Their Leaders Use Traditional Media in Their Social Media Campaign Communication

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Paatelainen ◽  
Elisa Kannasto ◽  
Pekka Isotalus
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Campaign ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Media ◽  
Campaign Communication ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

Political campaign communication has become increasingly hybrid and the ability to create synergies between older and newer media is now a prerequisite for running a successful campaign. Nevertheless, beyond establishing that parties and individual politicians use social media to gain visibility in traditional media, not much is known about how political actors use the hybrid media system in their campaign communication. At the same time, the personalization of politics, shown to have increased in the media coverage of politics, has gained little attention in the context of today’s hybrid media environment. In this research we analyze one aspect of hybrid media campaign communication, political actors’ use of traditional media in their social media campaign communication. Through a quantitative content analysis of the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts of Finnish parties and their leaders published during the 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections, we find that much of this hybridized campaign communication was personalized. In addition, we show that parties and their leaders used traditional media for multiple purposes, the most common of which was gaining positive visibility, pointing to strategic considerations. The results have implications for both the scholarship on hybrid media systems and personalization of politics.

scholarly journals Street Demonstrations and the Media Agenda: An Analysis of the Dynamics of Protest Agenda Setting

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (13-14) ◽  
pp. 2283-2313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Jennings ◽  
Clare Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Dynamic Theory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Media Agenda ◽  
The Media ◽  
Sectional Analysis

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.

Media Coverage of Corporate Taxes

2018 ◽  
Vol 94 (5) ◽  
pp. 83-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Chen ◽  
Kathleen Schuchard ◽  
Bridget Stomberg
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Corporate Taxes ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Economic Recessions ◽  
External Stakeholders ◽  
The Media ◽  
Negative Tone

ABSTRACT Managers express growing concern over media coverage of corporate taxes, yet no large-sample empirical study examines this phenomenon. As a first step to fill this void, we identify factors associated with the likelihood and negative tone of media tax coverage and examine firms' tax avoidance behavior following media tax coverage. We find the likelihood of media tax coverage is greater for firms with GAAP effective tax rates below the top U.S. statutory rate of 35 percent and for firms with greater visibility. The degree of negative tone is increasing in cash tax avoidance and firm size. We also find evidence of more frequent and more negative tax coverage during economic recessions. We find no evidence that firms reduce their tax avoidance following media coverage. Although our analyses are subject to limitations, our results suggest the media may not have the same influence over corporate tax policy as other external stakeholders. JEL Classifications: H25; H26; H20; M41; G39. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the paper.

scholarly journals Effect of Media News on Radicalization of Attitudes to Immigration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Agovino ◽  
Maria Rosaria Carillo ◽  
Nicola Spagnolo
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Fuzzy Methods ◽  
Negative News ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Many ◽  
Negative Tone ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Recent years have witnessed a growing aversion to immigration worldwide and, at the same time, radicalization of public opinion on the issue. This paper explores the relationship between media news and individual attitudes to immigration. We run an empirical analysis whereby an index capturing individuals’ pro-immigration attitude, measured in 19 countries, is regressed over indexes capturing the coverage and tone of media news about immigration. We find that pro-immigration attitudes are negatively correlated with media coverage and the negative tone of news. However, this correlation is significant only for those with high trust in the media. In the case of low trust, higher coverage of immigration and a negative news slant make previous preferences and beliefs vis-à-vis immigration more extreme, yielding a lower pro-immigration index for those politically on the right, while the opposite applies to those on the left. The pro-immigration index is constructed by means of fuzzy methods to account for the many aspects defining attitudes to immigration.

“Gipper Sweeps Congress”

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-97
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Economic Plan ◽  
Media System ◽  
Regressive Tax ◽  
The Media

This chapter analyzes media content, elite discourse, and public opinion surrounding Ronald Reagan’s 1981 economic plan. It demonstrates that major television and newspaper coverage of this early neoliberal policy significantly favored free-market perspectives that justified economic inequality. It also shows that media outlets marginalized elite and nongovernmental criticism of the Reagan plan. Commercial tendencies of the media system in that historical context are connected to these patterns in the news. Survey data suggest that such media coverage shaped public opinion to support this influential model of regressive tax policy.

Does context matter? A cross-country investigation of the effects of the media context on external and internal political efficacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 264-286
Author(s):  
Marton Bene
Keyword(s):  
Political Efficacy ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
The Political ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Media

As a motivational factor of action, political efficacy is an important predictor of political behavior. The term was invented to capture the extent to which people feel that they can effectively participate in politics and shape political processes. Today, we have a comprehensive knowledge of the individual-level factors (socio-demographic variables, political preferences, etc.) that shape the level of internal and external dimensions of political efficacy. However, while it is widely demonstrated that media consumption influences the level of political efficacy, the country-level media context factors affecting it have rarely been studied. This article reports the findings of extensive research on how two crucial features of the media context, the political significance of the media and the level of political parallelism in the media system, shape the level of external and internal political efficacy. The investigation draws upon the data set of the seventh round (2014–2015) of the European Social Survey (ESS) and includes more than 22,000 respondents from 19 European democracies. The research hypothesizes that in countries where the media play a more important role, people have lower levels of external and higher levels of internal political efficacy. Political parallelism, which shows the extent to which media outlets are driven by distinct political orientations and interests within a particular media system, is expected to directly increase both external and internal political efficacy. Its indirect effect is also hypothesized, arguing that partisan media amplifies the winner–loser gap in political efficacy as a kind of “echo chamber.” The findings show that in countries where the media play a major role in shaping political discourse, people have lower levels of external political efficacy, while the political parallelism of the media system indirectly affects the external dimensions of political efficacy. Internal political efficacy is, however, not related to these context-level factors.

scholarly journals Mediated Leader Effects: The Impact of Newspapers’ Portrayal of Party Leadership on Electoral Support

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loes Aaldering ◽  
Tom van der Meer ◽  
Wouter Van der Brug
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Positive Leadership ◽  
Negative Images ◽  
The Media ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
The Impact

Conventional wisdom holds that party leaders matter in democratic elections. As very few voters have direct contact with party leaders, media are voters’ primary source of information about these leaders and, thus, the likely origin of leader effects on party support. Our study focuses on these supposed electoral effects of the media coverage of party leaders. We examine the positive and negative effects of specific leadership images in Dutch newspapers on vote intentions. To this end, we combine an extensive automated content analysis of leadership images in the media with a panel data set, the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP), consisting of more than fifty thousand unique respondents and 110 waves of interviews conducted between September 2006 and September 2012. The results confirm that media coverage of party leaders’ character traits affects voters: Positive mediated leadership images increase support for the leader’s party, while negative images decrease this support. However, this influence is not unconditional: During campaign periods, positive leadership images have a stronger effect, while negative images no longer have an impact on subsequent vote intentions.

Media Representation of the Pandemic: a Metaphorical Image of War (based on American Newspapers)

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
N. S. Dankova ◽  
E. V. Krekhtunova
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Mass Consciousness ◽  
The Media ◽  
Coronavirus Infection ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

The article is devoted to the study of the media representation features of the situation of coronavirus infection spread. The material was articles published in American newspapers. It is shown that the metaphorical model "War" is widely used in media coverage of the pandemic. The relevance of the work is due to the ability of the media to influence the mass consciousness. The methodological basis of the research is formed by critical discourse analysis, which establishes the connection between language and social reality. The article provides an overview of works devoted to the study of metaphor. The theoretical foundations for the study of metaphorical modeling are given. In the course of the analysis, the linguistic means of updating the metaphorical model "War" were revealed. The authors note that this metaphorical model is represented by such frames as “War and its characteristics”, “Participants in military action”, “War zone”, “Enemy actions”, “Confronting the enemy”. It is shown that modern reality is presented in the media as martial law, the coronavirus is positioned in the media as a cruel and merciless enemy seeking to take over the world, the treatment of the disease is represented as a fight against the enemy. It is concluded that the use of the metaphorical model "War" is one of the ways to conceptualize the spread of coronavirus.

State Medical Boards' Perceptions of a Minimum Data Set and Current Practices for Collecting Physician Information

2013 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Young ◽  
Philip Davignon ◽  
Margaret B. Hansen ◽  
Mark A. Eggen
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minimum Data Set ◽  
Direct Patient Care ◽  
Physician Workforce ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Minimum Data ◽  
State Medical Boards ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Current Practices

ABSTRACT Recent media coverage has focused on the supply of physicians in the United States, especially with the impact of a growing physician shortage and the Affordable Care Act. State medical boards and other entities maintain data on physician licensure and discipline, as well as some biographical data describing their physician populations. However, there are gaps of workforce information in these sources. The Federation of State Medical Boards' (FSMB) Census of Licensed Physicians and the AMA Masterfile, for example, offer valuable information, but they provide a limited picture of the physician workforce. Furthermore, they are unable to shed light on some of the nuances in physician availability, such as how much time physicians spend providing direct patient care. In response to these gaps, policymakers and regulators have in recent years discussed the creation of a physician minimum data set (MDS), which would be gathered periodically and would provide key physician workforce information. While proponents of an MDS believe it would provide benefits to a variety of stakeholders, an effort has not been attempted to determine whether state medical boards think it is important to collect physician workforce data and if they currently collect workforce information from licensed physicians. To learn more, the FSMB sent surveys to the executive directors at state medical boards to determine their perceptions of collecting workforce data and current practices regarding their collection of such data. The purpose of this article is to convey results from this effort. Survey findings indicate that the vast majority of boards view physician workforce information as valuable in the determination of health care needs within their state, and that various boards are already collecting some data elements. Analysis of the data confirms the potential benefits of a physician minimum data set (MDS) and why state medical boards are in a unique position to collect MDS information from physicians.

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