Understanding Trump Supporters’ News Use: Beyond the Fox News Bubble

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-346
Author(s):  
Sadie Dempsey ◽  
Jiyoun Suk ◽  
Katherine J. Cramer ◽  
Lewis A. Friedland ◽  
Michael W. Wagner ◽  
...  

Abstract Since the 2016 election, the relationship between Trump supporters and Fox News has gained considerable attention. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 people and a representative survey conducted in the state of Wisconsin, we dive deeper into the media habits of Trump supporters using a mixed methods analytical approach. While we do not refute the importance of Fox News in the conservative media ecology, we find that characterizing Trump supporters as isolated in Fox News bubbles obscures the fact that many are news omnivores, or people who consume a wide variety of news. In fact, we find that Trump supporters may have more politically heterogeneous consumption habits than Trump non-supporters. We find that 17% of our survey respondents who support Trump in Wisconsin are regularly exposed to ideologically heterogeneous news media. We also find that like other voters, Trump supporters are disenchanted with the divisive nature of contemporary media and politics. Finally, we analyze the media use of young Trump supporters and find an especially high level of news omnivorousness among them.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2094356
Author(s):  
Jack Thompson

Scholars and political commentators point to Trump’s war on the media since the 2016 election as an unprecedented attack on a vital check to Presidential power. However, little attention has been paid to the role that White audiences play in this critical debate. In this article, I examine the relationship between Trump, the media, and White audiences. Using data taken from the American Trends Panel, I show that affect for Trump is conditional on Whites’ selective partisan exposure to conservative news media. My analysis also shows that exposure to political and election news directly from Trump intensifies the relationship between Whites’ perceptions of media bias and their distrust of national news organizations. The findings provide a novel and unique contribution to the existing scholarship by demonstrating the causal effect of selective exposure to conservative media outlets on affect for Trump.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 752-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Cluley

Purpose In an effort to explain the high level of scepticism and distrust towards marketing and marketers, this paper aims to explore how marketing practice and practitioners are depicted in the mass media. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses 6,877 news reports that discuss “marketing” across two one-year time periods from three UK newspapers. A systematic content analysis is presented through N-grams and K-grams, close readings of individual cases and manual coding. Findings The paper finds that the news media cultivates an image of marketing and marketing practitioners as a cost to businesses and something that businesses do to consumers. The study finds that marketers are also presented through a narrow viewpoint. Marketers are depicted as male and tend to be viewed as a source of authority only when speaking on behalf of their organizations in response problems and crises. Research limitations/implications The cultivation effect of mass media is widely accepted among communications scholar, yet its use within marketing research is limited. The paper represents an empirical application of this approach. Practical implications Organizations including the Chartered Institute of Marketing and American Marketing Association have attempted to counteract marketing’s image problem by redefining what marketing means. The results of this study suggest that such attempts are unlikely to work, as the practice of marketing, in particular PR, cultivates a negative image in the media. Social implications The paper explores the relationship between marketing practice and the marketing profession and society. Originality/value The paper demonstrates the utility of cultivation theory and systematic content analyses of media texts. It develops a methodology to examine how professional practice is depicted in mass media.


Author(s):  
Khadijah Costley White

This chapter looks at how the media explained, critiqued, and reported on their own role in the branding and coverage of the Tea Party, and what that says about news media function and convergence in a headphone culture. Whether it was a “media war” on Fox News, a reporter’s rant at CNBC, or a defamatory online video triggering the dismissal of a high-ranking Obama appointee for “racism,” one thing was clear—at its core, Tea Party news narratives were also a story about modern journalism. This section of the book explains how members of the news media portrayed (implicitly and explicitly) their own roles, functions, and values as they advanced the Tea Party’s recognition, messaging, and growth through the logics, action, and discourse of branding.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis Linnemann ◽  
Bill McClanahan

This paper engages the cultural politics of criminal classifications by aiming at one of the state’s most powerful, yet ambiguous markers—the ‘gang.’ Focusing on the unique cases of ‘crews’ and collectives within the ‘straight edge’ and ‘Juggalo’ subcultures, this paper considers what leads members of the media and police to construct—or fail to construct—these street collectives as gangs in a seemingly haphazard and disparate fashion. Juxtaposing media, cultural, and police representations of straight edge ‘crews’ and Juggalo collectives with the FBI’s Gang Threat Assessment, we detail how cultural politics and ideology underpin the social reality of gangs and thus the application of the police power. This paper, furthermore, considers critical conceptualizations of the relationship between police and criminal gangs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir ◽  
Þorgerður Einarsdóttir

The news media are the most influential sources of information, ideas and opinion for most people around the world. Who appears in the news and who is left out, what is covered and what is not and how people and events are portrayed matter. Research has consistently shown that women are underrepresented in the news and that gender stereotypes are reinforced in and through the media. The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action recognised the relationship between women and media as a major area of concern in achieving gender equality in contemporary societies. This article presents Nordic findings from the 2015 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), which is the largest and longest-running study on gender in the world’s media. The findings show that women account for only 1 in 5 of the people interviewed or reported on by Icelandic news media and that women’s overall presence in the news has declined compared to the last GMMP study in 2010. The proportion of women as news subjects is also considerably lower than in other Nordic countries. We argue that the number of women who are journalists, managers in the media industry and decision makers in society has increased, but this shift has not automatically changed the representation of women in the news, either in numbers or in their portrayal. This discrepancy indicates that the relationship between gender and the news media is complicated and needs to be approached from different perspectives.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Greg Michael Stutchbury

<p>This thesis examined through a political economy framework how New Zealand’s two largest newspaper chains, Fairfax and NZME, have been impacted by the advent of digital technologies and the effects these have had on the practice of sports journalism. Digital technology, falling revenue and increasing pressure from financial owners have all played a part in the restructuring of both Fairfax and NZME’s editorial news operations, especially in the last five years as both companies transitioned to a ‘digital-first’ environment.  Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 senior journalists who had knowledge of the transition from a print to a digital focus. These interviews highlighted the strategies adopted by both companies as they faced a challenging and evolving marketplace. They also underlined the internal tensions within newsrooms between not only journalists and editorial news managers but also the digital and print operations.  Despite the belief that digital technologies would make the print news media more collaborative and provide greater diversity and plurality, the opposite has occurred. Sports reporting remains highly routinised, coverage diversity is shrinking, and greater control is now exerted by editorial managers over the production of journalistic content. Digital technologies have also impacted the forms of content, with decision making on editorial content and resourcing now strongly influenced by data analytics, although there was still strong resistance to greater interactivity with readers. The relationship between sports organisations and print news media organisations, while considered in theory to be a symbiotic one but in reality, is an area of conflict, has also further deteriorated as sports organisations introduce significantly greater control over the media agenda. An element of this control has also heightened tensions with sports organisations moving into the digital space and competing directly with print news media organisations.</p>


2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Rodrick

This article begins by outlining what the principle of open justice is intended to achieve. It then investigates the nature of the relationship that exists between the courts and the media, and between the media and the public, and suggests that these relationships are not always conducive to realising the aims of open justice. While the reporting role of the traditional news media will undoubtedly persist, at least for the foreseeable future, it is argued that, since courts now have the means to deliver to the public a fuller and truer picture of their work than the media can, they should seize the opportunity to do so.


2020 ◽  
pp. 009365022091504
Author(s):  
Jay D. Hmielowski ◽  
Sarah Staggs ◽  
Myiah J. Hutchens ◽  
Michael A. Beam

In this article, we test a dynamic intracommunication process looking at the relationships between interpersonal discussion, perceived credibility of partisan media, and partisan media use. Using the theoretical foundation of hostile media perceptions, with a specific focus on relative hostile media, we examine whether interpersonal communication affects perceived credibility of liberal and conservative media outlets and whether these effects translate into increased use or avoidance of partisan media outlets. Using data collected during the 2016 U.S. election, we find that supportive interpersonal discussion is associated with greater perceived credibility of liberal media outlets (e.g., MSNBC) among liberals, which results in increased use of liberal leaning news outlets. In addition, we find that discussion with those who hold opposing views is associated with increased perceived credibility of conservative media outlets (e.g., Fox News) among conservatives, which translates into greater use of conservative leaning outlets. Similarly, talking to those who hold opposing views decreases perceived credibility of liberal media outlets (e.g., MSNBC) among conservatives, resulting in decreased use of liberal leaning outlets.


Author(s):  
Ted Gest

Police and the media have had a close relationship but it has become an increasingly uneasy one. For more than a century, the mainstream United States media—mainly newspapers, radio, television and magazines—have depended on the police for raw material for a steady diet of crime stories. For its part, law enforcement regards the media as something of an adversary. The relationship has changed because of the growth of investigative reporting and of the Internet. Both developments have increased the volume of material critical of the police. At the same time, law enforcement has used social media as a means to bypass the mainstream media to try getting its message directly to the public. However, the news media in all of its forms remains a powerful interpreter of how law enforcement does its job.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1632-1653 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRIK MARIER ◽  
MARINA REVELLI

ABSTRACTBuilding upon earlier studies on ageism in the media and the polarised ageism framework, this contribution compares the prevalence of three forms of ageism – intergenerational, compassionate and new ageism – in four Canadian and American newspapers. The analysis has three objectives. First, it adapts the polarised ageism framework to a comparative case study to assess its usefulness beyond Canada. Second, it analyses which form of ageism occurs more frequently in the coverage of ageing-related stories in Canadian or American newspapers. Third, it studies the importance of the political orientation of news media across both countries by comparing the portrayal of ageing-related stories in conservative and liberal newspapers. Core findings include the presence of a stronger focus on intergenerational ageism in American and conservative newspapers and more frequent prevalence of compassionate ageism in Canada and liberal newspapers. American newspapers also typically employ more pejorative and sensational language.


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