Tag: AEJMC

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Campaign Tweets in the 2012 U.S. and South Korean Presidential Elections

aejmc14Presented August 8, 2014 at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Montreal, Qc., Canada, Political Communication Interest Group.

For more information about this paper available here, or by visiting the Academia page on dylanmclemore.com.

 

As America embarked on its second social media election, changes to South Korea’s election laws permitted the highly digital nation to have its first. Amidst concerns that reform might lead to Americanized campaigning in South Korea, we sought to compare the Twitter activity between candidates in the two countries.

We conducted an extensive content analysis of over 4,500 Tweets from the accounts of presidential candidates, from frontrunners like Barack Obama and Park Geun-hye to third-partiers or independents like Jill Stein and Kang Ji-won. Specifically, we were curious as to what topics candidates Tweeted about, whether they used collectivist or individualistic language, and how often they used Twitter to engage in opposition attacks.

Among the findings:

– U.S. candidate Twitter feeds focused on issues and candidate image, while South Korean feeds spent more time promoting campaign events.

– Surprisingly, South Korean feeds featured almost entirely third-person language. They were far less likely to use collective “we/you” language than American candidates. U.S. feeds were also more likely to engage in individualistic “I” language. This might be less of a result of cultural differences in communication styles and more a function of South Korean usage of Twitter as a campaign calendar more than a platform for ideas.

– American candidates used Twitter to attack opponents more often than South Korean candidates. However, given cultural and political norms in the two nations, the number of attacks in the U.S. was less than what one might expect in other campaign communications, while the noticeable presence of negative campaigning in South Korea was new and somewhat surprising.

Together, the findings denote some differences between the two countries in Twitter campaign communication. However, similarities also emerged, and tended to point toward an Americanization of political discourse.

Covering the Conventions: Bias in Pre and Post-speech Media Commentary during the 2012 Presidential Nominating Conventions

aejmc

Presented August 10, 2013 at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Washington, D.C., Political Communication Interest Group.

This paper was previously presented at the 2013 AEJMC Southeast Colloquium in Tampa, Fla., where it received the Top Paper Award for the Electronic News Division. AEJMC permits re-submission of regional papers to the national conference.

To request the accompanying poster for this paper, email Dylan.

To read the abstract and request the full paper, go to the Academia page on dylanmclemore.com.

SYNOPSIS:

Party nominating conventions used to be messy and meaningful. Today, they’re more pomp and circumstance. It’s no wonder the broadcast television networks pay far less attention to them now than in decades past. For cable news, on the other hand, the conventions provide fuel – or at least a moving backdrop – to the 24-hour news cycle. And in the pauses between speakers, the talking heads weigh-in with their analysis.

There is a healthy amount of research suggesting that the party nominating conventions can influence voters, as well as a stack of studies that indicate media analysis of political events can influence voters. However, the specific cross-section between conventions and commentary has not been evaluated.

Does instant media commentary affect perceptions of convention speeches? This study lays the foundation for that investigation by looking at how favorably (or unfavorably) different news networks covered the 2012 Republican and Democratic national conventions.

We looked at a large sample of live convention coverage – all six nights of primetime (10 p.m. E.T.) on the three major broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC) networks. Here’s what we learned:

  • Convention coverage was generally favorable to the host party.
  • Bias was indicated by an exaggeration of this positive commentary, and near absence of negative commentary (for instance, coverage of the DNC on MSNBC was 3% negative; the RNC on Fox News was only 2% negative). In other words, unbalanced coverage was not the result of tearing one side down, but by disproportionately praising the other.
  • The largest differences in valence were observed on Fox News & MSNBC, though some statistical tests revealed evidence of bias in traditional network broadcasts.

We look forward to enriching this study with further data from the content analysis, including potential explanatory mechanisms. Next, we desire to test the effects of such instant media commentary on the audience (presently in the data collection phase). We extend our thanks to the reviewers, moderator, and discussant for taking the time to read our paper and provide valuable feedback.

“Evil Visited this Community Today”: News Media Framing of the Sandy Hook School Shooting

aejmcPresented August 8, 2013 at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Washington, D.C., Newspaper and Online News Division.

To request the accompanying tables and figures, email Dylan.

To read the abstract and request the full paper, go to the Academia page on dylanmclemore.com.

 

SYNOPSIS:

On December 14, 2012, Adam P. Lanza shot and killed 20 children and 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Ct., in the deadliest grade school shooting in American history. Media coverage of the tragedy was swift and extensive. Naturally, grief gave way to the question – How could this have happened? A content analysis of seven U.S. newspapers looked at the way the Sandy Hook shooting was framed and how problem definitions emerged in the week following the incident.

The seven papers were The Hartford Courant, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The St. Louis Post Dispatch and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Articles were coded for topical frame, presence of blame, valence, and source of information.

In the case of Sandy Hook, the death of so many children, all seven years of age or younger, presented a dramatic frame not present in many other prominent massacres. As such, stories were often framed in terms of the victims, and were overwhelmingly positive – celebrating the lives lived rather than lamenting the lives lost.

Guns emerged as the most prominent problem definition, or “blame frame.” Already an institutionalized frame for examining shootings like Columbine and Aurora, the frame was propelled by major political figures, including President Barack Obama and Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, who advocated gun control in the wake of the shooting.

Discussion of mental health was also prevalent in the coverage, and a specific point of interest for us. Many recent mass shootings, including Virginia Tech, Tucson, and Aurora, have been carried out by individuals with a mental illness. However, confirming diagnoses often lag far behind media speculation. A considerable number of stories mentioned that Lanza had Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. Autism is a neurological disorder, not a mental illness, and would not have been responsible for the type of premeditated violence perpetrated at Sandy Hook. Still, Lanza’s mental health remained a topic of speculation in the media.

Even more troubling was the sourcing of the mental illness frame. Rather than relying on experts in the field, three-quarters of mental illness frames relied on members of the communities, victims’ families, or similar laypersons. Sourcing for other frames made more sense. Political figures involved in the debate informed the gun control frame, educators and law enforcement informed the school security frame, and community members informed the victim frame.

A long-held criticism of the press is that it is insensitive to victims of tragedy, immediately trying to move the story forward. That criticism was not validated by the present study. Only two stories from the first day of coverage invoked blame, increasing to about a third of stories on day two. By day three, attributing blame became a focus of media coverage, accounting for more than half of frames over the rest of the week.

We look forward to refining our methodology and exploring coverage of events that capture national attention. We extend our thanks to the reviewers, moderator, and discussant for taking the time to read our paper and provide valuable feedback.

Covering the Conventions: Bias in Pre and Post-speech Media Commentary during the 2012 Presidential Nominating Conventions

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Presented March 1, 2013 at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, Tampa, Fla. Electronic News Division, Top Paper Award.

To request the accompanying PowerPoint, email Dylan.

To read the abstract and request the full paper, go to the Academia page on dylanmclemore.com.

SYNOPSIS:

Party nominating conventions used to be messy and meaningful. Today, they’re more pomp and circumstance. It’s no wonder the broadcast television networks pay far less attention to them now than in decades past. For cable news, on the other hand, the conventions provide fuel – or at least a moving backdrop – to the 24-hour news cycle. And in the pauses between speakers, the talking heads weigh-in with their analysis.

There is a healthy amount of research suggesting that the party nominating conventions can influence voters, as well as a stack of studies that indicate media analysis of political events can influence voters. However, the specific cross-section between conventions and commentary has not been evaluated.

Does instant media commentary affect perceptions of convention speeches? This study lays the foundation for that investigation by looking at how favorably (or unfavorably) different news networks covered the 2012 Republican and Democratic national conventions.

We looked at a large sample of live convention coverage – all six nights of primetime (10 p.m. E.T.) on the three major broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC) networks. Here’s what we learned:

  • Convention coverage was generally favorable to the host party.
  • Bias was indicated by an exaggeration of this positive commentary, and near absence of negative commentary (for instance, coverage of the DNC on MSNBC was 3% negative; the RNC on Fox News was only 2% negative). In other words, unbalanced coverage was not the result of tearing one side down, but by disproportionately praising the other.
  • The largest differences in valence were observed on Fox News & MSNBC, though some statistical tests revealed evidence of bias in traditional network broadcasts.

We look forward to enriching this study with further data from the content analysis, including potential explanatory mechanisms. Next, we desire to test the effects of such instant media commentary on the audience. We extend our thanks to the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida for hosting the event, and the paper judges for honoring us with the Top Paper Award in the Electronic News Division.

Perceived Media Bias and Cable News Branding: The Effects of Diversification in the Marketplace of Information

This presentation was given Saturday at the AEJMC Annual Conference as part of a refereed paper research session on “Bias and Branding” sponsored by the Radio-Television Journalism Division. This is a rudimentary script to an oral presentation with visual aids, so it will leave a bit to be desired for the blog reader.

For the PowerPoint accompanying this presentation, email Dylan.

For more on the conference as a whole, view my main post on AEJMC ’11.

Claims of media bias are nothing new. And despite plentiful content analyses that show little to no evidence of some collective attempt to mislead the public, perceptions of bias not only remain, but have increased dramatically over the past decade, a time frame that correlates with the rise of Fox News and MSNBC – cable news networks to compete with CNN and create a competitive marketplace.

Researchers like Sutter or Anand, DiTella, and Galetovic have looked at news coverage economically, and cable news as just what it is – a for-profit industry. That means, like any differentiated product market, the news outlets must seek a place along a continuum of potential audiences. With radio stations, it would be genres of music; with news it could be the types of stories covered (intl/domestic; hard news/entertainment), but we often think of it in terms of political ideology.

The suggestion is that our oft-idealized paradise of objectivity doesn’t make good business sense, because wide-open market segments are left untapped while everyone battles for the middle. If every station in town is playing country music, why don’t you try reaching out to the hip-hop fans? (Ideology isn’t quite so drastic, but you get the idea.)

So instead, content analyses (or a casual channel surf during primetime) have suggested that the cable news environment looks something like this. Each network has differentiated, targeting its own particular audience. Which begs the question… How do these differentiation attempts influence the audience’s perceptions of bias in those networks?

Continue reading “Perceived Media Bias and Cable News Branding: The Effects of Diversification in the Marketplace of Information”