In What Ways Can The Media Change The Way A Citizen Thinks About Government?
Story by Andra Brichacek. Video past Ryan Lund and Aaron Nelson. Photos past Schaeffer Bonner and Karly DeWees.
Ask Donald Trump and he'll tell you journalists wield a lot of power over the U.Due south. political procedure.
It's true that the media take played an important role in politics since the First Subpoena established freedom of the press equally a cornerstone of American democracy. Voters need information to brand educated decisions, and it'due south journalists' chore to requite it to them.
But can the media really alter the issue of an ballot?
In improver to widespread voter fraud, which most experts concord would be impossible to achieve, Trump is alleging the election has been "rigged" through biased media coverage. Contempo shifts in the media landscape take changed how the press interacts with candidates, campaigns and the voting public. And, at a time when trust in the media is at an all-fourth dimension low, the fourth estate has come up under burn from critics on both sides of the aisle for its coverage of the 2016 elections.
To notice out what the research says almost media's evolving office in the elections process, we talked to three scholars from the UO Schoolhouse of Journalism and Communication.
1. To cover or not to cover
The first style journalists become involved in elections is by choosing which candidates to encompass and how much. Those choices alone can have a huge effect on voter perceptions.
"As hard as it is to believe, the biggest thing that drives elections is unproblematic proper noun recognition," said Regina Lawrence, executive director of the UO SOJC'southward Agora Journalism Eye and George Southward. Turnbull Portland Center. "Inquiry has shown that some candidates can be literally left invisible because they tin can't win enough interest from the media."
Lawrence, a nationally recognized expert on political communication and the co-author of "Hillary Clinton's Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Entrada Trail" and "When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina," said this effect was near noticeable during the Republican primaries, when Trump generated an outsized proportion of the media coverage.
"He was able to get the equivalent of massive ad buys without having to spend much money," Lawrence said.
For the media, this disproportionate coverage was driven more past economic science than political bias. In a competitive 24/7 news cycle, news organizations publish stories that will drive traffic. And, cheers to his preexisting fame and ability to generate controversy, those stories were frequently about Trump.
Did all the gratuitous printing make a difference? Because this year's Republican primaries had such a large field, Trump's ability to stand out in the crowd likely played a significant role in his nomination.
two. Bias, scripts and the polarization of America
Research reveals that many major media outlets concenter partisan audiences, which reflects political biases in their coverage. Again, this miracle is motivated by business organization: Since today's news consumers can get the basic facts from a quick internet search, many publications have differentiated themselves by shifting from direct news to context and analysis
Unfortunately, the media'due south growing political schisms seem to be driving polarization in the populace as well.
"Selective exposure is the tendency many of us have to seek out news sources that don't fundamentally claiming what we believe about the earth," said Lawrence. "We know there'southward a human relationship betwixt selective exposure and the growing divide in political attitudes in this land. And that gap is clearly related to the rise of more than partisan media sources."
Aside from ideological bias, co-ordinate to Lawrence, journalists across outlets as well perpetuate biased views past distilling circuitous campaigns and bug into simplified "scripts."
Ane popular election-coverage script is the "horserace" or "game frame" narrative. "We know from decades of inquiry that the mainstream media tend to encounter elections through the prism of contest," said Lawrence. "Campaigns go covered a lot like sports events, with an emphasis on who's winning, who's losing, who's upwardly, who's down, how they are moving ahead or behind in the polls."
The media also perpetuate character-based scripts. "For example, in 2000, the script for Al Gore was that he was a pompous diameter, and the script for George Due west. Bush was that he wasn't very smart," said Lawrence.
In this year'due south presidential race, the narratives that Clinton is a corrupt politician and Trump is a racist, misogynist outsider take dominated ballot coverage.
iii. Social media: Echo bedroom and directly line to the masses
Co-ordinate to a recent Pew Research Center report, 62 per centum of Americans get their news via social media platforms. What they might not realize is that the news they see is heavily filtered.
"What we see on Facebook is dictated by algorithms that determine what yous encounter based on what you lot similar and dislike, what you annotate on and click on," said SOJC Assistant Professor Nicole Dahmen, who researches and blogs near visual communication and social media in politics. "Rather than getting a variety of perspectives that contribute to political discourse, nosotros see an echo chamber."
On the other hand, social media gives users more direct access to candidates than ever before. "With social media, voters may believe they take an intimate relationship with a candidate they will probably never see in person," said Lawrence.
And candidates have unprecedented control over the images they present. "Social media allow candidates a direct ways by which to communicate with the voting public, thereby bypassing the news media as a gatekeeper," Dahmen said.
4. A moving picture is worth 1,000 words
For almost people, visuals carry an even more powerful impact than words on a page.
"Visual communication research has shown that images, especially of political candidates, convey emotions, actions, realism and credibility," said Dahmen. "These images course a lasting impression in the mind of the voting public."
The photos news organizations choose to publish and such factors as their size and layout tin can also influence voter perceptions — and reveal possible bias.
"Expect at how dissimilar newspapers across the country presented the story of the nomination of Hillary Clinton equally the showtime female person candidate from a major party," said Dahmen. "Some led with a dominant photograph of Hillary that positioned her in a favorable light. Some led with an paradigm of her husband. And other newspapers led with an image of Donald Trump."
Published images besides go part of the permanent tape preserved on the internet. "Trump may claim he didn't mock a reporter with a disability," Dahmen said, "but nosotros take evidence in the form of a video and photographs showing that he did."
five. Information journalism: Fact-checking, polls and the cocky-perpetuating cycle
Once considered the least glamorous part of a journalist's job, fact-checking has come into vogue with help from new tools that make verification faster and more accurate.
"Organizations similar PolitiFact and Factcheck.org are doing adept-quality journalism that isn't simply following the new, shiny story of the twenty-four hour period," Lawrence said. "They're asking tough questions nigh what candidates are saying and testing them confronting the available record. Simply because of selective exposure, research suggests fact-checks will not necessarily alter somebody's listen."
While fact-checkers focus attention on the candidates' stands on the bug, information analysis tools can perpetuate the media's heavy attending on the horserace.
"I of the most notable developments in the information journalism space are tools to make predictions about the outcomes of elections," said Damian Radcliffe, the SOJC's Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of Journalism and co-editor of "Data Journalism: Inside the Global Future." "The nigh prominent example of this is the work done past Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight."
Much of the information Silver crunches come from polls, one of the most common topics of election coverage. "Polls influence voter perceptions," Lawrence said. "And we know that how candidates are doing in the polls can and so influence the type of coverage they get."
The media flock to the front-runners. And the more coverage those candidates get, the college they tend to climb in the polls — a dynamic that tin plow into a self-perpetuating bicycle.
6. Watchdogs of commonwealth
As of this writing, the story of the 2016 elections is not yet consummate — and neither is the media'due south role in it.
"Given the claims Trump has been making about rigged elections, I expect journalists to picket voting very advisedly," said Lawrence. "Of grade, that's a very large job with so many polling places beyond the state."
To face that claiming, ProPublica has launched Electionland to cover "access to the ballot and problems that prevent people from exercising their right to vote." The SOJC is one of 13 J-schools nationwide participating in the project.
"Around 85 students accept volunteered to participate in a special newsroom on Election Twenty-four hours," said Radcliffe, faculty atomic number 82 for Electionland. "We'll be monitoring social media to find interesting stories of things happening across the Westward Coast. If we find bug people are talking nearly, we'll effort to verify. And if necessary, we'll escalate them to the newsroom in New York to be explored in more detail."
At least one affair hasn't inverse: Monitoring the workings of power to evangelize the total story to the people is still the almost of import part of the journalist's job description.
Andra Brichacek is the SOJC Advice team'southward author and editor. She has most twenty years' experience creating content for print and online media and has specialized in education since 2008. Follow her on Twitter @andramere.
Ryan Lund is a senior double-majoring in cinema studies and journalism, with a modest in business administration. This is his first year as a digital content creator, with a specialization in videography and video editing, for the SOJC Communications office. He has also worked extensively with the Science and Retentiveness project. Follow Ryan on Instagram and Twitter @RynoLund, and subscribe to his YouTube channel at NorthFern Productions.
Aaron Nelson is a senior studying journalism at the SOJC with a focus in photo and multimedia journalism. He currently works every bit a photographer for the Daily Emerald and has freelanced for KVAL. He has as well held previous internships with Lookout man Recruiting and the music-review website Daily-Beat out.
Schaeffer Bonner is a graduate educatee in the SOJC's Multimedia Journalism Chief's programme at the SOJC in Portland. He previously worked six years equally a photojournalist for ABC affiliate KAKE-10 in Wichita, Kansas. His coverage of breaking news has as well been featured on ABC NewsOne and World News At present. Schaeffer is a veteran of the U.s. Air Force.
Karly DeWees is a design intern for the SOJC Communications office. She volition be graduating in December 2016 with honors and moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in advertising. During her time in the SOJC, she honed her photography skills shooting macro photos in Alaska for the Scientific discipline and Retentivity projection and local sports games for KVAL.com. Y'all can view her piece of work at karlydewees.com.
Source: https://journalism.uoregon.edu/news/six-ways-media-influences-elections
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