Political Behaviour/Sociology

F17 - Media Coverage of Politics I

Date: Jun 1 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location: Classroom - CL 434 Room ID:15743

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jason Roy (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Frédérick Bastien (Université de Montréal)

The News They Are a-Changin': An Analysis of 40 Years of News Media Content in the United States: Dominik Stecula (University of British Columbia)
Abstract: The media are an important institution in the political world. They have a virtual monopoly over the presentation of many kinds of important information, and shape political attitudes, policy preferences, and affect voting behavior and political participation. Over the past few decades, the news media environment has been transformed in a dramatic fashion, with the proliferation of outlets and fragmentation of the news audience in the United States (Prior 2007; Bennett & Iyengar 2008). In many ways, the competition for the news consumer is more intense than at any point in the 20th Century. And yet, little is known about how these fundamental, structural changes affected the news content. The aim of this paper is to systematically examine the news media content over the period 1980-2016. In total, nearly 600,000 news stories and transcripts are analyzed, from a wide array of sources, ranging from the national daily newspapers, television network news, cable news, and tabloids, focusing on a wide swath of issues, ranging from abortion to international trade. Utilizing automated content analysis, I examine two features of news content: the tone (including affect, civility, and negativity), as well as sources in the news, particularly whether the media feature extreme politicians more prominently than moderate ones. In short, I seek to gain a systematic understanding if and how did the news media content change at the time of major shifts in the news environment, and what are the implications of those changes for the polarized politics of the 21st Century.

Have You Seen This? Why Political Pundits Share Scholarly Research on Social Media: David Moscrop (Simon Fraser University), Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University)
Abstract: The public sphere has long been considered central to democratic societies. In recent years, this has been extended to a digital public sphere as a space for deliberation, discussion, and public debate. Whether digital or not, the public sphere relies on citizens having access to trustworthy information to reach considered judgments and opinions. As the venue where our societies more reliable knowledge is formally communicated, scholarly research is a critical piece of a broader information ecosystem. But do citizens access it? and how does it reach them? In this paper, we examine the role of political pundits—individuals tasked with informing the public—as conduits for scholarly research to reach and influence the digital public sphere. We ask “What motivates political pundits to share scholarly research on Twitter?” By examining the sharing practices and motivations of political pundits, as well as their interconnections with others who have shared research, we can offer an account of what role they play in informing the public and influencing the public sphere. We find that the political pundits do not share scholarly material often, but when they do, they primarily do so to inform others or to express general interest about something they have learned. Less often, they circulate material to promote themselves or others, or to socialize within their online community. Our findings suggest that pundits play a role in disseminating scholarly research on social media and thus act as a bridge between academics and the public.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest…? Conflict, Balance, and the Mass Media’s (Lack of) Coverage of Expert Agreement: Eric Merkley (University of British Columia)
Abstract: There is a large gulf that separates expert and public opinion on a wide range of questions of science and economics directly relevant to public policy. This may problematically put pressure on politicians to enact policies that are welfare reducing in the long-run. Multiple theories have been advanced to explain why these gulfs exist. First, individual-oriented research emphasizes that citizens may lack the motivation to pay attention to signals from experts, much like other types of political information. Politically attentive citizens may also be motivated to cognitively resist information from experts that go against their social identity-anchored priors. These theories implicitly assume expert information is readily available in the information environment. Second, media-centred approaches emphasize that news outlets are often biased against context, which may limit coverage of expert information, and towards authority and balance. They may elevate dissenting experts and political actors, and in so doing dilute the value of the expert information. However, little effort has made to systematically study these biases beyond the context of climate change. This study will present an analysis of over 300,000 American newspaper, newswire, broadcast, and cable stories on 10 issues where there are important elements of consensus among scientists and economists. It will combine automated methods, such as machine learning and dictionaries, with hand coding. This paper aims to demonstrate the extent to which the news media provide expert information through its coverage, including consensus cues, and whether the presentation of such information is contaminated by authority and balancing bias.

Pictures, Filters, and Politics: The Role of Instagram in Constituent Communication in Canada: Vincent Raynauld (Emerson College), Mireille Lalancette (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières)
Abstract: Recent years have been marked by the rapid growth and intensification of dynamics of visual political communication in the social mediascape. In this paper, we explore how elected officials are leveraging the structural and functional properties of social media platforms with a strong visual component, such as Instagram and SnapChat, for constituent outreach and engagement during their daily personal and professional activities. Specifically, we take interest in the ways in which and to what degree these tools are used for image-making and messaging – or political storytelling – in a context of non-stop digital campaigning in and out of elections. In order to do so, this paper unpacks how Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, utilized his personal Instagram account to document his first year in office (October 19, 2015 to October 19, 2016). Through a detailed coding rubric considering 125 variables linked to visual and textual content, we examine how he portrayed himselves and framed his message through still and moving image content shared on his personal Instagram feed. By extension, this paper explores emerging practices of social media-based visual constituent communication that are increasingly personalized and informal due to various factors, including their format and their target audience. More generally, this paper contributes to the growing body of scholarly work on image-based digital constituent communication and engagement in a context of permanent campaigning in Canada.