Unifying or Polarizing? Short‐Term Effects and Postdebate Consequences of Different Rhetorical Strategies in Televised Debates

Despite a large body of research, little is known about the ways in which viewers react to different kinds of statements during televised debates nor about the degree to which these short-term reactions influence postdebate opinions. Taking the second televised debate in the 2002 German national election as an example, we address both of these questions. We identify the most unifying and polarizing statements and connect immediate reactions during the debate to postdebate verdicts on an individual level of analysis. Our results show that commonplaces and acclaims met unanimous support among audience members with different political predispositions. Attacks and statements in which the candidates presented factual evidence or specified their political plans tended to polarize supporters of the respective candidates. Moreover, short-term reactions had an independent impact on postdebate verdicts even when political predispositions and expectations were controlled.     

Effects of Postdebate Coverage on Spontaneous Policy Reasoning

Candidate debates are unique in modern politics in their potential to draw widespread attention to policy reasoning, but game‐framed postdebate coverage may interfere with this potentially deliberative moment. Two experiments tested effects of policy‐ versus game‐framing of postdebate coverage on audience use of policy reasons, using a new dependent variable we develop and label spontaneous policy reasoning (SPR). In Study 1, a game‐framed postdebate story decreased SPR relative to no postdebate story, while exposure to a policy‐framed story increased SPR. Study 2 added manipulations of the timing and wording of the reason‐giving prompt, replicating the framing effects in another context while validating SPR as a spontaneous tendency to give reasons distinct from existing measures of the ability to do so.     

Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power

This article proposes integrating the insights generated by framing, priming, and agenda-setting research through a systematic effort to conceptualize and understand their larger implications for political power and democracy. The organizing concept is bias, that curiously undertheorized staple of public discourse about the media. After showing how agenda setting, framing and priming fit together as tools of power, the article connects them to explicit definitions of news slant and the related but distinct phenomenon of bias. The article suggests improved measures of slant and bias. Properly defined and measured, slant and bias provide insight into how the media influence the distribution of power: who gets what, when, and how. Content analysis should be informed by explicit theory linking patterns of framing in the media text to predictable priming and agenda-setting effects on audiences. When unmoored by such underlying theory, measures and conclusions of media bias are suspect.     

The politics of conservative elites and the 'liberal media' argument

Recent evidence suggests that conservative elites' claims of a liberal media are having an impact upon public perceptions of news coverage. With this in mind, we examined two related questions in the context of the 1988, 1992, and 1996 presidential elections. First, what factors may be prompting conservative elites to make allegations of liberal media bias? Second, what factors may influence when news media report these criticisms during presidential campaigns? Findings suggest that these criticisms of news media are at least partly strategic and reflect a dynamic relationship between political elites and journalists during a presidential campaign.     

America in Black and White: Locating Race in the Modern Presidency, 1933–2011

Research on race in public discourse tends to fall into 1 of 2 categories: Either it focuses broadly on how media communicate about racial groups and frame political issues in racial terms or it focuses specifically on how politicians, in 1 or 2 key speeches, discuss race. This study bridges these approaches. It borrows an analytical strategy from research on race in media but applies this strategy to presidential discourse. Drawing on a content analysis of every mention of race in presidential addresses over 8 decades, we find that presidents have avoided talking about race and especially specific racial groups. We also find that race discourse varies across speech types and that Southern Democrats discuss race differently than do others.     

Use and Disuse of Contextual Primes in Dynamic News Environments

This study reexamines the news priming effects of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Suggesting an alternative approach to those used in previous studies, this study assesses individuals' use and disuse of a contextual prime (i.e., the air war) in dynamic news environments. With a short-term, quasi-experimental approach considering the air war as a prime stimulus, a path analysis suggests robust evidence of the short-term accessibility effects of priming. More importantly, as suggested in Martin's (1986) set/reset model, this study extends priming effects beyond the simple hydraulic patterns of accessibility effects. It reveals that both attitudes toward military action and attitudes toward a diplomatic solution were used in subsequent judgments of the president's job performance and handling of the war. The associations between attitudes toward a diplomatic solution and subsequent judgments were even stronger than those between attitudes toward military action and the same subsequent judgments, despite the clear prowar primes of news discourse in the air-war context. This pattern was more greatly intensified among those in the high news attention group than those in the low news attention group     

Framing Cancer for Online News: Implications for Popular Perceptions of Cancer

News frames can influence how people think about disease. In a pair of studies, we demonstrate how contemporary news outlets frame cancer and how exposure to common frames can affect news audiences' perceptions of those who suffer from cancer. First, we examine the current landscape of frame usage in online cancer news, employing frames ideally suited to the depiction of health and disease. We compare our results with previously published research in this news domain. Second, we employ these frames in a multimessage experiment to assess the influence of cancer news framing on individuals' perceptions about cancer, cancer interventions, and those with cancer. We conclude with a discussion of implications for framing research and health news production.     

Defining Moments, Presidential Debates, and the Dynamics of Quotability

News coverage of presidential debates often focuses on a single defining moment which is taken to epitomize the debate in its entirety. This is a case study of the central defining moment of the 1988 vice presidential debate—the dramatic exchange culminating in Lloyd Bentsen's assertion that Dan Quayle is "no Jack Kennedy." The study documents the degree to which this particular excerpt dominated news coverage of the debate, explains why it received so much attention, and explores how it has survived and evolved in the media over time. More generally, it is argued that journalists select quotations and sound bites by reference to three basic considerations: (a) narrative relevance, (b) conspicuousness, and (c) extractability. These considerations guide processes of extract selection generally, and they can explain the genesis and survivability of prominent defining moments.     

Taking Television Seriously: A Sound and Image Bite Analysis of Presidential Campaign Coverage, 1992–2004

This study updates and builds on Hallin's landmark investigation of sound-bite news by documenting the prevalence of candidate image bites, where candidates are shown but not heard (as opposed to being shown and heard), in general election news over 4 election cycles. A visual analysis of broadcast network (ABC, CBS, and NBC) news coverage of the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 U.S. presidential elections finds that image bites constituted a greater percentage of total campaign coverage than sound bites, with candidates appearing in image bites significantly more than sound bites. Even as candidate sound bites continue to shrink over time, image-bite time is increasing in duration—and candidates are being presented in image bites almost twice as much as journalists. Sound bites are also found to be largely attack and issue focused. Based on these findings, we call for greater appreciation of visual processing, nonverbal communication, and voter learning from television news in the study of media and politics.     

Discourses of the wound and desire for the Other: remembrances of the Katyń massacre and the Smoleńsk crash

ABSTRACT

We investigate the commemorative debate in Polish newspapers about how the Katyń massacre and the presidential plane crash near Smoleńsk, Russia, should be remembered. We demonstrate that a psychoanalytic discursive analysis elucidates the insistence on remembering past wounds, nationalist politics of victimhood, and the difficulties in reaching rapprochement in intercultural relations. To this end, we analyze the commemorative debates in two main Polish newspapers and a news magazine. We argue that an emotive discourse of “Katyń as a wound” yearns for a therapeutic healing of the rifts in Polish national mythology and postcommunist identity. This discourse revolves around a demand for recognition from the Russian Other of a wounded subject by employing evocative metonymies and transposing logics of equivalence and difference.     

How informed are messaging app users about politics? A linkage of messaging app use and political knowledge and participation

Mobile messaging apps, such as Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, were unique campaign and information platforms in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This study assesses how using such apps for campaign information is related to political knowledge and participation. Data from an online survey conducted prior to the election indicate that using messaging apps for news is positively related to knowledge miscalibration. Knowledge miscalibration is positively related to offline and online political participation. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of messaging apps in the political process.     

A Clearer Picture: The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Framing Effects

Visuals in news media help define, or frame issues, but less is known about how they influence opinions and behavior. The authors use an experiment to present image and text exemplars of frames from war and conflict news in isolation and in image–text congruent and incongruent pairs. Results show that, when presented alone, images generate stronger framing effects on opinions and behavioral intentions than text. When images and text are presented together, as in a typical news report, the frame carried by the text influences opinions regardless of the accompanying image, whereas the frame carried by the image drives behavioral intentions irrespective of the linked text. These effects are explained by the salience enhancing and emotional consequences of visuals.     

Sound Bite News: Television Coverage of Elections, 1968–1988

Based on samples of network evening news broadcasts from each presidential election from 1968 through 1988, this article shows that the average sound bite has declined from 43 to 9 seconds. This change is interpreted as part of a general shift in the style of television news toward a more mediated, journalist-centered form of journalism. Three factors help explain this change: (a) the evolution of television "know-how," (b) the weakening of political consensus and authority during the last 20 years, and (c) changes in the economics of the industry. This change has significant consequences for journalism in the 1990s.     

French Abstract

This paper attempts to measure the impact of naturally occurring media frames on public support for a policy. Content analysis of network nightly news during late October of 2001 reveals that U.S. media framed the events of September 11 in terms of both war and crime. A concurrent survey of 328 Tennesseans reveals that rather than adopting either a war frame or a crime frame, audiences combined elements of these media frames in various ways and that their subsequent understanding of the events of September 11 had an impact on their support for the war in Afghanistan. The results reveal the complexity of the framing phenomenon in natural environments and suggest the need for better measures of how audiences perceive media frames as well as further investigation into framing as a means of coalition building.     

The Impact of Political Talk Radio Exposure on Attributions About the Outcome of the 1996 U.S. Presidential Election

This study investigates the media's potential to affect audiences' interpretations of news events. It compares perceptions of the causes of the 1996 presidential election outcome across four media consumption groups: listeners to the program of Rush Limbaugh, listeners to other political talk radio, consumers of mainstream news media, and nonconsumers of news media. Limbaugh listeners were more likely to discount substantive election explanations than were consumers of other types of political talk radio, consumers of mainstream news media, and nonconsumers of news media. These differences in interpretation parallel differences between the content of his program and that of other media.     

Frame Complexity and the Financial Crisis: A Comparison of the United States,the United Kingdom,and Germany in the Period 2007–2012

Communicative complexity concerns the variety of issues and stakeholders (agenda complexity) and their associations (frame complexity) in the news. One issue may dominate news in crises (9/11, Katrina), but as soon as complexity recovers, uncertainty may decrease and the public mood may improve. The financial crisis in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany (2007–2012) offers an example. An automated content analysis was applied to over 160,000 newspaper articles. Frame complexity decreased until the spotlight fell on the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers (2008). The subsequent gradual recovery was only partly interrupted by the euro crisis. A Vector AutoRegression time series analysis shows that increasing frame complexity may indeed have fostered the recovery of financial markets and consumer confidence.     

Behavioral Effects of Framing on Social Media Users: How Conflict,Economic, Human Interest,and Morality Frames Drive News Sharing

We hypothesize that generic frames influence what news people share on Facebook and Twitter through three different routes: emotions, motivations, and psychological engagement. Using a mixed-methods design, a content analysis of a representative sample of articles published in six Chilean outlets was combined with in-depth interviews with digital journalists. After controlling for issue, newsworthiness, informational utility, valence, and other confounds, results show that—across platforms—a morality frame increases news sharing, whereas a conflict frame decreases it. Emphasizing economic consequences also decreases sharing, but only on Facebook. Surprisingly, the human interest angle has no noticeable effects. These results show that news frames can have behavioral consequences, and confirm the existence of a gap between preferred frames of journalists and users.     

Explicating Media Salience: A Factor Analysis of New York Times Issue Coverage During the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

Media salience—the key independent variable in agenda-setting research—has traditionally been explicated as a singular construct. Nevertheless, scholars have defined and measured it using a number of different conceptualizations and empirical indicators. To address this limitation in research, this study introduced a conceptual model of media salience, suggesting it is a multidimensional construct consisting of 3 core elements: attention, prominence, and valence. Furthermore, the model was tested through an exploratory factor analysis of The New York Times news coverage of 8 major political issues during the 2000 presidential election as a case study. The data revealed that 2 dimensions of media salience emerge: visibility and valence. Based on the factor analysis, 2 indices are created to measure the construct, which are intended for use in future investigations.     

The emotional appropriateness heuristic: processing televised presidential reactions to the news

This study introduces the concept of the emotional appropriateness heuristic. An experiment investigated the effects of televised presidential reactions to compelling news events on memory, thought elaboration, and appropriateness evaluations made by subjects. Assessment of the news story-presidential reaction message sequences was conceptualized as an interactive cognitive process that uses the heuristic to categorize and evaluate the nonverbal behavior of the president. Negative and low intensity presidential reactions were expected and deemed appropriate. Positive or intense reactions tended to violate normative expectations and were classified as inappropriate. Findings also indicate that the emotional redundancy of images across valence-congruent message sequences improves memory. Results further suggest that the emotional appropriateness heuristic may help explain a process by which citizens can accurately assess the performance of leaders in a mass democracy, irrespective of political knowledge.