Media Effects

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Media Effects

• The role of the mass media in American politics

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What is mass media?

• Print media (newspapers, magazines)
• Broadcast media (television and radio)
• Internet

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Importance of mass media

• Primary conduit of information about politics
• But is the media passive?
• Is the media biased or objective?
• If biased, does it matter?

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Traditional view of media effects

• Expected effects
• - information
• - persuasion
• Experimental design
• Findings
• - little retention of information
• - little persuasion
• Minimal Effects Hypothesis

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More subtle effects

• Agenda-setting
• Priming
• Framing

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Agenda-setting

• Importance of issue
• Scope of issues/answers
• Iyengar, Kinder and Peters study
• Effect increased by
• - lead story status
• - vivid story, emotional engagement
• - lack of political sophistication of viewer

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Priming

• Cognitive misers
• Which aspect of an issue weighs most heavily in
  our attitude
• Iyengar, Kinder and Peters Study

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Not just the news . . .

• Entertainment shows may also have effects
• - agenda-setting
• - priming
• Even better than the news
• - full hour on single issue
• - consistency from week to week
• Examples

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Framing!

• What is the frame of a story?
• What is the cultural or ideological context in
  which we place an issue?

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Manipulating the frames

• Klan rally
• - free speech
• - social order
• Bosnian conflict
• - genocide
• - centuries of ethnic conflict

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Bottom lineMedia doesnt change what we think,
only how we think
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Characteristics of the Media and Media Coverage

• (and their implications)

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A look ahead

• Ideological bias
• Corporate control of media
• Personalization/Personality Politics
• Dramatization
• Fragmentation

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Ideological bias?

• Allegations of liberal bias journalists
• Allegations of conservative bias media owners /
  advertisers
• Does it matter?

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Corporate control of media

• Limits the number of real news outlets
• Profit motive
• - demand-driven news
• - cost-cutting measures
• - journalists sell souls for access
• - rush to print

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Demand-driven news

• Saturation coverage of ultimately non-historical
  events
• May crowd out other stories
• May burn out the public, make us jaded
• Examples O.J., Paris Hilton

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Cost-cutting measures

• Canned news stories (same stories in every
  paper)
• Lack of in-depth research
• Usual suspects interviewed, no diversity of
  viewpoints

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Objectivity vs. Access

• Willing to do puff pieces in order to get
  choice interviews
• Embedded journalists

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The rush to the presses

• Use sources and tips without confirmation
• Trying to predict the news
• Implications
• - may get things wrong, and people dont pay
  attention to retractions
• - elections people behave strategically

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Personalization / Personality Politics

• Tendency to focus on issues through lens of
  individual victims
• Tendency to focus on personality of candidates
• Implications
• May actually engage some viewers
• Personality characteristics may be good cues to
  how politicians will actually behave
• But . . . May gloss over important policy issues

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Example of personalization CNN (October 17,
2000)

• there might have been a defeat for Gore on the
  likeability factor. (Bob Novak)
• Gores clear decision to be aggressive, to try
  to define very sharp differences might make him
  seem assertive and tough minded or rude and
  smug. (Jeff Greenfield)
• In this forum, where he was answering questions
  and being that aggressive, it will be interesting
  to see whether or not it plays as if he was a
  little terrier running out and trying to answer
  this persons question versus standing back and
  saying You know, let me talk down to you.
  (Tamala Edwards)

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Dramatization

• News told through narrative structure and visuals
• If it bleeds, it leads
• May result in important pieces of information
  being cut because they dont fit with the
  narrative structure
• Oversimplifies issues
• Polarizes issues by playing up dramatic conflict

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Fragmentation

• News told in small bits (esp. w/ broadcast media)
• Oversimplification
• Dont see stories in context, developing dynamic,
  connection between various issues and events

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In sum

• Many aspects of news coverage result in poor
  quality information and skewed decisions about
  which stories to cover
• May not persuade us to vote Republican rather
  than Democratic, but these biases do affect how
  we think about political issues

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So . . .

• If media is such an important component of
  political life and
• Media is so terrible
• What can we do about it?