Mass Media

1
Mass Media

• Functions of the media
• Transmit political information from political
  actors to the public
• Gatekeeping
• Media makes decisions about what is news, and for
  how long
• Watchdog function
• Informal check in our political system
• Media allows the public to keep tabs on behavior
  of elected officials
• Expand scope of an issue
• More media attention leads to higher levels of
  public knowledge about issue
• This leads to more pressure on politicians

2
Problems with the Media

• Agenda setting Blurs perceptions
• The media tells up what to think about by
  covering some issues, and ignoring others
• Bias
• Ideological bias
• Corporate bias
• Media not accessible to everyone
• Priming
• Framing

3
Media Agenda Setting

• Agenda setting
• The decision to cover any event or issue
  necessarily means that other issues are more
  unlikely to be covered, even if those issues are
  arguably more important
• Newshole is limited by various constraints
• Time
• Space
• Pressure to cover the sensational

4
Media Blurs Perceptions

• If it bleeds, it leads
• When asked about the crime rate, most respondents
  vastly overestimate overall crime rate, and more
  particularly violent crime rate
• Since 1990, murder coverage increased over 500
  while real world homicide rates dropped over 40
• 1999 Lowest crime rate of decade, but 511
  homicide stories
• 1991- Higher crime rate than in 1999, but fewer
  than 100 homicide stories on major 4 networks

5
If It Bleeds, It Leads
6
Examples of Agenda setting

• Experiment 1 News stories about defense
• Group A Stories about weakness in defense
• Group B No stories about defense
• Group A participants much more likely to cite
  defense as a major problem facing nation
• Experiment 2 Various news stories
• Group A Stories about defense
• Group B Stories about pollution
• Group C No added stories
• Participants cited defense, pollution,
  depending on what stories they were exposed to

7
Bias

• Ideological bias
• Claim that there is a liberal bias in the media
• Many in media are liberal (tend to vote
  Democratic)
• Higher percentage of liberals in national media
• Rising claim of conservative bias as well
• Fox News obviously has conservative slant
• Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War

8
Bias

• Corporate Bias - corporate owners of media
  outlets might unduly influence news content
• Disney ? ABC, ESPN
• Time Warner-AOL ? CNN, TBS, TNT, HBO, Time,
  Sports Illustrated, People, Entertainment Weekly,
  Fortune, Money, Warner Brothers., New Line Cinema
• General Electric, RCA, and Westinghouse ? NBC,
  CNBC, MSNBC, History Channel
• VIACOM ? CBS, MTV, VH1, BET, TNN, UPN, Comedy
  Central, Showtime, TMC, Nickelodeon, Paramount
• News Corporation ? Fox, NY Post, London Times
• Conflict between desire of journalists to report
  news and corporations desire to maintain
  business interests

9
Media not accessible to everyone

• While most newspapers and TV news are presented
  at basic level, there are high start-up costs
  that disadvantage many
• Terms used often over the head of those with low
  political knowledge
• Without basic knowledge about politics, and often
  the issue at hand, many cannot understand the
  news
• Saying that a Democratic challenger to the
  incumbent is much more liberal is only
  informative if you understand ideologies
  (including how they match up with your own
  preferences)

10
Framing

• The way that the media presents a story
• Can affect who we blame for a particular problem,
  which affects how we think the government should
  respond
• Individual vs. societal frames
• Poverty experiment
• Those who were exposed to societal frames more
  likely to blame society for high poverty levels
• More likely to support welfare, food stamps, etc.
• Those who were exposed to individual frames more
  likely to blame individuals
• Oppose social welfare programs

11
Priming

• Prominence of stories in the media can affect the
  standards by which we judge political leaders
• Bush overall approval rating 71
• Approval of handling of economy 49
• Approval of handling of taxes 52
• Approval of handling war in Iraq 71
• Overwhelming coverage of the war is priming the
  public
• Evaluate Bush, they do so based on war, rather
  than economy or taxes