New Directions in Media and Politics

Travis N. Ridout

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351364010
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It would be difficult to find a more interesting topic than the relationship between the news media and politics, especially given that Americans are now living in the "Twitter presidency" of Donald Trump. Academic research in the area of media and politics is rapidly breaking new ground to keep pace with prolific media developments and societal changes. This innovative, up-to-date text moves beyond rudimentary concepts and definitions to consider exciting research as well as practical applications that address monumental changes in media systems in the US and the world. This carefully crafted volume explores key questions posed by academics and practitioners alike, exposing students to rigorous scholarship as well as everyday challenges confronted by politicians, journalists, and media consumers.

Each chapter opens with a "big question" about the impact of the news media, provides an overview of the more general topic, and then answers that question by appealing to the best, most-up-to-date research in the field. The volume as a whole is held together by an exploration of the rapidly changing media environment and the influence these changes have on individual political behavior and governments as a whole.

New Directions in Media and Politics makes an ideal anchor for courses as it digs deeper into the questions that standard textbooks only hint at—and presents scholarly evidence to support the arguments made.

New to the Second Edition

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• Fully updated through the 2016 elections and the early Trump presidency with a special focus on the role of social media.

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• Adds three new chapters: The Move to Mobile; Media and Public Policy; and Fake News.

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• Adds Discussion Questions to the end of each chapter.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Travis N. Ridout

In the introduction to the first edition of this textbook, which I wrote in 2012, I noted how much had changed in the study of media and politics in the previous 20 years. These changes included the movement of news online, the rise of partisan news media and the rapid decline of daily newspapers. Although these trends are certainly still important, I did not envision six years ago the election of an American president who would fundamentally change the role of the news media in both election campaigns and coverage of the presidency. I am speaking, of course, of Donald Trump and his amazing ability to use, distract and bypass the news media.

Trump, despite never having held elective office, demonstrated impressive skill in attracting the attention of the news media during his run for the presidency. At every stage of the campaign, whether the early days of the Republican primary or the waning days of the general election in early November, Trump secured more media coverage than any other candidate.¹ Through his outrageous statements—statements unlike any previous presidential candidate was willing to make—Trump provided the novelty that journalists like and the ratings points that drive up network incomes. Trump’s ability to draw media attention allowed him to remain in the public eye without having to purchase the millions of dollars in political advertising that a typical candidate must buy.

A second component of Trump’s relationship with the media was his skilled use of a relatively new platform: Twitter. Twitter provided Trump a way to bypass the news media, speaking directly to followers. Of course, other candidates had access to Twitter as well, but the authenticity of Trump’s tweets (no conventional politician would have said the same thing) meant that 1) he had more followers than Hillary Clinton,² 2) was more often retweeted than Hillary Clinton,³ and 3) was more likely to set the agenda of (and distract) the news media. Trump’s campaign tweets were often quoted directly in news articles and that continued when he became president. Never before had tweets made news to such an extent.

The third component of Trump’s relationship with the media is his unprecedented use of attacks on the news media. He routinely labels news stories that are critical of him as “fake news,” and he has said things that, at the very least, seem to encourage censorship of the press. In a tweet in October of 2017, Trump threatened the broadcast license of “network news” in response to critical reporting by NBC News. In a different tweet, he called the news media “the enemy of the American people.” In July 2017, Trump tweeted an altered wrestling video of himself punching a man with a CNN logo. And there are many more examples I could provide.

Finally, the Trump White House is willing to bend the truth in speaking to the news media to an unprecedented degree. Most memorably, Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted to the White House press corps that the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was the largest ever (in spite of photographic evidence to the contrary). Kellyanne Conway, an advisor to the president, called Spicer’s words “alternative facts” rather than a falsehood.

In just the past two years, then, the relationship between the president of the United States and the American news media has become something new. It’s a relationship in which the president has a powerful ability to distract the news media and to bypass the news media through the use of Twitter, and it is a relationship in which the president repeatedly attacks the news media and is more than willing to lie to them. My hope is that your understanding of this relationship between the news media and Donald Trump—and between the news media and politicians more generally—will be enhanced once you have finished reading the chapters in this book.

There are three main themes in this book that I want to highlight. The first is that the media environment in the United States and around the world is undergoing rapid change. These changes include the decline of traditional news organizations (and their occasional reimagining online), the proliferation of blatantly partisan and ideological news organizations both on cable television and online, the movement of news and news consumers to an online environment, and the blurring of the lines between who is a journalist and who is not. Those who study political communication are struggling—though making vast strides—to keep up with these changes and their impact. Thus, the second theme of this volume is that changes in the media environment have the potential to influence the political behavior of individuals and the functioning of governments and democracy. The authors in this volume address the many ways in which changes to the media system have had an impact on how citizens think about politics and interact with their governments. These range from how voters respond to being contacted by a politician through Facebook to whether people learn more from political blogs than they do from newspapers.

Something noted by the authors of almost every chapter is that today’s media environment has made it easy—and maybe even encouraged—people to expose themselves to news sources whose politics they agree with. The presence nowadays of so many news organizations that are upfront about their own political ideologies or partisanship means that people can easily seek out news sources that reinforce their beliefs rather than challenging them. Because of the prevalence of this idea, I placed at the front of this volume Talia Stroud and Ashley Muddiman’s chapter, which explores how people choose the media sources they use. Their chapter discusses the concept of selective exposure. As the authors show, choosing to use like-minded media has consequences for how easily people make political decisions, how much people participate politically and even how much they know about politics. Yet today’s media environment not only facilitates choosing like-minded media sources, it also facilitates the avoidance of politics. People’s entertainment preferences are easily satisfied in this era of 200 channels and billions of websites, and thus one need not engage with politics at all.

Chapter 3 shifts our focus to the subtle ways by which the media send messages. This chapter, by Samuel R. Gubitz, Samara Klar, Josh Robison and James Druckman, focuses on framing and makes an important distinction between frames in communication (the words, images and style that a presenter uses to relay information) and frames in thought (how individuals perceive a situation). The authors discuss how both types of frames are established and then note the situations under which frames can—and cannot—have an influence on people’s opinions.

In chapter 4, Jonathan Ladd and Alexander R. Podkul provide us with a useful reminder that attacks on the media did not begin with Donald Trump. They have a long history. Yet attacks by politicians on the media have risen over time, a trend that appears to coincide with another trend: the dramatic decline in how much trust and confidence that people have in the news media.

Of course, as Erika Franklin Fowler rightly points out in Chapter 5, not all people turn to a partisan media source. In fact, many still consume a traditional, mainstream news source: local television news. A common criticism of local television news is not that it’s providing one-sided political coverage but that it’s providing virtually no coverage at all of elections and government; you might as well be watching ESPN or MTV. Yet Fowler shows that this stereotype is not completely true. Local news broadcasts do provide a fair amount of political coverage, but much of it focuses on national politicians as opposed to local and much of it focuses on political strategy as opposed to the substance of policies.

Piers Robinson takes us outside the United States in Chapter 6. His focus is on how the media cover war and conflict around the globe, though he pays particular attention to how the American and British press covers those events. In doing so, he addresses an important question: in its coverage of war, do the news media serve to drum up war, or do they act as agents of peace? Robinson’s answer to this question is careful and nuanced, but he ultimately finds considerable support for the warmonger label.

No book on media and politics today should ignore the role of social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Indeed, when I conceptualized this book, I wanted the role of social media in politics today to be something that was addressed not just in a single chapter but by a multitude of authors. Still, while I wanted to show the importance of social media in a variety of contexts, I wanted one chapter that focused on that topic alone. That chapter is Chapter 7. Young Mie Kim, Richard Heinrich, Soo Yun Kim and Robyn Baragwanath focus on how election campaigns use social media, how the use of various platforms has changed over time and how the introduction of these new means of communication has had an impact on the voter. The jury is still out, however, on whether campaigns’ use of social media helps—or hinders—democracy.

People are now accessing more information through social media, but technology they use to access messages on social media has also changed. Many have abandoned their desktop computers for tablets and smart phones—the so-called “move to mobile”—a phenomenon that is examined by Johanna Dunaway, Kathleen Searles, Newly Paul and Mingxiao Sui in Chapter 8. The authors find that there are real consequences of people’s accessing news on small screens, namely, that people’s attention for the news is much more fleeting on mobile, a bad sign for an informed electorate.

Chapter 9, by Yanna Krupnikov and Elizabeth Connors, focuses on a debate that has received much attention recently: are negative campaigns bad or good for the American voter and for American democracy more generally? But instead of staking out a position on one side, the authors carefully consider the circumstances under which negativity may inspire participation—and when it may impede participation. And so “it depends” is the appropriate answer to the question of whether campaign negativity depresses political participation.

In Chapter 10, Michael Franz takes us inside the world of the political strategist. He shows how technological change has enabled campaigns to better target their messages to an intended audience. He explains how campaigns place their advertising not just in specific media markets but on specific television stations and even during specific programs in order to better reach the audiences they want to speak to. But while this may be “efficient” for campaigners, it creates a situation in which some voters are not hearing from politicians on both sides, a development that is decidedly not good for American democracy, in the view of Franz.

Regina Lawrence considers media coverage of one particular type of candidate in Chapter 11: women running for office. She asks whether women candidates get a fair shake from the news media. While pointing out hurdles that women candidates still may face—and illustrating that with a discussion of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 runs for the White House—Lawrence remains fairly optimistic that the hurdles facing women candidates are now fewer than those they faced in the past.

Most media and politics textbooks devote considerable attention to the relationship between the news media and the branches of government, and this book is no exception. In Chapter 12, C. Danielle Vinson examines the relationship between Congress and the news media—and which actor has the upper hand. Although Vinson argues that the news media ultimately get to determine what is newsworthy, she notes an impressive array of techniques that Members of Congress have adopted in their (often successful) attempts to steer the coverage that they receive. In Chapter 13, Brandon Rottinghaus takes us down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. He considers whether the president even has the ability to lead the American public anymore in this era of a fragmented—and increasingly critical—news media. But while modern presidential communication may be difficult, presidents do have various means of communication at their disposal, and the environment is sometimes ripe for presidential leadership and persuasion.

In Chapter 14, Matt Guardino ponders the question of whether online media do a better job at informing citizens about policy debates than traditional media. To answer this question, Guardino examines the framing of several policy debates, including the debate over the American Health Care Act in 2017, finding little reason for optimism. News organizations today largely fail to provide the sort of substantive information that citizens need to be well informed about policy.

We have all heard of fake news, but what is it exactly? Erika Franklin Fowler and I provide the answer in Chapter 15, explaining the difference between false or fabricated news and the politicization of the news. We also examine how false news is spread and provide advice on how you can protect yourself against it.

Rod Hart ends this volume with a “big picture” look at politics in the digital age. He addresses the staggering failure of journalism’s economic model in this Internet era and points out the dangers of a citizenry that may be too “wired.” He also bemoans a lack of courage among those scholars who study media and politics, warning that they must set aside their fascination with numbers in order to study real people using their everyday voices.

New to This Edition

The world has provided us with many new examples of the interaction between politicians and the news media since the first edition of this book was published, and the chapters are filled with such stories—many from the 2016 presidential campaigns. But this edition of the book also contains several new chapters. One explores the topic of “fake news” (what we prefer to call fabricated or false news), while another examines the impact of people’s move to mobile, that is, their interacting with the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise for the Second Edition
• New Directions in Media and Politics
• New Directions in American Politics
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The American Media System Today: Is the Public Fragmenting?
• 3 Political Dynamics of Framing
• 4 Distrust of the News Media as a Symptom and a Further Cause of Partisan Polarization
• 5 All Politics is Local? Assessing the Role of Local Television News in a Polarized Era
• 6 News Media and War: Warmongers or Peacemakers?
• 7 Campaigns Go Social: Are Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter Changing Elections?
• 8 The Move to Mobile: What’s the Impact on Citizen News Attention?
• 9 Negative Campaigns: Are They Good for American Democracy?
• 10 Targeting Campaign Messages: Good for Campaigns but Bad for America?
• 11 Do the Media Give Women Candidates a Fair Shake?
• 12 Congress and the Media: Who Has the Upper Hand?
• 13 Reassessing the Power of Speech in a Crowded Media World: Conditional Modern Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion
• 14 Media and Public Policy: Does Media Coverage Depend on the Medium?
• 15 Fake News: What is the Influence of Fabricated Stories and Efforts to Undermine Media Credibility?
• 16 Politics in the Digital Age: A Scary Prospect?
• Index