When good news is scarce and bad news is good: Government responsibilities and opposition possibilities in political agenda‐setting

Recent studies have drawn attention to the political contingencies of the media's political agenda‐setting influence, finding, for instance, that issues from the media agenda are more likely to attract attention if a party enjoys ownership of the issue. Supplementing the debate on why political parties respond to news, it is argued in this article that ownership is only part of the picture and that policy responsibility, together with news tone, constitutes a stronger explanation of news politicisation. Opposition parties respond to bad news because they reflect negative developments in social problems for which the government could be held responsible. The government responds to good news that reflects positive developments in social problems because this could politicise policy success, but is also forced to react when news explicitly address government responsibility and thereby threatens its image as responsive and competent. Furthermore, it is shown that news tone and policy responsibility condition the incentive to politicise owned issues from the media agenda. Thus, opposition parties will not politicise owned issues when news is good because this could draw attention to government success, while government is unable and unwilling to prioritise owned issues when news is bad and instead is likely to make use of its ownership strengths when news is good and the pressure to respond is low. The arguments are tested on a large‐N sample of radio news stories from Denmark (2003–2004). Opposition response is measured through parliamentary questions spurred by the news stories, while government response is indicated by references to these stories in the prime minister's weekly press meeting. Results confirm the expectations, suggesting that parties care more about the tone of news stories and the type of attention they might produce, rather than what type of issues they could serve to politicise.     

论负面新闻报道的舆论引导

新闻分为正面报道和负面报道。在新媒体时代,以暴露和批评为主的负面报道,也可以有效地剔除糟粕,净化社会环境,张扬人性的力量。因此,要以崭新的思维与视角来做好负面报道,本着信息为本、受众为本的原则,充分尊重老百姓的知情权,对负面新闻报道做到不夸张、不缩小、不遮掩也不渲染,更杜绝"反面文章正面做",客观、公正、及时、准确、全面地将真实情况告诉受众。让负面报道,特别是灾难新闻报道中的人情、仁爱、人文关怀成为人类苦难的"温柔抚摸者",挖掘负面新闻报道的正面效应。同时,做负面新闻报道时,要揭开事实真相,发挥负面报道的舆论引导作用,积极营造廉洁、廉明、廉正的舆论场,匡正社会风气,维护公平正义。     

It’s all ‘bad’ news! Voters’ perception of macroeconomic policy competence

The purpose of the present paper is to consider how voters form perceptions about macroeconomic policy competence by focusing on the role of recent macroeconomic news: Do their perceived views of good news matter as much as bad news when they form beliefs about the incumbent government’s competence in managing the macroeconomy, in particular, with regard to their ability to control inflation and unemployment? We find that ‘bad’ news about unemployment persists when households are forming their perceived competence, whereas “good” news does not. That is, voters tend to display pessimistic bias when forming perceptions about the incumbent government’s competence.     

Information,perceptions, and electoral behaviour of young voters: A randomised controlled experiment

The way people absorb and process politically relevant information is central to their subsequent political behaviour (in terms of turnout and vote choice). Nonetheless, little is known about how young voters – who might be more impressionable than more experienced voters – respond to the provision of such information. In this article, we design a between-subject randomised controlled trial that exposes a sample of university students to positive, neutral or negative information about central government performance before the 2017 Portuguese local elections. We find that young voters update their perceptions more when exposed to negative news. This negativity bias is stronger for first-time voters. We also find that negative information significantly affects turnout of initially undecided young voters. Our results imply that sensitivity to information is heterogeneous and that some young voters may be prone to manipulation through the provision of negative news.     

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.     

A framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries: What makes a “good” picture gallery?

The development of digital technology in recent years has led to a revolution in news production and dissemination. In terms of production, we have witnessed a fundamental shift towards visual story-telling. Images dominate the verbal story space and have the potential to become the story themselves. Beyond this, they are also creating unique spaces for themselves (e.g. the online news gallery), with new multimodal genres posing challenges for practitioners and analysts alike. The potential effects of such fundamental shifts on the professional news story-telling practices of the legacy news media provide a rich research opportunity for understanding both how and whether news organisations fulfil their mandate of making sense of the plethora of information that is now available. In this paper, we concern ourselves with one particular innovation in visual news reporting – the online news gallery, or picture gallery in journalism terms. We report on a qualitative analysis of 35 galleries from 12 English-language newspapers with online presence from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, and interrogate the choices made by institutions in composing this particular type of multimodal “text”, as it is situated in a professional, news story-telling context. In doing so, we explore how a systemic-functional semiotic approach to multimodal news discourse may help us to access the meaning potential of this emerging genre as a vehicle for multimodal digital news reporting, present a framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries and consider its implications for the education of media practitioners.     

Is newspaper coverage of economic events politically biased?

This paper develops an econometric technique to test for political bias in news reports that controls for the underlying character of the news reported. Because of the changing availability of the number of newspapers in Nexis/Lexis, two sets of time are examined: from January 1991 to May 2004 and from January 1985 to May 2004. Our results suggest that American newspapers tend to give more positive coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the White House than when Republicans are; a similar though smaller effect is found for Democratic control of Congress. Our results reject the claim that “reader diversity is a powerful force toward accuracy.” When all types of news are pooled into a single analysis, our results are significant. However, the results vary greatly depending upon which types of economic data are being reported. When newspapers are examined individually the only support that Republicans appear to obtain is from the president’s home state newspapers during his term. This is true for the Houston Chronicle under both Bushes and the Los Angeles Times during the Reagan administration. Contrary to rational expectations, media coverage affects people’s perceptions of the economy.     

Partisan Differences in Opinionated News Perceptions: A Test of the Hostile Media Effect

The proliferation of opinion and overt partisanship in cable news raises questions about how audiences perceive this content. Of particular interest is whether audiences effectively perceive bias in opinionated news programs, and the extent to which there are partisan differences in these perceptions. Results from a series of three online experiments produce evidence for a relative hostile media phenomenon in the context of opinionated news. Although, overall, audiences perceive more story and host bias in opinionated news than in non-opinionated news, these perceptions—particularly perceptions of the host—vary as a function of partisan agreement with the news content. Specifically, issue partisans appear to have a “bias against bias,” whereby they perceive less bias in opinionated news with which they are predisposed to agree than non-partisans and especially partisans on the other side of the issue.     

How news content influences anti-immigration attitudes: Germany, 1993–2005

Immigration is an increasingly important political issue in Western democracies and a crucial question relates to the antecedents of public attitudes towards immigrants. It is generally acknowledged that information relayed through the mass media plays a role in the formation of anti-immigration attitudes. This study considers whether news coverage of immigrants and immigration issues relates to macro-level dynamics of anti-immigration attitudes. It further explores whether this relationship depends on variation in relevant real world contexts. The models simultaneously control for the effects of established contextual explanatory variables. Drawing on German monthly time-series data and on ARIMA time-series modeling techniques, it is shown that both the frequency and the tone of coverage of immigrant actors in the news significantly influence dynamics in anti-immigration attitudes. The strength of the effect of the news, however, depends on contextual variation in immigration levels and the number of asylum seekers. Implications of these findings are discussed in the light of the increasing success of extreme right parties and growing opposition to further European integration.     

Attentiveness to television news and opinion change in the fall 1992 presidential campaign

This paper examines the extent to which attention to television news impacted affective evaluations of presidential candidates during the last two months of the 1992 campaign. Our analyses show that attentiveness to campaign news significantly influenced evaluations in a manner consistent with the tone of news coverage for each candidate. We disaggregate the data by party and ideology, however, and discover this effect to be conditional, depending critically on the character and intensity of political predispositions. Throughout the paper we emphasize the interplay between political predispositions and the valence of network coverage, underscoring the contingent effect of media messages. We conclude with a brief discussion of our results and stress the importance of partisan reinforcement, which we found was a major consequence of news media reception during the fall 1992 campaign.     

Voters' reasoning processes and media influences during the Persian Gulf War

Voters engage in complex reasoning processes in deriving their policy preferences. Such reasoning processes take place in the environment of media helping to construct the discourse of an issue. To demonstrate the reasoning processes and media influences on the processes, this study analyzes the panel data gathered from a national probability sample before and after the Persian Gulf War. The results show a process of forming one's support of the Bush administration's Gulf War policies that involved feelings toward Bush, patriotic feelings, and acceptance of the official statements of U.S. foreign policy goals. These positive contributors are all related to heavier exposure to television news. Respondents' level of public affairs information and exposure to newspaper public affairs functioned as a contingent factor in the reasoning processes: Those at the upper half of the scale showed a greater emphasis on ideology and negative emotional reactions to the destruction of the war in forming their support of the Bush administration's Gulf War policies. The importance of the homogeneity in the discourse of the issue is further demonstrated by the effects of the news media exposure on higher likelihood of dissent concerning the end of the war.     

Media evolution and public understanding of climate science

This paper employs public opinion data from a nationally representative probability sample to examine how information encounters and exposure to different media sources relate to individuals' beliefs about global warming. The analyses indicate that media source exposure (i.e., exposure to news and information about science presented through different media outlets), intentional information exposure (i.e., deliberate exposure to global warming news coverage), and inadvertent information exposure (i.e., unplanned exposure to news and information about science that is encountered online while searching for other forms of information) relate to beliefs about global warming, in significant and meaningful ways. Namely, the findings show that both intentional information exposure and inadvertent online information exposure associate with disbelief in human-made causes, catalysts, and consequences of global warming. Theoretical and social implications of the findings are discussed and contextualized in light of the rapidly evolving media environment.     

Models of the economy implicit in public discourse

The interdependence of the U.S. and the world economy has been a central problem in politics during the 1980s. The politically cognizant have had to become economically cognizant. This paper examines news reports about the economy to determine what may be learned from the news media. A macroeconomic model is developed which is consistent with the statements found in the news reports. The connectedness of economic relationships as presented is estimated. The focus of attention in the news stories is reported. An upper bound on learning is assessed.     

News Media and Peace Building in Asymmetrical Conflicts: The Flow of News between Jordan and Israel

This study explores the role of the news media in asymmetrical conflicts after countries have signed a peace agreement. While most research has focused on the inherently negative role the press plays in attempts to bring peace, this study attempts to look at this issue using a more dynamic perspective. The theoretical argument focuses on how political factors affect the quantity and quality of the news flow and some of the ways in which leaders can sometimes overcome the obstacles they face in promoting encouraging news about peace. The model considers two political factors that have a major impact on media performance: the relative level of political power of the two sides and the varying amount of hostility. To illustrate the importance of these factors we focus on the flow of news between Jordan and Israel between 1999 and 2002. The major findings from content analyses of news articles ( N  = 859) appearing in both countries show that while Jordanians are exposed to massive amounts of mostly negative information about Israel, the Israeli public reads almost nothing about Jordan. Despite all this, it was also found that the initiation of diplomatic relations between the former enemies allowed for the creation of important 'news slots' that were previously unavailable. This development created space for less threatening types of news and also allowed leaders from both Jordan and Israel to initiate some positive stories about peace, even during some of the darkest periods.     

Image repair in the aftermath of inaccurate polling: How the news media responded to getting it wrong in 1948 and 2016

The US presidential elections of 1948 and 2016 produced surprise outcomes when the predicted winners ended up losing the election. Using image repair theory, this article explains the strategies the media used to repair their image in light of predicting the wrong winner. Using a qualitative analysis of news coverage that immediately followed the 1948 and 2016 presidential elections, this study finds that the media utilized similar image repair strategies of offering explanations for poor information, highlighting the media’s good reporting, diminishing the harm caused by the inaccurate predictions, and justifying the inaccurate predictions of both elections. However, the media responses in 1948 and 2016 differed greatly in tone and in the utilization of a new attack strategy to deflect criticism of the media itself. These strategies suggest that media use of image restoration is limited because of the unique societal expectations placed on the press, and that the media’s inaccurate 2016 predictions and subsequent attack strategies may have been contributed to the heightened criticism of mainstream news.     

Cost of ruling as a game of tones: The accumulation of bad news and incumbents’ vote loss

An extensive body of research documents how governing parties generally suffer electoral defeats. Varying explanations have been offered, most of which touch upon the liabilities of policy responsibility. Although media coverage is generally acknowledged as one of these liabilities, few empirical studies have examined how news content affect government support. Based on the fact that voters get their information about politics, policies and societal issues from the media, this article studies how the constant stream of negative news influences incumbent support over a 20-year period in Denmark. Modeling a previously untested argument on the cost of ruling, it shows that the accumulation of bad news throughout tenure exerts a substantial effect on government support.     

A comparative analysis of Channels TV and CNN's coverage of World News

This study did an analysis of the Western and Third world coverage of World News using the broadcast stations (CNN and Channels TV) as case study. In other words, the study sought to examine if the Western and Third World nations are still guilty of imbalance, bias and distortion in their treatment of news. The findings showed that both the North and South nations are guilty of bias and imbalance in their coverage of World News and that each nation seeks to promote their interest rather than a true world interest or the interest of their counterpart nations. The study further revealed that the Third World media still depend heavily on Western media sources for its news albeit their standpoint on the News Flow debate. About 50% of the entire World News stories on Channels TV were sourced ‘outside’, while about 40% were unidentified. Only 10% were from the in‐house personnel. It was also observed that about 55 and 67% of World News coverage by Channels TV and CNN, respectively, were focused on ‘bad news’; an age‐long controversy that has bedeviled news coverage globally. In view of the foregoing, it has been recommended that there is need for the acceptance of ‘imbalance’ as a major feature of all media systems as well as a re‐evaluation of the standards and values of news evaluation. The rapid industrialization of Third World economies will also go a long way to stop the one‐way traffic in international communication which is what encourages media dependence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Merging content analysis and the policy sciences: A system to discern policy-specific trends from news media reports

In this article we set out to bridge a surprising methodological gap between two time-honored research traditions – news media content analysis and the policy sciences analytic framework. Lasswell, a recognized pioneer of both the method and the framework, discussed the mutual benefits of each decades ago. But few researchers, if any, have formally linked the two. To that end, in this article we (1) make the case for using news media content analysis to inform research studies using the policy sciences analytic framework; (2) introduce an original content analysis categorical system for that purpose; (3) demonstrate that system with a study of 90 national news articles about the stratospheric ozone hole; and (4) compare our system to others used to examine news content. We report that our system, used by human coders, is well geared to describing and mapping trends in the social process surrounding the development of the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty during the intelligence gathering and promotion phases encompassed by our data sample. We argue that other content analysis systems fall short – in structure and purpose – of meeting the promise ours holds to the policy scientist.     

建构警方传媒监督的良性运作机制探析

警方传媒监督良性运作机制就是警方与传媒的良性互动机制,使各自积极的社会功效在合作过程中得以顺利实现并充分补强,将两者之间因分歧和冲突而产生的负面影响降至最低限度,包括以下两个方面:(一)规范传媒机构和传媒监督,包括培养行业自律,坚持“政治家办报方针”;明确传媒监督的重点;把握传媒监督工作的策略;(二)建立健全公安新闻保护机制,包括严格队伍管理和坚持正面主动的舆论导向;建立快速、有效的应对舆论监督的反应机制;建立被传媒机构侵害的救济机制;普遍建立健全新闻发言人制度。     

Stirring up apathy? Political disengagement and the media in the 2003 Welsh Assembly elections

This paper examines the media coverage of the 2003 Welsh Assembly elections in the context of the wider academic debate about the media's relationship with political engagement. It draws on evidence to suggest a potentially positive relationship between media use and voting, before arguing that this relationship was limited in Wales in 2003, due both to the limited penetration of the Welsh media in Wales and the election's low prominence in this media. It then examines the way in which ‘the apathy story’ dominated media coverage. Such an emphasis wrongly equated apathy with discontent with the devolution process in Wales, and dominated the issues which the public were represented as discussing, while space was rarely given to their views on policy issues. Bad news about electoral disengagement was much more likely to be emphasised than good news, while emphasis on public ‘apathy’ offered a typically negative simplification of political attitudes among the electorally disengaged. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications