Table of Contents
Abstract
The media plays a major role in covering political campaigns and based on where Americans go to get their news could play an active role in how Americans perceive policy issues and political candidates. The purpose of this research paper is to examine social media platforms and press coverage to identify how they play a part in party polarization and affect election results. It will identify whether the polling data the media shares is an adequate measure of how the general population tends to vote.
Keywords: campaign coverage, polarization, social media, media bias, media coverage, elections, public opinion
Introduction
This paper will discuss how social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have played a role in the political process, specifically the impact the platforms have during campaigns and how that effects party polarization and election results. I wanted to focus on this topic because due to the outcomes of the 2016 presidential election and how much social media played a part in the information going around about candidates and their policy platforms. During the presidential campaign, polling results often found Donald Trump as unfavorable as compared to the likes of Hillary Clinton. When Donald Trump won the presidential election, this left a lot of people questioning just exactly what happened, when he was continuously polled as unfavorable. It has since come out that there was a lot of misuse of information spread across social media platforms such as Facebook, as President Trump would say, there was a lot of ‘Fake News’ spread. Without doing further research people assumed that these articles were accurate and only intensified party polarization during this election season.
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When President Trump started discrediting media outlets as being biased in their reporting of the 2016 Presidential election we began to see a major shift in the trust of media and the content they provided. People began to shift from 24/7 news cycles such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC to entertainment news such as the Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show, especially amongst younger viewers and voters. For others, they relied heavily on their friends and family for ‘accurate’ information, and others stuck it out with the 24/7 news cycles and even had news delivered to their phones through news apps that would notify people when new headlines came out and people could pick their news outlets.
Literature Review
Jonathan Morris’ paper, “Slanted Objectivity? Perceived Media Bias, Cable News Exposure, and Political Attitudes”, focuses on the proliferation and fragmentation of news audiences and the political consequences associated with the polarization of this audience (Morris, 2007). He conducted several surveys and analyzed data on political attitudes and new-gathering habits from the 2004 Presidential campaign (Morris, 2007). The significance of his work related to political attitudes along with media coverage and how it is presented on certain outlets.
Melissa Miller and Jeffrey Peake’s research, “Press Effects, Public Opinion, and Gender: Coverage of Sarah Palin’s Vice-Presidential Campaign”, concentrates on how media influence plays a part in how candidates are perceived. In 2008, Sarah Palin came on the scene as John McCain’s Vice-Presidential nominee for office. Outside of Alaska, where she was Governor, she hardly had a name/reputation for herself. The media had complete control on how the American voters would perceive her. After doing some research, Miller and Peake found that as opposed to her male counterparts, Palin’s coverage consisted of her gender, appearance, and family (Miller, 2013). The tone set in Palin’s coverage created negative feelings toward her, Hillary Clinton dealt with the same kind of coverage, this highlights the influence that the media has over voters, especially those who seek mainstream media for their daily and political news.
Lindsay Hoffman’s Research, “Political Interviews: Examining Perceived Media Bias and Effects Across TV Entertainment Formats”, highlights a very important issue, lack of confidence in journalism and news outlets. She mentions that many people are now turning to entertainment programing such as, The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon, Hannity and other political-satire programming as their main source for news and political updates. Hoffman’s intent was to find out what effects this new type of “news” programming had on American’s view of media bias as well as the people and others around them (Hoffman, 2013). This is significant because the results of her findings will indicate the effects that the media and other influencers have on the way people perceive political candidates (Hoffman, 2013). This highlights even more on the notion that the media plays a role in political participation as well as voter behavior.
Research Findings
Americans are growing tired of the mainstream media and that is evident by the amount of people who relied on entertainment news programming, social media, and even their close friends and family to provide them with the news and “facts” that they needed to stay up to date with the political campaign coverage during the 2004 and 2016 Presidential elections. For those who stay with traditional news outlets such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and many others, it is likely that their opinion fall in line with the tone and coverage set by the station that they rely on most. More than 60% of Americans watched broadcast network news in 1992, by 2004 the percentage of Americans watching had fallen more than half (Morris, 2007). People who are turning their back on the mainstream media have shifted to the Fox News Channel, this is thought to be due to the Fox News Channel’s hostility towards the media (Morris, 2007).
Focusing on media bias Johnathan Morris noted that people who use Fox News as their primary source of news typically have a higher tendency to view Democratic leaders in a negative light and will reject any negative coverage related to a Republican leader (Morris, 2007). Fox News generally attracts a more conservative audience while CNN’s audience is made up of progressives and liberals. When discussing events or policies that happen locally or internationally both sides view the news stories in a completely different manner. This is mainly due to the lack of bipartisan representation on these news outlets. People seek information from people who agree with their ideologies, so if there is a lack of representation this is how media bias ultimately gets through and people usually are not aware of it.
The anti-mainstream media “movement” that we see happening has lead people to turn to entertainment news sources such as The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, and Hannity for the political news. This is usually delivered in the for of political satire and often political officials and candidates are brought on these shows now because they know that’s where their audience is headed. Lindsay Hoffman noted that according to Gallup, Americans had the lowest confidence in television news in the past 20 years, only 21% of people who responded said they had a “great deal” of confidence in the platform (Hoffman, 2013). Hoffman explored the phenomena of First-and-Third-Person Effects on viewers of, Meet the Press, Hannity, The Daily Show, and The Tonight Show, to find out if viewers of these shows differ in perceptions of program quality, the interviewer, and the interviewee (Hoffman, 2013). She found that based on what clip the audiences saw determined how they perceived the variables in question. This was likely due to the various ways in which each program portrays the news coverage. This study is significant to understanding bias not only in traditional news formats but also through entertainment news programming.
Melissa Miller and Jeffrey Peake hypothesized that Sarah Palin’s Vice-Presidential nominee coverage would have more negative coverage than that of her male counterparts and the media would draw more on her gender and aspects of it to detriment to the public (Miller, 2013). They found that their hypothesis was correct and played on the already existing theory of how press treatment of women impacts voter opinion. They wondered if Palin’s lack f qualification played a part in the negative coverage, but what they found is that on 40% of coverage mentioned her qualifications, but 60% did not (Miller, 2013). Palin may not have had the qualifications needed but as opposed to men who lack the same qualifications, she received sexist comments as well as comments on sex role stereotypes, something men hardly, if ever, receive. The paired dates from press coverage on Palin with survey data from NAES. Press mentions of her gender and appearance diminished her favorability and lessened the views on her readiness to be president (Miller, 2013). This goes to show how media bias affects the numbers at the polls, if the coverage and tone of a candidate is seemingly negative it will affect voter opinion.
Knowing the media’s role during political campaign coverage gives better insight as to how polling numbers are affected and the pivotal role that polls play in seeing where the American population is leaning. John Cassidy for The New Yorker wrote an article touching on what happened in the Iowa caucus and what that meant going forward. Trump had 24.3% of the Republican vote in Iowa while Marco Rubio, who exceeded his poll numbers from the weeks leading up, came in third-place trailing Trump by only 1.2 percentage points (Cassidy, 2016). This had people changing their perceptions and betting on Rubio as the favorite to win the G.O.P nomination. This highlights the fact that polls can be wrong, but Cassidy says, “Poll results drive media coverage, which in turn can drive polls”, meaning candidates who poll on the low end tend to be ignored by the media, but on the other hand if you poll numbers are high the media is at your attention (Cassidy, 2016). Cassidy shares that all polls should be treated with caution which is why statisticians pay more attention to poll averages (Cassidy, 2016).
Critics Claims and Controversy
Critics claim that polling is not capable of accurately measuring voter choices due to certain hurdles (low response rates, increase use of cell phones, and underrepresentation of young voters) (Jacobs, 2005). Jacobs and Shapiro make the claim that polling is harming the American public in two aspects – polls encourage elected officials to abandon independent leadership, and polls display blemished and biased information that only fuels partisan fires (Jacobs, 2005). Tom Rosenstiel, a highly-regarded arbiter, takes the position that the press is using polls to spout their own political opinions instead of reporting hard news. This has negatively impacted the quality of campaign news reporting and polling has led to audience wants becoming more visible which impairs the professional judgements of journalist and editors on what they should cover and how they will cover it (Jacobs, 2005).
Moving Forward
Looking back at the media during the 2016 election it becomes clearer that what happened in the media was nothing new, but the polling was a fluke. Most can agree that polls are generally accurate even when accounting for the margin of error for victory. The prevalence of entertainment news programming, biased news outlets, and journalists seeking to get their opinions out there, shows us that as time moves forward this trend will keep on going. The consensus seems to be that polling is not the issue when it comes to political campaign coverage, it the media and the way they portray information to their audiences. This affects voter opinion, especially for voters who do not take the time to really dig in and do the research of finding out just who these candidates are and what they truly stand for. This highlights and confirms the notion of polling and the media having a lasting impact on each other in election coverage.
Conclusion
Based on the research gathered it can be concluded that although public opinion polling may not always be correct, it is usually accurate or close enough to draw conclusions, unless the polling was off from the very beginning. When it comes to political campaign coverage journalists, media outlets, and other media influencers hold a huge microphone and that microphone quickly becomes media bias when these influencers start adding in their own opinions and using certain tones when referring to certain candidates. Ultimately, the media and the polls drive each other, the polls tell the media and the voters who is currently leading in the race and the media covers those candidates more often which in turn make people invest more energy into that specific candidate which brings them to the polls.
Initially, I was not too keen on public opinion polling especially after the way the 2016 presidential election results lead the public to believe that Hillary Clinton would more than likely beat out Donald Trump for the presidential office. I learned that several factors play a role in how effective polling is such as, voter turnout, truthfulness of those being polled, and media influence on citizen participation and candidate preference. However, after reading several articles and papers on the subject matter I feel differently about the use polling to gather data to determine the general population’s stance on a political candidate. I also believed the media played a strong role in polling results due to media bias. I still very strongly that the media plays a role in giving favoritism to certain candidates over others, but what I have learned is that media coverage and public opinion polling come full circle when deciding which political candidates are ahead in numbers. Polling numbers give the media insight as to what the American population is thinking and doing at the polls, but at the same time the media coverage and attention given to certain candidates also drive the public opinion poll numbers.
References
- Cassidy, John. (2016). Opinion Polls Matter – Even When They’re Wrong. The New Yorker.
- Hoffman, Lindsay. (2013). Political Interviews: Examining Perceived Media Bias and Effects Across TV Entertainment Formats. International Journal of Communication, pgs. 471-488
- Jacobs, Lawrence R. (2005). Polling Politics, Media, and Election Campaigns. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol.69, no.5.
- Morris, Jonathan S. (2007). Slanted Objectivity? Perceived Media Bias, Cable News Exposure, and Political Attitudes. Social Science Quarterly, pgs. 707-726
- Peake, Jeffrey S. and Miller, Melissa K. (2013). Press Effects, Public Opinion, and Gender: Coverage of Sarah Palin’s Vice-Presidential Campaign. The International Journal of Press/Politics, pgs. 482-507.
- Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 31, no. 2, Spring 2017, pp. 211–236.
