TEL T205 1st Edition Lecture 9 The One That Gets Political I News Coverage of Political Campaigns A Political coverage is framed in the sports frame 1 2 Questions it is framed around a Who is winning 1 By how much 2 Trends of who is ahead and change Candidate is pulling ahead or coming back 3 b 2 B Dominated by polls How are they winning or losing 1 Focus on strategy aka color commentary in sporting events 2 How are they moving the polls 90 of US news coverage is focused on one or both of these questions Alternative way to cover political campaigns These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute 1 The Problem Proposal Performance frame a Key questions for this frame 1 Key problems facing us 2 What are the candidates proposals 3 Would they work 4 What s the candidates previous performance b This frame is more like a job interview rather than a race which is fitting since they are being elected for a job c C Focused more on important criteria Why do we only get the sports frame 1 News coverage has everything to do with audience demand and value 2 Entertaining 3 Informative In terms of how they are presenting new information 4 Objective reporting polls is just the facts so there is no need to evaluate 5 Brevity We understand the sports frame of reference so it can be reported quickly and easily D Effects of the sports frame 1 Knowledge acquisition a Issue what kind of knowledge they are gaining b Will know who is ahead and the trends throughout the race can tell about the strategy c Will not know much about what they candidates are proposing to do d People learn much more at partisan sources then they do the mainstream media 2 Public Cynicism a We see politicians as creatures of strategy b Because all of the media coverage is seeing politicians want to win do not care about what matters for the country c Media frames politicians in a negative way which increases public cynicism E Does media influence public attitudes behavior in political campaigns 1 2 Voter Turnout a Media coverage depressing turnout because of public cynicism b Negative campaign ads decrease turnout Evaluation of candidates Agenda Setting political priming a Media not effective at changing our evaluations of candidates b When they are effective it is in their likability c Media influences what we think ABOUT through political priming 1 We think about each candidates on separate dimensions on each issue 2 Media can influence what issues we focus and think about which can influence how we vote a EX If running up to the election all of the stories are about the economy then the importance of the economy in voters increases and this is the main issue they focus on vote for the candidate that they agree with on that issues 3 Enough to swing an election media coverage through agenda setting has then ability to change elections II Entertainment Formula A What is it 1 Involves three characteristics a Conflict essential part of the formula b to Character Identification that we like or dislike and that we can relate c Next Step Reality Grounded in reality in some dimension but goes beyond reality in other dimensions 2 EX USA Network a Was a super channel and had a bunch of different genres no one watched b 9 years ago shifted their strategy 1 Used the entertainment formula with every movie and tv show that they thought to bought 2 c Worked so well they became 1 program on TV Blue Skies Formula 1 Characters protagonist was aspirational and had goes that they tried to reach also had a fun flaw 2 Color wanted daytime shots more than nighttime shots and always had atleast a pop color in the frame B 3 Genre Difference 4 Medium Difference 5 Era Difference a These are all superficial differences b At the core they are all telling the same story Why use it 1 Format Contraints 2 Audience constraints a This formula is what the audience wants to watch