Media and Voting

Abstract

Perhaps only one thing has united candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign: The media have treated them unfairly whether it be biased coverage, superficial coverage, or not enough coverage. For instance, while Bernie Sanders complained about the wild disparities in network coverage between himself and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio charged that the media were biased against all Republican candidates. “The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC. It’s called the mainstream media” (Farhi, 2016).

Complaints from candidates, political observers, and academicians that the media are not serving the public interest in election coverage are troubling because scholars note that the fundamental role of the media is to create an information environment that allows citizens to be able to learn about the important issues and be able to follow the actions of elected and government officials to make reasoned, intelligent voting decisions. Failure to provide such an environment has been identified as a primary reason democratic practices fall short of normative ideals (Delli Carpini, 2008).

This essay, however, is not designed to debate the quality of media election coverage, but to explore the effects of media on voting, a focus of some of more seminal works in the field (e.g., Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) and a continuing interest in this journal.

This special virtual theme issue compiles 10 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) articles that have explored how media affect intent to vote. The studies will be organized under three main areas: How do traditional media, specifically newspapers and television news, influence intent to vote? How has intent to vote been impacted by non-traditional media, particularly television talk shows and the Internet? What are theories and models that can explain media and intent to vote?

Traditional Media and Voting Intentions

Early studies of newspaper’s influence on voting examined the effects of a very particular type of newspaper content, newspaper endorsements, because newspaper endorsements offered a clear, unequivocal message about who citizens should cast their ballots for and why (Robinson, 1974). Consequently, endorsements had an influence on who citizens voted for (McCombs, 1967; Robinson, 1972; St. Dizier, 1985). Robinson (1974) explored newspaper endorsement effects over five presidential elections (1956-1972) and found independents were more likely to vote for the endorsed candidates, even after controlling for party identification and other factors. In the three landslide elections (1956, 1964, and 1972), newspapers also caused party loyalists to abandon the losing candidate.

Studies have consistently found that newspaper use predicts intent to vote because they contain both depth of information and mobilizing information, Not surprisingly, newspaper use proved a consistent predictor of intention to vote in the studies examined for this issue (Hyun & Moon, 2014; Kennamer, 1990; McLeod et al., 1996). Drew and Weaver (2006) failed to find a significant relationship, but newspaper use proved to be the sole media predictor in earlier studies (Drew & Weaver, 1998; Weaver & Drew, 2001).

In contrast, results have been split on the relationship between television use and voting intention. Studies that have used either attention to or reliance on TV news content tend to find a stronger link between television news and voting than ones with television exposure because one can “watch” television without paying attention to it. Results from the studies included in this virtual issue were split with some finding a positive relationship (Elliott & Sothirajah, 1993; Hyun & Moon, 2014) and other ones did not (Drew & Weaver, 2006; McLeod et al., 1996). Furthermore, differences were not because of measurement issues. Drew and Weaver (2006) included both attention and use measures, and McLeod et al. (1996) combined both exposure and attention. However, Drew and Weaver found that for all media studied attention was a better predictor than exposure.

But the effects of the media may depend on time in the election process, who is being studied and whether researchers examined news or analysis.

Kennamer (1990) noted primary voting is more difficult to predict than general election voting because of a number of factors, including the number and relative strength of candidates. Because of the unpredictability of voting in the primaries, Kennamer found only campaign interest and interpersonal discussion predicted intent to vote. In the general election, reading newspapers stories proved the strongest predictor followed by discussion, age, education, and interest. Who was examined also made a difference. Independents were more likely to rely on communication to make decisions because they cannot rely on party identification. Indeed, newspaper reading and television attention proved significant predictors of independents.

Elliott and Sothirajah (1993) studied the debate as well as post-debate television analysis after the first 1988 George Bush/Michael Dukakis debate. They found that watching the debate and post-debate analysis led people to say they were more likely to vote for Dukakis, who had been deemed by analysts as the winner of the debate, and less likely to vote for Bush.

Non-Traditional Media and Voting Intention

What makes a medium non-traditional? McLeod and associates characterize non-traditional media as those that allow a more direct connection between candidates and voters and less direct mediation by journalists. Based on the McLeod definition, this essay investigates the role of television talk shows and Internet news in voting.

Candidates have flocked to late night talk shows, morning shows, and daytime interview shows like Oprah since the 1992 election to both avoid tough questions from the traditional media as well as improve their image with voters. Therefore, talk shows may have more influence on affective attitudes like candidate image than intent to vote (Johnson, Braima, & Sothirajah, 1999). Indeed McLeod and associates (1996) found talk television increased image favorability in the 1992 election but not voting intention. Drew and Weaver (2006) discovered talk television also failed to influence intent to vote.

Scholars have disagreed about the potential of the Internet to increase political engagement. Some argue that most Internet content is entertainment, which will distract citizens from political participation. Others contend it will increase participation by making it easier and more convenient to access political information (Boulianne, 2009). Two JMCQ studies reflect that split. Drew and Weaver (2006) found that Internet news exposure had no influence on likelihood to vote. Hyun and Moon (2014) discovered Internet news attention did predict issue voting, but traditional media had a stronger influence on the issue-voting process.

Modeling the Effects of Media on Intention to Vote

Four of the studies used theory or models to explain the relationship between media and voting.

Agenda-setting research began during election campaigns and has remained one of the field’s most enduring theories. Not surprisingly, several articles have explored media and intent to vote through agenda setting (Brosius & Kepplinger, 1992; Roberts, 1992; Wu & Coleman, 2009).

Brosius and Kepplinger (1992) explored whether media emphasis on certain political issues, particularly expounding upon them as problems, influenced voting intention for the four parties in the 1987 German Federal Parliament election. Media attention to specific issues, the energy supply (which was linked to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster), and environmental protection hurt support for the two biggest parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party, respectively. The Free Democratic Party picked up support because of coverage of the educational policy and the Green Party profited from health system coverage.

Wu and Coleman (2009) examined whether amount of coverage of issues—the first level of agenda setting—or the attributes of the candidates—the second level—had a greater effect on likelihood of voting for George Bush or John Kerry in the 2004 election. Both first- and second-level agenda settings influenced intent to vote. Second-level agenda setting had a greater effect—at least in the case of the challenger Kerry. Wu and Coleman also tested a new contingent condition, the theory of affective intelligence, which suggests that emotions, particularly negative ones, are important to get people to pay attention to politics. They indeed found that negative attributes about Kerry had more influence on support for him than positive attributes.

Both Domke and associates (1997) and Hyun and Moon (2014) tested models of media on voting intention. Domke et al. explored the ideodynamic model that states a candidate’s current level of support is a function of the level of previous support, recruiting the opponent’s previous supporters due to the nature of media coverage and losing the candidate’s own supporters due to media coverage. The authors found that overall quantity of positive and negative coverage was strongly related to support for Clinton but had a limited impact for Dole even though the two candidates received relatively even ratios of positive and negative coverage.

Hyun and Moon (2014) tested an issue-voting model that found attention to newspapers and television news led directly to issue proximity (how close their issue preferences were to the candidates) and indirectly through issue knowledge and importance. Internet news attention was only indirectly related to issue proximity through issue knowledge. Issue proximity predicted vote choice for both Internet and traditional media, but particularly among those high in news attention and among independents.

What Lessons Did We Learn From the Selected JMCQ Articles About Media and Voting?

This theme collection gathered 10 articles from the JMCQ archives to address three areas. What did we learn? First, while academics may bemoan the declining influence of traditional media in a Web 2.0 world, the public still turns to newspapers and television for news about the candidates and campaigns, and newspapers in particular have an important influence on whether citizens vote and who they vote for. Second, “new” media, such as television talk shows and Internet news, do not affect voting intention as greatly. However, studies have only explored Internet news attention broadly. Numerous JMCQ studies on media effects of online news and social media suggest that voting intention studies need to be extended to these new sources. Finally, four studies suggested the value of applying models and theory. Agenda setting was the dominant theory used in voting studies but because elections draw considerable attention and interest from the public they provide an important canvas to use other theories and models.

Thomas J. JohnsonProfessor, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin

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