Network TV news framing of good vs. bad economic news under democrat and Republican presidents: A lexical analysis of political bias

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 85, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 483-498

  Lowry, Dennis T ^a  

^a SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADMINISTRATION; MASS MEDIA; PARTY POLITICS; TELEVISION;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 59149106282     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900808500301     Document Type: Article

References (62)

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5. Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Vintage Books, 1994);
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14. The Pew Research Center, "Views of Press Values."
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18. David Niven, Tilt? The Search for Media Bias (New York: Praeger, 2002), 70. Even Fico and his colleagues, while using human coders and clearly defined operational definitions to study reporting fairness and balance, were able to achieve 100% inter-coder agreement on only some variables, and as low as 80% on others. While 80% is considered to be quite good for human coding, computer coding is always 100% reliable. Both human coding and computer coding, however, still have to deal with validity questions. See Frederick Fico and William Cote, "Fairness and Balance in Election Reporting: The 1994 Governor's Race in Michigan," Newspaper Research Journal 18 (3-4, 1997): 50-63;
19. Frederick Fico and Michael Drager, "News Stories About Conflict Generally Balanced," Newspaper Research Journal 22 (1, 2001): 2-11;
20. Frederick Fico, Linlin Ku, and Stan Soffin, "Fairness, Balance of Newspaper Coverage of U.S. in Gulf War," Newspaper Research Journal 15 (1, 1994): 30-43;
21. Frederick Fico and Stan Soffin, "Covering Local Conflict: Fairness in Reporting a Public Policy Issue," Newspaper Research Journal 15 (4, 1994): 64-76.
22. Robert M. Entman, "Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm," Journal of Communication 43 (4, 1993): 51-58.
23. Niven, Tilt? The Search for Media Bias.
24. Mike Conway, "The Subjective Precision of Computers: A Methodological Comparison with Human Coding in Content Analysis," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 83 (1, 2006): 186-200.
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27. Roderick P. Hart, The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987);
28. Roderick P. Hart, Diction 5.0: The Text-Analysis Program software (Thousand Oaks, CA: Scolari/Sage, 1999);
29. Roderick P. Hart, Campaign Talk: Why Elections Are Good for Us (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000);
30. Roderick P. Hart, "Redeveloping Diction: Theoretical Considerations," in Theory, Method, and Practice of Computer Content Analysis, ed. M. West (NY: Ablex, 2001);
31. Roderick P. Hart and Jay P. Childers, "Verbal Certainty in American Politics: An Overview and Extension," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 (3, 2004): 516-35;
32. Roderick P. Hart and Jay P. Childers, "The Evolution of Candidate Bush," American Behavioral Scientist 49 (2, 2005): 180-97;
33. Roderick P. Hart and Sharon E. Jarvis, "Political Debate: Forms, Styles, and Media," American Behavioral Scientist 40 (8, 1997): 1095-1122;
34. Roderick P. Hart, Sharon E. Jarvis, William P. Jennings, and Deborah Smith-Howell, Political Keywords: Using Language That Uses Us (NY: Oxford University Press, 2005).
35. Entman, "Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm."
36. Hart and Childers, "The Evolution," 185.
37. Hart, Verbal Style and the Presidency, 13.
38. Hart and Jarvis, "Political Debate."
39. Hart and Childers, "Verbal Certainty."
40. Hart and Childers, "The Evolution."
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42. Marisa Connolly, The Power of Reputation in Mediated Public Scandal: An Analysis of Coverage of the Kobe Bryant Sexual Assault Case (master's thesis, Communication, Culture and Technology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2004).
43. Craig E. Carroll, How the Mass Media Influence Perceptions of Corporate Reputation: Exploring Agenda-setting Effects within Business News Coverage (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2004).
44. Angela K. Davis, Jeremy M. Piger, and Lisa M. Sedor, Beyond the Numbers: An Analysis of Optimistic and Pessimistic Language in Earnings Press Releases (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, January 2006).
45. Davis, Piger, and Sedor, Beyond the Numbers, 20.
46. Davis, Piger, and Sedor, Beyond the Numbers, 22.
47. Dennis T. Lowry, Lei (Tommy) Xie, and Oliver R. Witte, "Agenda-setting and Rhetorical Framing by Semantic Proximity: A New Computerized Approach to the Analysis of Network TV News" (paper presented at the annual convention of AEJMC, Chicago, 2008).
48. Davis, Piger, and Sedor, Beyond the Numbers; Lowry, Xie, and Witte, "Agenda-setting and Rhetorical Framing."
49. Fred N. Kerlinger and Howard B. Lee, Foundations of Behavioral Research, 4th ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000), 456.
50. Davis, Piger, and Sedor, Beyond the Numbers.
51. Examples from the Praise sub-dictionary include alert, best, better, bright, fine, good, great, positive, profitable, and successful. Examples from the Satisfaction sub-dictionary include confident, exciting, glad, happy, pride, surprising, and welcome. Examples from the Inspiration sub-dictionary include beauty, comfort, courage, determination, help, hope, power, pride, prosperity, and trust. Examples from the Blame subdictionary include bankrupt, detrimental, embarrassing, mean, morbid, naive, nervous, painful, rash, sloppy, and weary. Examples of the Hardship sub-dictionarv include apprehension, bankruptcy, betrayal, earthquake, exploitation, injustice, pollution, rebellion, slavery, unemployment, and weakness. Examples of the Denial sub-dictionary include standard negative contractions (aren't, shouldn't, don't), negative functions words (nor, not, nay), and terms designating null sets (nothing, nobody, none). Additional details can be obtained for free by using a search engine to download Diction 5.0 The Text Analysis Program User's Manual (Austin, TX: Digitext, 2000), n.a.
52. Roderick P. Hart, personal communication, 2008.
53. Diction 5.0 The Text-Analysis Program User's Manual.
54. Hart, Diction 5.0: The Text-Analysis Program software, n.p. Hart defines Accomplishment as: "Words expressing task-completion (establish, finish, influence, proceed) and organized human behavior (motivated, influence, leader, manage). Includes capitalistic terms (buy, produce, employees, sell), modes of expansion (grow, increase, generate, construction), and general functionality (handling, strengthen, success, outputs). Also included is programmatic language: agenda, enacted, working, leadership."
55. Dennis T. Lowry, "Gresham's Law and Network TV News Selection," Journal of Broadcasting (4, 1971): 397-408;
56. Niven, Tilt? The Search for Media Bias.
57. Davis, Piger, and Sedor, Beyond the Numbers.
58. Niven, Tilt? The Search for Media Bias.
59. Lowry, "Gresham's Law."
60. Donald T. Campbell and Julian C. Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963).
61. Alf Linderman, "Computer Content Analysis and Manual Coding Techniques: A Comparative Analysis," in Theory, Method, and Practice in Computer Content Analysis, ed. M.D. West (Westport, CT: Ablex, 2001);
62. Conway, "The Subjective Precision."