Local News Coverage in a Social Capital Capital

Election 2000 on Minnesota's Local News Stations

Bibliographic Data

ID7971333
AuthorsDaniel Stevens (0000-0003-0990-8237, Hartwick College), Dean Alger (Film Independent), Bárbara Allen (0009-0001-7933-2635, Carleton College), John L Sullivan (0000-0002-4676-1898, University of Minnesota)
Year2006
Volume23
Issue1
Pages61-83
Publication date2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1058-4609 • E-ISSN: 1091-7675
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10584600500477062
OpenAlexW2089169753
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited43

This article examines local news coverage of an election in one of the nation's "social capital capitals," Minnesota. In Minnesota, according to theorized connections between civic involvement and news media use, we might expect the orientation of local news to be local and the quality of coverage of local campaigns to be high. Content analysis of all evening newscasts on all four non-cable channels in the Minneapolis market (the 13th largest television market in the United States) for the 12 weeks leading to the day of the election yielded striking evidence on the amount and nature of local television news coverage. The predominant news emphasis was on the presidential race, with considerably less attention to the close U.S. Senate contest, and very little or nothing on any other race; local television news was mostly not local. As with previous studies, this analysis showed prime emphasis on strategy and game, while the far fewer "issue" stories tended to be thin. These local television news shows also offered very little airtime with candidates speaking directly. In addition, seven focus groups were conducted in Minnesota, in which subjects were asked about local television news coverage. Subjects expressed frustration with the brevity and superficiality of election news stories and with the stations' claims of providing in-depth coverage. Judging by our data, levels of civic and political involvement in Minnesota may remain high despite, rather than because of, political coverage by local television news. Keywords: campaign 2000campaign coveragelocal democracylocal newssocial capital Notes 1. Putnam's work on social capital has been the subject of extensive debate over matters such as definition, putative decline (ladd, 1996), the role of the state as a producer of social capital (Citationlevi, 1996; Citationskocpol, 1999a), and its relationship to representative democracy (Citationfiorina, 1999), but rarely on the place of the media (cf. CitationNorris, 1995). 2. CitationValentino, Beckman, and Buhr (2001) present experimental evidence that horse-race coverage only has this effect on citizens who are least interested in politics, while having no effect on those most interested. 3. Iyengar presents episodic and thematic frames as a dichotomy, but stories may open with an episodic frame, focusing on how a policy affects "people like you" while also assessing the policy at a more abstract level. To account for this, we coded stories as entirely or mostly thematic, entirely or mostly episodic, or equally thematic and episodic. 4. What we are identifying here is mere summaries of candidate speech, summaries that can be misleading. If the story also provided in-depth analysis of the speech, it was picked up elsewhere in our coding sheet. Such instances were rare. 5. A regression of coverage of the candidates on whether the office involved was the presidency or the Senate showed the difference in coefficients for office involved did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance (p < .14). 6. The New York Times, "The Weight of an Anchor," Frank Rich (May 19, 2002). 7. We included dummy variables for two of the broadcast times and for weekends. Because these are exogenously determined, they are not part of the VAR Granger causality "system

Advertising · Business · Commercial broadcasting · CONTEST · News media · Political science · Politics · Presidential election · Public broadcasting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub