Incivility is a growing concern among Americans and a burgeoning topic of scholarly research. The current study investigates the extent to which incivility via lying accusations was present in major party candidate and campaign expressions on Twitter during the invisible primary season preceding the 2016 presidential election. All tweets on verified major party candidate and campaign Twitter feeds were collected from March 5, 2015 through December 31, 2015 ( N = 66,463). The collection of candidate tweets included 6 Democrats and 18 Republicans. While lying accusations were infrequent, they occurred 109 times over the preprimary period. The Republican candidates were more likely to make lying accusations than were the Democratic candidates. This was driven in large part by the candidacy of Donald Trump.
This study examined the relationship between elite news media agendas and campaign agendas during the 2016 presidential primary season. Computer-assisted content analysis was used to assess issue emphasis within Twitter feeds of U.S. presidential primary candidates and their campaigns as well as the nation's top newspapers. The relationship between the overall Twitter agenda and that of newspapers, as well as the influence of front-runners Clinton, Cruz, Sanders, and Trump, was investigated using time series analysis. Aggregate and candidate-specific findings reveal some reciprocal relationships, but overall greater influence of newspapers on the Twitter agenda was detected. Findings suggest that Twitter has the potential to break free from and influence traditional media gatekeeping.
This study of the 2014 U.S. midterm congressional elections examined whether connections across sources within newspaper coverage predicted framing outcomes. Conceptualized as an aspect of frame building, symbolic source networks within articles were examined using social network analysis and multilevel modeling. Results suggest network density within a given article predicted the likelihood that a source was linked to the strategic game frame and issue frame in election coverage. By nesting sources within networks, this study extends our understanding of frame building and collective sense-making in politics. It also demonstrates the utility of social network concepts and measures for research on news production.
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