Agenda Setting in the Partisan TV News Context

Abstract

This study examines the agenda setting of candidates' attributes and its relationship with polarized candidate evaluation among TV news viewers. Content analyses of candidates' affective attributes during the 2012 presidential election indicate partisan imbalance from CNN's Anderson Cooper and Fox's Special Report. NBC Nightly News was relatively balanced. Watching a particular program was positively associated with attribute agenda setting by each program. Also, agenda setting by the Fox program was positively related to viewers' polarized candidate evaluations, whereas agenda setting by the NBC program was negatively associated. Implications of the partisan TV news context for agenda-setting theory are discussed.Attribute agenda-setting research has documented that attributes or traits of candidates emphasized in the news media influence voters' images about those candidates (e.g.,

The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review

“…Some studies focused on the differences between media programs. For example, one study found the content on Fox News was highly polarized, while NBC was not polarized (Hyun & Moon, 2016).…”

Partisan Information Sources and Affective Polarization: Panel Analysis of the Mediating Role of Anger and Fear

“…Affect refers to favorable disposition toward a person or item, which is often measured through attitude scales (Batra, 1986;Fiore & Kim, 2007). As such, affective polarization is a manifestation of attitude strength in terms of favorability or hostility toward certain political objects, such as presidential candidates and political parties (Abelson, 1995;Hyun & Moon, 2016). Unlike affective polarization, emotions are short-lived and intense mental states representing evaluative and valenced reactions to certain external stimuli; they often arise automatically (Moors, 2010;Nabi, 1999).…”

Individual differences in affective agenda setting: A cross-sectional analysis of three U.S. presidential elections

“…Show line-up also differed slightly on CNN; in 2008 we used Anderson Cooper 360 , while in 2012 and 2016 we used The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer because it aired at the same time as the previous show. For the traditional networks, we used NBC Nightly News to represent all three because of the high degree of redundancy (Hyun and Moon, 2016). 3…”

“…This is one area where research on a demographic variable has been conducted with affective agenda setting, and media use is not always the primary explanation. Hyun and Moon (2016) examined the candidates’ affective attributes in the 2012 election and found that partisanship was the strongest predictor of agenda setting, saying that, ‘effects of TV news programs rely on viewers’ susceptibility to the effects of the affective dimension present in specific programs, rather than on simple exposure to those programs’ (p. 510). Another possible explanation for why partisanship should have affective agenda-setting effects is based in need to evaluate.…”