The Consequences of Strategic News Coverage for Democracy: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

One of the most dominant ways of covering politics in the media is by focusing on politicians’ strategies for gaining public support and their positions at the polls. The conventional wisdom is that this tendency—usually referred to as strategic, horse race, or game coverage—has negative consequences for democracy because it increases political alienation. Others argue, however, that the public’s attraction to strategic coverage improves knowledge about issues and encourages civic engagement. This study examines the consequences of strategic coverage by performing a meta-analysis of published and unpublished studies. Based on 54 findings from 32 studies and 38,658 respondents, I show that across studies and contexts, strategic coverage increases political cynicism ( d = 0.32), reduces substance-based political knowledge ( d = −0.31), and discourages positive evaluations regarding the news items ( d = −0.22). However, there is no evidence that this coverage erodes participation. These findings correspond with scholars’ previous concerns.

The Winner-Loser Spiral in Political News Coverage: Investigating the Impact of Poll Coverage on Subsequent Party Coverage

“…However, it is now more than 25 years since it was published and there has been plenty of methodological progress since. One recent study which in part corroborates the notion that poll development affects subsequent party coverage is Wlezien and Soroka (2018) work on the US 2016 presidential election. Here, the authors use data on publicly available opinion polls together with data on media sentiment toward the two presidential candidates to address to what extent there is a reciprocal processes between the two.…”

“…The data used to evaluate the overall research question and to test the hypotheses is a daily collection of top political news stories (n = 7553) for eight of the major news outlets in Sweden. 2 This means, that in contrast to previous empirical studies discussed above, we use media's poll coverage as the main independent variable and not actual poll results themselves (e.g., Stolwijk, 2017;Wlezien & Soroka, 2018).…”

“…What has received less empirical attention, and what might be more consequential both for how parties are portrayed in the media and for citizens' long-term opinion formation, is how the media's coverage of horse race polls influences subsequent political coverage in itself. While some studies have examined this dynamic in the short-term context of electoral campaigns (Patterson, 1993(Patterson, , 2016Sides & Vavreck, 2014;Stolwijk, 2017;Wlezien & Soroka, 2018), they are few, and there are virtually no studies investigating this over longer time periods.…”

The novelty news frame: How social identity influences policy attention of minority presidential candidates

“…As compelling as these frames may be, they often crowd out policy issues in the news agenda. This not only results in a less informed electorate but may also increase levels of public cynicism and diminish voter turnout, particularly in races predicted to be non-competitive (Benoit et al, 2005; Westwood et al, 2020; Zoizner, 2018). These patterns also make it increasingly difficult for candidates to communicate their policy ideas to the public.…”

واقع دراسات استخدام الإعلام التربوی فی العملیة التعلیمیة: دراسة تحلیلیة

“…The researcher here reviews previous studies from media studies and research that relied on the dimensional analysis method. (Zoizner, 2021) entitled" The Consequences of Strategic News Coverage for Democracy: A Meta-Analysis" This study aimed to address the existing disagreement about the effectiveness of the "strategy" or "horse racing" framework in news coverage of electoral conflicts, and does it contribute to increasing the political participation of the recipient? Or does it enhance their political isolation?…”