The Structural Determinants of Local Congressional News Coverage

Schaffner, Brian F.; Sellers, Patrick J.

doi:10.1080/105846003901365

Cited by 53 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…First, the manner with which district and market boundaries interact can have a tremendous effect on local coverage (Levy and Squire, 2000;Schaffner and Sellers, 2003;Vinson, 2002;Campbell, Alford, and Henry, 1984). The overlap between market and district can affect a legislator's local coverage in three ways.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…By considering marketdistrict dyads, we can incorporate variation across both markets and districts into our analysis of legislators' local coverage. This approach also allows us to incorporate controls for contextual variables that have substantial influence over local coverage (Schaffner and Sellers, 2003). We describe these contextual variables below.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress^*

Schaffner

Gadson

2004

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective. Despite the increasingly diverse legislative records of African-American members of Congress, much of the population continues to believe that AfricanAmerican legislators are interested only in minority issues. If African-American House members are becoming more like their nonblack colleagues, then why do many citizens continue to hold these stereotypes about African-American legislators? Methods. We examine local television news coverage of House members and compare the coverage received by African-American and nonblack incumbents. Results. We find that local television newscasts devote more coverage to AfricanAmerican members of Congress but this coverage is also more race oriented, especially in less diverse markets. In fact, local television stations produce more raceoriented coverage of African-American legislators regardless of their legislative records on minority issues. Conclusions. Local television news stations may be partially responsible for the prevailing stereotype of African-American House members who are narrowly focused on race-oriented issues.It should come as no surprise that race continues to be one the most fundamental factors that shapes politics. Race plays a particularly important role in how citizens evaluate politicians. In particular, despite the fact that African-American members of Congress have produced increasingly diverse legislative records, much of the population continues to believe that AfricanAmerican legislators are interested only in minority issues. If African-American House members are becoming more like their nonblack colleagues, then why do many citizens continue to hold these stereotypes about AfricanAmerican legislators? In this article, we seek an answer to this question by examining how local television news stations report on these incumbent legislators.Local news coverage is a critical tool used by legislators to present themselves and their legislative record to constituents. Legislators use local coverage to communicate information about their activities in Congress and n Direct correspondence to Brian F. Schaffner,

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress^*

Schaffner

Gadson

2004

Social Science Quarterly

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Both media market-district congruence and circulation size have been found to shape congressional news coverage (e.g., Campbell, Alford, and Henry 1984;Goldenberg and Traugott 1984;Schaffner and Sellers 2003;Vinson 2003). Generally, research indicates that higher congruence between districts and media outlets leads to greater coverage for members of Congress (e.g., Campbell, Alford, and Henry 1984;Schaffner and Sellers 2003).…”

Section: News Media Characteristics and Biasmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Generally, research indicates that higher congruence between districts and media outlets leads to greater coverage for members of Congress (e.g., Campbell, Alford, and Henry 1984;Schaffner and Sellers 2003). In this analysis, the largest circulating paper in each representative's district was selected for analysis, resulting in high media market-district congruence across all cases.…”

Section: News Media Characteristics and Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Race, Gender, and the Media Intersect: Campaign News Coverage of Minority Congresswomen

Gershon

2012

Journal of Women, Politics & Policy

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The news media often serves as an intermediary between elected officials and constituents, informing voters of the ways in which they are being represented. While the media plays a critical role in allowing representatives to communicate with constituents, previous research indicates that coverage of women and minority members of Congress may be unfavorable. Contrary to previous research, I find that being either a woman or a minority alone does not negatively impact coverage. However, faced with the "double barrier" of race and gender, minority congresswomen often receive more negative and less frequent media coverage than all other representatives.

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“…As a consequence, not every candidate receives the same amount of media attention; their newsworthiness depends, for instance, on news values (e.g., Galtung and Ruge 1965;Shoemaker and Reese 1996;O'Neill and Harcup 2009). Following this rationale, journalists tend to report more prominently about those politicians who hold leadership positions or high political office (e.g., Schaffner and Sellers 2003;Midtbø 2011;Gattermann and Vasilopoulou 2015;Schoenbach, De Ridder, and Lauf 2001;Vos 2014), have more experience in office (e.g., Schoenbach, De Ridder, and Lauf 2001;Sellers and Schaffner 2007), or belong to the government and are thus considered powerful (Van Aelst et al 2008). Socio-demographic characteristics, including gender and age, also play a role: Female politicians tend to be underrepresented in television (Hooghe, Jacobs, and Claes 2015) and newspapers (e.g., Ross et al 2013), although Vos (2014) argues that such a bias might be spurious and others find mixed effects (e.g., Elmelund-Praestekaer, Hopmann, and Nørgaard 2011;Gattermann and Vasilopoulou 2015); younger politicians are also more likely to receive newspaper coverage (Vos 2014).…”

Section: Exploring the Conditionality Of The Dynamic Relationshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media

Kruikemeier

Gattermann

Vliegenthart

2018

The Information Society

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Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media Kruikemeier, S.; Gattermann, K.; Vliegenthart, R. General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. ABSTRACTThis study examines the extent to which politicians' visibility in traditional news coverage explains individual politicians' visibility on social media, and vice versa. We also explore whether these relationships depend on commonly identified characteristics of individual politicians. We collected data for all elected candidates from the 2012 Dutch national elections covering each 15 days prior to the election day (N D 2250). This includes 2736 newspaper articles and 77,597 mentions on Facebook and Twitter. Our results show that the traditional news agenda and social media agenda impact each other, but that the reciprocal influence is not independent of politician characteristics.

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The Structural Determinants of Local Congressional News Coverage

Cited by 53 publications

References 14 publications

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress^*

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress^*

When Race, Gender, and the Media Intersect: Campaign News Coverage of Minority Congresswomen

Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media

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The Structural Determinants of Local Congressional News Coverage

Cited by 53 publications

References 14 publications

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress*

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress*

When Race, Gender, and the Media Intersect: Campaign News Coverage of Minority Congresswomen

Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress^*

Reinforcing Stereotypes? Race and Local Television News Coverage of Congress^*