What Predicts the Game Frame? Media Ownership, Electoral Context, and Campaign News

Dunaway, Johanna; Lawrence, Regina G.

doi:10.1080/10584609.2014.880975

Cited by 74 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Among accounts that have sought patterns in the appearance of the game frame in news content, Iyengar et al (2004) suggest that audiences prefer game framed to issue-focused coverage. Perhaps for this reason the game frame tends to be used more in commercial than in public service media organizations ( Dimitrova and Strömbäck, 2011 ), although both types of media resort to it when a political competition is tight ( Dunaway and Lawrence, 2015 ). It is more likely to be used around the period when an actual decision has to be made and conflict between elites culminates, rather than at the early stages of a debate when the issue frame is more prominent ( Lawrence, 2000 ).…”

Section: Referendum Campaigns: Games Of Strategy or Policy Debates?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…De Vreese and Semetko’s (2002 , 2004 ) study of the 2000 Danish referendum on the adoption of the Euro found both strategy and issue frames in the media coverage, as did Robinson’s (1998) study of the 1995 Quebec independence referendum. Particularly nearer the time of the vote, when a decision has to be made, the game frame can be expected to dominate over the issue frame ( Lawrence, 2000 ), especially if the two options are close in polls ( Dunaway and Lawrence, 2015 ).…”

Section: Referendum Campaigns: Games Of Strategy or Policy Debates?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This seems to contradict research in other national contexts suggesting that commercial media (like STV) use the game frame more often than public service broadcasters (like the BBC) ( Strömbäck and Van Aelst, 2010 ). However, the equal prominence of this frame on both channels may be partly explained by the closeness of the two sides in polls towards the end of the campaign ( Dunaway and Lawrence, 2015 ).…”

Section: The Prominence Of Issue and Game Frames In The Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

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Issue and game frames in the news: Frame-building factors in television coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

Dekavalla

2016

Journalism

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This article explores frame building in Scottish television coverage of the 2014 independence referendum. It uses content analysis of news and current affairs coverage and semi-structured interviews with broadcasters and their sources to explain how factors internal and external to the media may be specifically connected to the prominence of generic issue and game frames in the coverage. It argues that broadcasters’ perception of their role in this event and the powerful influence of political sources were factors that encouraged policy-focused coverage, while the journalistic routine of balance and media organizations’ perceptions of what would attract audiences favoured the strategic game frame.

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Section: Referendum Campaigns: Games Of Strategy or Policy Debates?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Referendum Campaigns: Games Of Strategy or Policy Debates?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Prominence Of Issue and Game Frames In The Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

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Issue and game frames in the news: Frame-building factors in television coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

Dekavalla

2016

Journalism

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“…For the media, competitiveness of the race is a stronger predictor of tweet volume than for the public or political elites. This may be a reflection of the media's well-documented reliance on horse race reporting; on which increased competitiveness is associated with an increase in game-frame coverage (Dunaway & Lawrence, 2015). For the public, as well as political elites, political attention to a candidate appears to be driven less by how close the race is and more by the money spent campaigning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twitter as a tool for and object of political and electoral activity: Considering electoral context and variance among actors

McGregor¹,

Mourão

Molyneux

2017

Journal of Information Technology & Politics

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In recent years, journalists, political elites, and the public have used Twitter as an indicator of political trends. Given this usage, what effect do campaign activities have on Twitter discourse? What effect does that discourse have on electoral outcomes? We posit that Twitter can be understood a tool for and an object of political communication, especially during elections. This study positions Twitter volume as an outcome of other electoral antecedents and then assesses its relevance in election campaigns. Using a dataset of more than 3 million tweets about 2014 U.S. Senate candidates from three distinct groupsnews media, political actors, and the publicwe find competitiveness and money spent in the race were the main predictors of volume of Twitter discourse, and the impact of competitiveness of the race was stronger for tweets coming from the media when compared to the other groups. Twitter volume did not predict vote share for any of the 35 races studied. Our findings suggest that Twitter is better understood as a tool for political communication, and its usage may be predicted by money spent and race characteristics. As an object, Twitter use has limited power to predict electoral outcomes.

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“…As figure 1 shows, the referendum was framed as being about policy for most of the campaign (in total the frame was present in 1,735 articles, or 51% of the total coverage), except for the final weeks. This shift of attention from policy to strategic game as the referendum approached may be due to the increased strategic efforts of the two sides, and to the predicted closeness of the outcome towards the end, which has generally been found to trigger the game frame in news coverage (Dunaway and Lawrence, 2015).…”

Section: Policy Frames: Economy and Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Framing referendum campaigns: the 2014 Scottish independence referendum in the press

Dekavalla

2016

Media, Culture & Society

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This article explores the framing of referendum campaigns in the press and its relationship to the framing of elections. Drawing from an empirical analysis of the newspaper coverage of the 2014 Scottish referendum and from previous research on campaigns in different contexts, it finds that frames associated with elections, like the 'strategic game' and policy frames, were also dominant in the framing of the referendum. It argues that by framing the independence debate in similar terms to other political contests, the press promoted an understanding of this event as being about pragmatic decision-making on policy and political competition, rather than purely a decision about constitutional matters of self-determination.Keywords: Referendum, framing, content analysis, newspapers, Scotland, media coverage.Referendums are different political events from elections: they are not competitions between political parties to come into power but essentially consultations of the electorate on a divisive issue that goes beyond the lifespan of individual governments; they are one-offs, not regular events; there is not always clear correspondence between party identification and ideological stance and parties with diverse ideologies may support the same side (de Vreese and Semetko, 2004a).Although research on news coverage of election campaigns has been ongoing since the 1940s (Patterson, 1980), the coverage of referendums in the news is comparatively an under-researched area (de Vreese and Semetko, 2004b: 714). This article uses frame analysis, a method that has made a substantial contribution to our understanding of election coverage, to look at the way the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence from the United Kingdom was represented in a range of Scottish newspapers. Drawing from the analysis of the specific case and reflecting on previous studies of campaigns on other topics and national contexts, it addresses the following question: did the press coverage of the referendum generate different frames compared to those of election campaigns, as would be justified by the different nature of these political events? The findings have implications both for our understanding of referendums as mediated events and for evaluating the performance of the news media in explaining what a referendum is about. This latter is particularly significant because the media are for most people a key source of information on politics, and how they define referendums matters (Wettstein, 2012). Despite the dramatic decline of the print press internationally and in Scotland specifically (Dekavalla, 2015), it remains a significant part of the 'relay race' of discourses in the public sphere (Garton et al., 1991: 100-103), whereby print, broadcast and online media co-create the mediated public debate and re-represent political discourse on different platforms. The 2014 referendum has been hailed as an occasion where grassroots groups reinvigorated the debate on social media and challenged the dominance of traditional news platforms (Law, 20...

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What Predicts the Game Frame? Media Ownership, Electoral Context, and Campaign News

Cited by 74 publications

References 43 publications

Issue and game frames in the news: Frame-building factors in television coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

Issue and game frames in the news: Frame-building factors in television coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

Twitter as a tool for and object of political and electoral activity: Considering electoral context and variance among actors

Framing referendum campaigns: the 2014 Scottish independence referendum in the press

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