The first assumption that our project made was that we could divide the Democratic Candidates into clear cut groups of Image based candidates and Policy based candidates. We anticipated that the Image based group would consist of Senator Edwards, General Clark and Governor Howard Dean. The candidates who we identified as Policy based were Senator Kerry, Senator Lieberman and Congressman Gephardt. These initial groupings were based on educated guesses.
That candidates would appear as image and policy based however was not our only expectation. We also had predictions about how various types of media would respond to content and tone. We imagined that all media would prefer Image based candidates to Policy based candidates. They are simply easier to cover. You don't have to know their policies; just that they were a General or that their father worked in a mill. It was expected that this gap would be greater in television than in newspapers. Television typically doesn't have time to cover a policy and explain it. Conversely we imagined that Newspapers would give more coverage to Policy based candidates. This is because the medium of newspapers is so different than television in that they have room to explain and discuss policy.
As for tone we all anticipated that the media would provide more coverage to positive candidates for the simple reason that no one wants to hear someone with only negative things to say.
We also assumed that their would be distinct differences between National and Local news coverage and how they assigned coverage to different candidates. We assumed that the National media would give more coverage to Image based candidates. Because of the nature of the media the National coverage would be more interested in the actual race itself and not as much on the issues. This type of coverage would lean more towards an Image based candidate.
The local media would not care about the difference. They would not be as focused on the horse race as the National media. Rather the local media would give coverage to whoever was talking about local issues, regardless of whether they were Image or Policy based candidates.