This project evolved from a seminar course taught at Davidson College called "Political Manipulation of the News." Focused on the interaction between politicians, the media, and the public, the course sought to examine how each group influences the other.
To aid in our study we began an in depth study of the Democratic Primary Elections as they were a timely example of the topic at hand. We chose to investigate the ability to which candidates can effect the amount of coverage they receive through issuing press releases with different types of tone and content. Specifically, we defined both positively and negatively toned releases, as well as image and policy oriented content.
We studied a combination of local and national news coverage from both television and newspapers. Initially, the analysis was broken down into three individual studies, but those have been combined in this web site. Tom Anstrom looked at candidate's coverage only in local newspapers, while Laura Noyes studied the differences in coverage between national and local newspapers. Vic Lindsay attempted to compare national television with national print media.
All three studies limited their study to the six major Democratic candidates: Richard Gephardt, Joseph Lieberman, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and John Kerry. We selected these candidates, because they were more viable than others such as Carol Mosely-Braun, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Bob Graham who received significantly less coverage or had already dropped out of the race.
Of the six candidates studied, three were commonly stereotyped as image candidates, whereas the other three we known more for their policy positions. We expected that the image candidates, Clark, Dean, and Edwards would issue more image based press releases, and also receive more coverage across all media outlets, especially on television. As a visual media, television plays best to the strengths of image candidates who campaign on their character and an appearance of honesty and trustworthiness. Policy candidates such as Gephardt, Lieberman, and Kerry sometimes fair better in print media, where more space can be dedicated to presenting their opinions.
The study also made use of several other variables on top of those dealing with tone and content of candidates' press releases. These included the number of candidates left in the race, the number of days until the Iowa Caucuses, whether or not a debate took place, the day before, of, and after the state of the union, and the day of the week.
Each person then ran regression models of the data looking for significant correlation. As mentioned before, each of the three researchers focused on a different set of media formats. This web site, however, attempts to unify our individual work into a more comprehensive study by adding three additional models. First, a combination of all available media outlets both television and print, national, and local. The second model focused on just the six television stations: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and PBS, while the third looked at all six newspapers.
Each study's results were unexpectedly similar. Across each of the different media formats, as well as the differences between national and local media, the impact of candidates' press releases was barely felt. In a few situations, certain candidates' coverage was effected by the number of press releases they issued, or by their tone or content, but only in rare cases. The fact that these cases were so limited offers little support to our hypothesis, except to say that when a candidate's press releases do impact his coverage, it would be the exception, not the rule.
Other variables, however, did have a consistently significant impact on the results. As the number of candidates in the race decreased, the remaining candidates each saw a rise in coverage. Similarly, as the Iowa Caucuses approached, candidates also experienced an increase in the number of stories mentioning their name each day. One of the most significant variables was Monday. Defined as press releases issued on Monday, television stories aired on Monday evening, and newspapers stories which actually appeared on Tuesday morning, Monday represents the beginning of a definite news cycle.
Upon completion of this study, several areas where improvement could aid results were located. The area most lacking in our study was candidate's activities. While we did have some access to candidate's press releases, the study took no notice of their speeches, campaign stops, advertising, or other activities, many of which are public appearances and perhaps be more likely to attract media coverage. In addition, more media outlets would be needed, specifically local papers, and local television coverage which was not present at all in the original study.
For a more in-depth look at our project and its results, please browse through the links on the left hand side of your screen.