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GameOver22 on 04 November 2012
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Veknoid_Outcast said:
GameOver22 said:
Veknoid_Outcast said:
This is definitely possible, but how do you quantify something like tone?

Don't get me wrong, Fox News is a safe haven for conservative-minded citizens and MSNBC is a refuge for liberal-leaning citizens, and both spend an ugly amount of time participating in the political process instead of reporting on it. But how do you measure tone?

Also, it's possible that the high number of "negative" or "positive" stories corresponds to the actual frequency of positive and negative actions and reactions on the campaign trail.

Essentially, you have researchers who read/watch news stories, and they then code the stories as having a positive, negative, or mixed tone for each candidate. They usually do it by counting the number of positive and negative statements in each story, and then coding the story accordingly. Its hardly a fool-proof practice, but it can generate some meaningful conclusions.

As for your last statement, that is why they separate horse-race from non horse-race coverage.

Thanks for your response. Based on these statistics, it seems like this horse-race effect is quite common, and quite destructive to, and distracting from, substantive news coverage. Frankly, it appears to transform the news from a source of information into a source of entertainment.

What are your thoughts, GameOver?

I think the media likes to generate viewership, and the fact is that the day-to-day up and downs of the campaign trail are more exciting than the true story, which is that campaigns don't matter much. As to the destructive nature of horse-race journalism, I think its more of a symptom rather than the problem. The modern 24-hour news cycle tends to focus on a plethora of issues and addresses each one sparingly rather than focusing on in-depth analyses of a couple issues. You also see this with print media (declining budgets leads to less investigative journalism). Campaign coverage fits nicely into this cursory coverage and generates interest while doing it.

Well, that's my take on it. : )