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The Effects of Framing in Election News Coverage on a Voter’S Intention to Vote ______ THE EFFECTS OF FRAMING IN ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE ON A VOTER’S INTENTION TO VOTE _______________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of The College of Arts and Sciences Ohio University _______________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation with Honors in Political Science _______________ By Maddie Capron April 2019 1 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………….. 4 LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………………………………… 8 METHODS …………………………………………………………………………. 14 FINDINGS ………………………………………………………………………….. 21 ANALYSIS …………………………………………………………………………. 26 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………….. 32 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………. 34 APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………………37 3 Introduction If politics were a game, there would be clear winners and losers. There is the candidate who is leading the polls, there are the people right behind them, and then there are the ones who are simply struggling to keep up in the race. Over the past several years, the horse-race frame, which focuses on who is winning or leading in the polls rather than the policies or issues at hand, has become more prominent in election coverage (Pew Research Center 2012). It appears in election media coverage more than other frames such as a policy frame (Pew 2012), which focuses on the issues and platforms during an election rather than other factors. The public is infatuated with who is “winning the race,” and reporters keep conveying that information to readers. Many critics are skeptical of the horse-race frame (Marx 2007), and some even say it could be causing political coverage to be “broken” because articles continue focusing on the wrong parts of the story at hand (Rosen 2011). The horse-race frame dominates election news coverage (Pew 2012). It focuses primarily on who is leading in the polls and who is behind, how they can catch up and how they can prevent falling behind. The frame is anything but uncommon, even appearing in The New York Times, one of the most respected media outlets in the world (Healy and Haberman 2016): Donald J. Trump wrested back control of the Republican presidential race on Tuesday with a commanding victory in the New York primary, while Hillary Clinton dealt a severe blow to Senator Bernie Sanders with an unexpectedly strong win that led her to declare that the Democratic nomination was “in sight.” That coverage, however, isn’t limited to popular national news organizations, either. Regional and local outlets have also taken to including this type of coverage in their political reporting. For example, the Columbus Dispatch reported in 2018 (Rowland 2018): 4 Democrat Richard Cordray and Republican Mike DeWine are tied at 43 percent in the survey by Cygnal, a Montgomery, Alabama-based polling and research firm. Five percent support a minor- party candidate and 9 percent are undecided. Ohio’s Senate race is a different story: Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is up 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent, over GOP Congressman Jim Renacci of Wadsworth. Although Renacci has aligned himself closely with President Donald Trump, the poll found that Ohio voters who say they do not support Trump’s actions but will still support local Republicans actually back Brown, 72 percent to 20 percent. Trump earns favorable marks from 45 percent of Ohio voters, while 51 percent are unfavorable. Republican state Auditor Dave Yost leads 46 percent to 43 percent in the attorney general’s matchup with Steve Dettelbach, former U.S. attorney for northern Ohio. The margin of error for the telephone poll of 503 likely Ohio voters Tuesday and Wednesday is plus or minus 4.37 percentage points. Earlier Thursday, fivethirtyeight.com unveiled a trio of forecasts for Ohio’s governor race. One showed Cordray winning narrowly, a second showed DeWine winning narrowly, while a third said the two are tied. In 2016, much of the coverage surrounding the presidential election, even starting in the primary elections, was presented with a horse-race frame (Patterson 2016). Some say that type of coverage led to some candidates—like Ohio Republican John Kasich—having a more difficult time rising during the primary elections because they weren’t getting the same amount of media coverage as the ones leading the race. Additionally, that kind of framing, just as any kind of framing, can affect voters’ decisions (Patterson 2016).What is important about the horse-race frame, however, is its rise in popularity. By putting so much attention on the winners of the race, it can take away other candidates’ opportunities to be present in the minds of voters. Previous elections followed similar trends in reporting. During the early parts of the 2008 presidential election, the bulk of the reporting focused on the fundraising, campaign tactics, and polling, which would lean toward a horse-race frame (Pew 2007). Additionally, regardless of the 5 medium, Pew Research Center found that “the horse race” was at the “front and center” of most of the coverage (Pew 2007). Another study showed that the horse race was also dominating during the 2012 Presidential Election, but not quite to the degree of the 2008 election (Pew 2017). Because so much of media news coverage during campaigns is overrun with stories based on the winning and losing of “the game,” it is important to understand the effects that frame could have on voters, candidates, and the elections at large. Any number of factors could be at play when someone makes the decision to cast a vote on Election Day. In recent elections, less than 60 percent of eligible voters cast a vote at the polls (Pew, 2018). In some cases, those who chose to vote could have done so because of their peers and environment (Lane 1955). In other cases, factors like a person’s attitudes toward a certain candidate, their passion for a specific political issue, or any number of personal characteristics could be pushing them to cast a vote (Lane 1955). However, media coverage, especially the way it is presented—whether it’s with a horse-race frame, a focus on policy and platform, or emphasis on the candidate himself or herself—can have the power to change someone’s attitudes, perception, and opinions. While some studies have shown how framing can affect those factors in voters, few have studied the impact framing has in election media coverage. Traditionally, many studies have focused on a specific issue, policy, or event and how the framing on that changes someone’s attitudes or behaviors. Additionally, few studies have shown the impact framing can have on a person’s intention to vote and voter turnout. This paper will explore the relationship between how the media present the news—in terms of framing—during elections and how that affects a person’s intention to vote and overall voter turnout. It will explore the published literature about framing and examine the gaps that exist in studying the intersection of turnout and framing. It 6 will also present an experiment to find how framing in election coverage affects voters’ intentions to cast a vote. Additionally, the paper will focus specifically on the horse-race frame compared to a policy-based frame, which focuses on the policies a candidate is presenting and the potential outcomes of those policies, and how those affect a person’s intention to vote. While there has been significant research on how framing affects attitudes, this paper will focus more on how it affects behavior, specifically in terms of voter intentions, and ask the question of if the horse-race frame has an effect on people’s intention to vote. 7 Literature Review When someone reads a story in the newspaper or watches a news broadcast on TV, they are doing so with preconceived thoughts and opinions about the story at hand. They already have formulated feelings toward that subject, and those judgments will stick with them. Framing, however, could change the way the story is digested by the person who is learning more about the story. Framing is “the process by which a communication source, such as a news organization, defines and constructs a political issue or public controversy” (Nelson, Clawson, Oxley p. 597). Frames can privilege a certain message or aspect of a story and convey a message of importance to a reader or viewer. The way news stories are presented has the power to change the public’s opinion on any given topic. Framing has been studied widely by a number of scholars, and it has become mostly clear that it has an effect on how a news story can be perceived and understood by the public. Consumers of news are able to take away different aspects of a story because of the way a story is framed, and it’s crucial to understand that impact. Understanding the effects of framing That phenomenon is exemplified in Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley’s work. When presenting a Ku Klux Klan article using two different frames—a free speech issue versus a disruption of public order—the power of framing was brought to light. In their research, it was found that viewers who had seen the story with the free speech frame had more tolerance toward the KKK than those who had seen the story that presented it as a disruption of public order (Nelson, Clawson, Oxley 1997). It shows the psychological impact framing can have when reporters put the emphasis on a specific aspect of a bigger story. In a similar instance, Nelson and Oxley explored how issue framing affects belief importance and opinions in a different article. By presenting a controversial issue with two 8 different types of framing, the experiments showed that framing significantly had an impact a person’s opinion on the issue, also affecting their belief content and belief importance. They showed that framing can alter the importance people give to an issue-based belief, which shows the significant impact of framing.
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