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Using Sentiment Analysis to Evaluate Administration-Press Relations from Clinton Through Trump Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod and John Woolley

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Using Sentiment Analysis to Evaluate Administration-Press Relations from Clinton Through Trump Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod and John Woolley POLITICAL COMMUNICATION https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1763527 New Conflicts in the Briefing Room: Using Sentiment Analysis to Evaluate Administration-press Relations from Clinton through Trump Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod and John Woolley Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Journalists have argued that the high levels of hostility between American politics; executive President Trump and numerous media outlets have marked branch; media; presidency a critical juncture in presidential-press relations. This perceived con- flict challenges a key expectation of literatures on political media and the presidency: that functional interdependence will encourage pre- sidential administrations to tolerate more aggressive media question- ing in an effort to control media messages. We examine the interactions between U.S. presidential administrations and the White House press corps through thirty-five years of press briefing transcripts to assess the underpinnings of the current shift. We evaluate key hypotheses via a sentiment analysis using the NRC Emotional Lexicon. Generally, each side tends to reinforce, or mirror, positive and negative language of the counterparty during press briefings. However, we find a significant disjunction with the Trump Administration. Trump Administration representatives use negative language at higher rates than previous administrations and respond more sensitively to changes in press tone by decreasing positive language in response to press negativity. We discuss implications for the dynamic role of the media in shaping these changes. On November 7, 2018, the Trump Administration suspended the White House press pass of CNN Correspondent Jim Acosta, accusing Acosta of shoving a White House aide. Trump himself told Acosta, “You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN” (Trump, 2018b). Later, in the midst of litigation about the issue, the White House reinstated Acosta, after the media had characterized the Administration’s justification as a lie (Wang & Farhi, 2018). For many observers, this incident was emblematic of the conflict between the Trump Administration and the media. President Trump and his allies have argued that the media has adopted a hostile stance toward his Administration (Bush, 2018; Grynbaum, 2017; Trump, 2018a). Journalists have decried these attacks as an assault on the First Amendment, expressing frustration with the perceived disdain for truth within the Trump Administration (Glasser, 2019). In making accusations, both the press and the Administration seem to recognize that a dramatic shift in presidential-media relations has occurred. It is generally agreed that the 1970s saw a similar shift, with an increase in aggressive media investigations and CONTACT Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod [email protected] Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9420 Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’swebsiteat https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1763527. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 2 J. MEYER-GUTBROD AND J. WOOLLEY a corresponding increase in administration efforts to control coverage (Maltese, 1994; Clayman et al., 2010; Patterson, 1994). Over the past four decades, the executive’s continued dependence on the media to capture public attention and the media’s depen- dence on the administration for information have produced an adversarial but engaged relationship (Bennett, 1990, 2016; Bennett et al., 2008; Kumar, 2008, 2007). The ongoing inherent tension has generated complex routine interactions with media representatives, bounded by norms of engagement which have recently broken down (Kumar, 2007). In this paper, we explore the origins of the current shift, and in doing so, adjudicate between the competing claims of the Trump Administration and the press. Using auto- mated text analysis on near-daily press briefing transcripts obtained from the American Presidency Project (Woolley & Peters, 2019b), we examine the sentiment of both media and administration spokespersons during the Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations. We construct a metric for tone using the percentage of negative and positive words spoken by the press and administration separately, calculated using the widely adopted NRC sentiment lexicon (Mohammad & Turney, 2013b). Using data aggregated by week, we model positive or negative tone of the administra- tion as a function of the tone of the press – and vice versa, including fixed effects for presidential administration, interaction terms, and covariates. We find that the tone of the administration and press are highly correlated, likely due to a shared agenda. However, controlling for this agenda, we find a statistically significant higher use of negative language by the Trump Administration,1 with no corresponding shift within the media’s tone. Further, an increase in the negativity of the press2 corresponds to a unique decline in positivity by the Trump Administration. The results strongly suggest that the Trump Administration marks a critical juncture in presidential-media relations. This juncture is rooted in a decline in the norms of engage- ment on the part of the Administration in the face of stable press tone. We believe that in the contemporary case, new avenues of communication have provided an opportunity for the Trump Administration to avoid confronting more adversarial media outlets. The growth of Twitter as a medium for direct contact and the partisan division of the media environment through the growth of a polarized right-wing network are central in this process (Benkler, Faris and Roberts 2018). The refusal of the Trump Administration to engage with media outlets through regular, structured briefings has limited the media’s ability to cover the administration and threatened their ability to serve as watchdogs. Further, the Administration’s decision to select winners and losers amongst media outlets based on their willingness to support the president’s agenda will only further polarize and divide the American electorate. Finally, while the “Watergate shift” altered the landscape of president-media relations for forty years, it remains to be seen whether the “Trump shift” will persist. Understanding its roots may shed light on this potential. President-press Tone and the Changing Media Environment A common theme concerning the transformation of the presidency during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the changing relationship with the news media. Presidents adopted as the media evolved from an explicitly partisan press to a more professionalized, nonpartisan model of journalism (Ellis, 2018). Recent scholarship has POLITICAL COMMUNICATION 3 noted that norms in the press-presidency relationship shifted dramatically during the early 1970s. Among several factors, the Watergate scandal produced journalistic norms empha- sizing aggressive investigations of the presidency and the media’s watchdog role in democracy (Clayman et al., 2010; Patterson, 1994). At the same time, the Nixon Administration made a concerted effort to control presidential-press coverage through the newly established Office of Communications, which subsequent administrations have continued (Kumar, 2007; Maltese, 1994). While there is an inherent tension in the juxtaposition of antagonism and control, both parties recognize the mutual benefits therein, resulting in a symbiotic relationship in which presidents tolerate aggressive media coverage in exchange for the prospect of delivering their core message (Bennett, 2016; Kumar, 2007, 2008). The current tension is rooted in the press’ response to the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. In examining a sample of presidential-press conferences, Clayman et al. found that variation in media use of aggressive language depends on context, including unemployment and interest rates, but not on presidential approval ratings (Clayman et al., 2007). They also found that long-time members of the press corps are more likely to engage in aggressive questioning and that presidents faced tougher questioning during their second term (Clayman et al., 2012, 2007). Ultimately, Clayman et al. show an over- time link between more aggressive questioning and a combination of partisan polarization and a shift in journalistic norms, rejecting alternative explanations including the partisan- ship of the president, and the increase in presidential management of media (Clayman et al., 2010). Put simply, Clayman et al. find a shift toward more aggressive questioning during press conferences starting with the Nixon Administration (Clayman et al., 2010, 2006; Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Heritage & Clayman, 2013). While scholars examining other countries have highlighted a distinction between the aggression in and out of the briefing room (Eriksson & Östman, 2013), no similar trend has been observed in the U.S. Instead, since the shift during Nixon Administration, the press has embraced its role of discovering and publishing negative information about presidential administrations, driven by both a perception of its watchdog role and an economic need to drive scandal coverage (Patterson, 1994; Sparrow, 1999). Accompanying this change has been an increase in the presidential efforts to control the news media and influence the agenda (Kumar, 2007; Maltese, 1994). Political science has long recognized one of the core presidential goals is to shift public opinion to favor their particular policies (Jacobs & Shapiro, 2000). Presidents
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