Political Communication's E-Portfolio

1.      Identify and discuss the significance of three key concepts you learned this semester

I think one of the most important concepts I learned about this semester was framing. Framing is something that is done by political campaigns, political parties and the media. I learned that a political campaign can be framed by the media in at least four ways: Conflict, Horserace, Issue and Candidate Attribute.

There is a popular assumption that candidates focus most on being likeable – on their attributes. This assumption held up when I coded the campaign website for Governor Martin O’Malley back in January. O’Malley was very concerned with being seen as the lifelong democrat, having “15 years of executive experience” and being part of an “Irish Rock band”. But when the governor did talk about issues, it was seen that he took more of a negative approach, focusing on what was broken instead of how he would fix it. O’Malley framed his discussion of issues through the use of fear.

In this piece from March 21 I took a brief look into framing and how it practically plays out in the news coverage of a presidential election. In this blog post I quoted a clip that said that, “No poll in the upcoming states [Arizona, Utah and Idaho] shows Sanders winning by enough of a margin.”

Senator Sanders won Idaho by 78%-21% and won Utah by 79%-20.%, losing Arizon 57%-39%.

One of the first things I did as a part of this class was to parse out exactly what political communication is and what it means in a practical and theoretical sense. As a communication major my overall perspective on this is influenced by my background in communication. I wrote for my first blog post this semester:

“Political communication is first and foremost the academic pursuit of an interdisciplinary understanding of the ways in which studies of political science (and the applied ‘politics’) interact with studies of communication (and applied fields including but not limited to ‘journalism’, ‘public relations’ and ‘advertising’).”

One thing I have found fascinating about the 2016 presidential election is the adoption of the use of the social media application Snapchat. Governor Lincoln Chafee was an early adopter of Snapchat, though it did not ultimately help him in his attempts to secure the Democratic nomination. Back in June only seven candidates for president had a Snapchat account, and all of them have since dropped out, with the most recent drop out being Senator Marco Rubio. I am very interested on a retrospective piece on the role of Snapchat (and all social media apps and platforms) in this election, and I wonder if there will be any theorizing that the presence of indomitable candidates such as Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump make it impossible to truly gauge the effectiveness of ever-evolving technology.

Very similar to framing are narratives. Every campaign and each candidate, attempts to weave a specific narrative about themselves, their campaign and the country. Back in February I investigated the narratives of “Donald Trump the Winner and Marco Rubio ‘The Republican Obama’”.

It was kind of pre-mature to observe the first narrative of Donald Trump as a winner back in early February. But two-and-a-half months later and the narrative has not only been continued in the media, but has been proven true by the voters.

Figure 1:  50% of these results show Donald Trump as a winner, even going as far as to say that he will be the nominee.

Trump has won twenty-two contests, twice as many as Senator Ted Cruz his closest contender. Trump has also one 2.3 million more votes than Senator Cruz. Trump and the media have constantly driven home the narrative of Trump as a winner, and so far that narrative has proven actually true.

            The narrative of Senator Rubio as ‘The Republican Obama’ have not held up, however. Arguably it was a weak narrative to begin with, seeing as Marco Rubio was the establishment candidate in comparison to some of his opponents (Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and even fellow senator Ted Cruz) and seeing as he never could get the race down to just being between him and one other opponent. Additionally, if the GOP ever had an inevitable candidate in 2016, that candidate was nothing similar to Senator Clinton in 2008. Rubio withdrew from the race for the presidency on March 15 and two days later on March 17 he announced he would not be running for reelection for senate. In fact it is thought now that Rubio is shifting from electoral politics toward a private life.

2.      Describe each of the journalism and research projects you worked on this semester, including a specific description of your role in each

a.      Content Analysis #1

For the first content analysis my group and I looked at the campaign websites of Governors O’Malley and Christie and hoped to answer two research questions: RQ1: “How do Governors Christie and O’Malley use positive and negative messaging on their websites and in their discussions of national security and criminal justice reform?” and RQ2: “How do Governors Christie and O’Malley’s discussions of national security and criminal justice reform compare?”

I had a hand in creating the proposal and influencing the direction our content analysis took. Specifically, I wanted to find a way to not focus on Clinton, Trump or any other front-runners, and eventually through group brainstorming the group decided on the Mid-Atlantic governors from opposite sides of the aisle who were both doing poorly in the polls. After that I did research into the subject of “What Do Voters Care About?” – trying to understand any similarities or differences New Jersey and Maryland voters had with each other or with the nation in general.

I then had to collect screencaps of O’Malley’s campaign website. Once our proposal for the content analysis had been approved, it was close to the date of the Iowa Caucus and we didn’t want to lose the primary source of the website if the governor dropped out (and subsequently took down his site). It may be worth noting that the site is still up.

Once I had the screencaps, it was time to begin combing through the site to code the data. Once I had finished coding data relevant to the two research questions I sent my coding off to my group members, who checked the coding to ensure inter-coder reliability. Similarly, I checked the coding of Christie’s site ensure inter-coder reliability. From there I contributed writing to the ‘Introduction’ section as well as the ‘Findings’ section. I also contributed to editing as the project reached its due date.

b.      News Story #1

For the first news story my group and I had to cover a political event. We chose to travel down to Atlanta to Morehouse College to cover a rally that Senator Sanders was having there. For this I conducted interviews, collected campaign materials and took pictures. I conducted six interviews over the course of the evening and listened to the speeches of the senator and all of his surrogates. I contributed to the writing and editing of the news story. As the only journalism student in my group working on this particular story, it fell to me to make sure that the story was formatted correctly and met AP-guidelines.

c.       News Story #2

For the second news story of the class we were charged with covering another political event. We chose to compare and contrast a town hall held by Governor John Kasich and a rally held by Donald Trump. I contributed reporting from a town hall Governor John Kasich held at Kennesaw State University. I conducted four interviews, recorded the town hall on a tape recorder and took notes and pictures.

d.      News Story #3

For the third news story my group and I had to do a retrospective on the Georgia Primary and Super Tuesday, and to obtain interviews with experts and those involved in campaigns to get their opinion on those elections and the elections to come. I interviewed the president of KSU for Bernie, Zach McDowell. I also took pictures of McDowell and contributed to the writing and editing.

e.       Field Research Project

For the field research project the group decided to analyze the research question: “How does Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric work to mobilize African American support?”

I contributed my notes and interviews from the Sanders events, respectively. I also contributed writing, editing and graphic-making.

I contributed the following analysis:

“Despite all of his efforts Senator Sanders has had a difficult time appealing to black voters. In South Carolina he won 14% of black voters to Secretary Clinton’s 86%. He did better in Nevada, where he received 22% of the Black vote to Clinton’s 76%. In Alabama Sanders won 6% of the black vote. In Arkansas he won 10% of the black vote. In Georgia Sanders won 14% of the black vote (and 41% of the white vote) to Clinton’s 85% of the black vote (and 58% of the white vote). In Oklahoma Sanders won 27% of the black vote. He won 10% in Tennessee, 15% in Texas, 16% in Virginia, 28% in Michigan and 11% in Mississippi.”

            It would be interesting to continue to track this trend and see how it has played out through to the most recent races. In fact, this is what that would look like:

f.        Content Analysis #2

For the second content analysis the group I worked with decided to collect a convenience sample of twenty-five articles from the Los Angeles Times and twenty-five articles from CNN. We collected our sample from Monday, March 28 to Friday, April 1. I collected the articles from the Los Angeles Times and I checked my groupmate’s coding for inter-coder reliability. I also contributed to key findings, analysis and editing.

3.      Upload at least one visual from the course projects (photos, audio/video from interviews, charts from content analysis/field research projects, etc.) with a description.

See above.

4.      Discuss and elaborate on how you did or did not successfully accomplish each of the four expressed learning objectives (listed below) for the course.

a.      Demonstrating the ability to produce high quality research projects relating to political communication in American elections

Though I’ve already taken two research methods classes (Communication and GWST/Interdisciplinary), I think that my ability to produce research in political communication in the future could benefit from a course in Political Science Research Methods. Obviously my time in this course has given me a degree of training that has improved my ability, but it was very much learn-by-doing. Given my grades in the course, I would say that my ability to produce research projects is above-average, but still has a way to go before becoming ‘high quality’.

b.      Accurately describing and providing critical perspectives on the intersection between political communication and American elections

I think that I have excelled most in this area. Already having been rather fascinated with American elections and communications, I had a vested interest in the intersection in question. I believe that my blogs throughout this course demonstrate my ability to provide the aforementioned critical perspectives.

c.       Producing high quality political journalism on the theme of American elections

I faltered on this in the beginning of the course, but I do believe that this course has helped me better my ability to produce this type of journalism in a high-quality manner. My interviews for the second and third news stories were much better than they were for the first one.

d.      Respectfully observing American political communication processes in practice.

‘Respectfully’ is highly subjective, but yes, I believe that I have been able to observe the political communication process in the United States with a respectful honesty. I attended two campaign events, interviewed many people and conducted many nights of live-tweeting, with various conversations interspersed, and I have always tried to keep decorum throughout all of it.

Confirmation bias in the media: Show me, tell me

By THOMAS HARTWELL

We, as humans, believe that we are inherently correct and seek out information that agrees with our thinking. How does this apply to our daily thinking or our consumption of products, services, and news?

Confirmation bias, or the interpreting of evidence or information in regards to existing beliefs, has been addressed often in the discussion of the presentation of news. Most believe that there should be no biases in news reporting, and journalists are taught to stay completely objective in the presentation of hard news. While, in a perfect world, consumers of news could watch/read news presented completely objectively and make educated decisions based on what they read, we do not live in a perfect world. News organizations have to incorporate what sells into the presentation of their stories. There is also a consideration of gatekeepers who run the media organizations. While the goal should always be objective reporting, people have a tendency to have strong opinions on political issues, which many times manifest themselves in subtle biases in reporting.

When we explore confirmation bias in the larger media outlets, we often encounter a widely-accepted thought pattern: "CNN and MSNBC are liberal, Fox is conservative." While this is now considered the norm, the media outlets themselves would never come out and admit to it. The media outlets, therefore, must disguise their biases as "just another way of reporting."

Let's look at Fox and MSNBC's reporting of the same story. A racially insensitive joke was told at a charity dinner recently, and both outlets wrote a story on it. Keeping in mind that Fox is considered conservative and MSNBC liberal, there is a subtle difference in the reporting in a couple ways:

Image and story from foxnews.com

Image and story from msnbc.com

1. The headlines: In Fox's case, the headline reads that both Mayor De Blasio and Hillary Clinton take part in the joke and draw criticism. If we consider Fox's possible confirmation bias, it would make sense that they would want to frame Hillary in this way. Whereas, in MSNBC's case, only De Blasio takes part in the joke, and even then it's presented as "coming at a bad time" rather than being "racially-tinged."

2. The visuals: Fox shows Clinton and De Blasio laughing and seemingly celebrating with the headline "racially-tinged joke" hovering above. It seems to be framed as the two enjoying the insensitive comment. MSNBC instead shows Clinton off to the side looking on as the joke is made. This way, she seems to not take part in the joke making. Clinton also is even standing next to the African-American gentleman, further separating herself from the insensitivity.

Images, as we've already seen, can speak a thousand words in reporting, and often do. The images we see can impact our impression of the candidate depicted. For these examples, I'll choose a picture of Ted Cruz from CNN and one from Fox.

Image from cnn.com

Image from foxnews.com

In these cases, the presentation of Ted Cruz is considered in the photos chosen to be published on the sites. CNN's picture choice is less than flattering, while Fox's looks like a campaign flier.

While minds won't necessarily be changed by only images or word choice, the presentation of information or images can alter the way that people think about a subject. Objective news reporting and an educated public would be preferable to what is widely accepted as a biased news environment, but in order to inform the public, the public must want to be informed. If it takes subtle biases (even no-so-subtle ones) to inform them, then so be it -- I'll take the news with a grain of salt.

Framing the presidential race

By THOMAS HARTWELL

The presidential race in any context is a media frenzy, but this race has been unlike any before it in many ways. As with any story, the media make choices as to how to approach the stories surrounding the presidential race, and there are four commonly used "frames" of presentation, all of which have been used to cover the year's campaigns.

Horse Race:


Horse race journalism in the political spectrum is the presentation of information as a contest or comparison of, in this case, presidential candidates. There's been a lot of talk about a possible convention contest for the Republican nomination this campaign season, and that has opened the door for A LOT of horse race journalism. With a race this close between Trump and Cruz and a candidate pulling delegates away from the two front-runners, many outlets are taking the opportunity to present some "who will win the sprint to 1,237?" stories. There has been some in regard to the Democrats' race as well, but with a race on the left seemingly more and more decidedly won by Hillary, there have been more stories about the change that Sanders' campaign has brought to politics than "who will win?"

From the Associated Press

Conflict:

Horse race and conflict presentation of the Republican race have gone hand-in-hand this campaign season. As the race has continued and candidates have dropped out, there has been more opportunity for conflict-frame journalism. For instance, this CNN article incorporates elements of the delegate race, but describes the race for the nomination between Trump and Cruz as a "duel." A search for stories about Trump on CNN and other news outlets provides a look at the presentation of Trump's campaign strategy: conflict frame and a "Trump vs..." mentality. 

From cnn.com search

Issues:

Candidates of the same party and especially opposite parties LOVE to slam each other on policy issues -- the presidential race produces plenty of these opportunities. While most attacks come on an opponent's stance on ongoing issues, current events also play a part. For example, Trump and Cruz chose to slam President Obama on immigration regulations and international terrorism in response to terrorist attacks in Brussels, Tuesday. Stories written on the issues provide voters and onlookers with the ability -- hopefully objectively, but we all know, not so much -- to make decisions based on those issues. Trump has also generated lots of attention and media spotlight for himself by making large and outrageous issue claims. He's actually winning in the presidential race on lots of the "important issues," because he has so much coverage out there on his policy on those issues.

From msnbc.com

Candidate Attributes:

Another frame of media coverage dominated by Donald Trump and, some may argue, Bernie Sanders. Trump and Sanders' revolutionary approach to U.S. politics has changed the race for good, and a lot of that focuses on their personal attributes. Plenty of stories have focused on Trump's deficiencies, outlining why he couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't be President of the United States.

From toptens.com

This article even outlines ten reasons why Donald Trump should not be the next president, citing his past words, actions, claims, etc. 

National News and Framing

By Branden Camp

I find it interesting that when you step back and analyze an article rather than just read it, you find that many articles are biased and have a strong elements of framing and agenda setting.

The Washington Post has written several articles focused on the negative attributes of Trumps personalities.  They have headlines like “To defend our Democracy against Trump….” Early in the article, they point out that the Republican Party should do everything they can to stop Trump.  This is an example of candidate attributes. They point out the flaws in the candidate’s character in this article.  In this same article they show how Trump is completely at odds with the Republican Party, which is a conflict frame.

The Washington Post also published an article that is clearly a horse race frame about Cruz and Trump in a race against each other.  The even say in the article that race has entered a “combative phase” between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

The article “The Plausibility of Ted Cruz” by New York Times, Ross Douthat talks through Cruz’s policy issues on foreign affairs and economic stance.  This is a clear issues frame.  This article also focuses on comparing Cruz to Rubio, using words like “attacking” when discussing how Cruz and Rubio face each other.  So we see some horse race framing as well as conflict frames.  Many of the national news, especially New York Times and Washington Post, they will focus on one type of frame while at the same time including some if not all four frames in their articles.

Republican party aims to trump Trump as candidate furthers his delegate lead

By THOMAS HARTWELL, ESTI AFANADOR AND CHRISTIANI FERNANDEZ

The 2016 presidential campaign has been one that has, in many ways, strayed from the normal workings of U.S. elections, with the season’s rhetoric centered around the anger and distrust of a “corrupt Washington.” While both sides have seen revolutionary political strategies and several broken ballot records, the Republican party’s election has undeniably been the more colorful of the two, and Donald Trump has captured voters’ attention. The Republican race to the general election is narrowing, and the Trump campaign seems to be rallying the needed public support to face the Democrats in November.

“The Trump phenomenon – no one saw this coming. No one really understands why it’s happening – what’s going on – but I’ve got some ideas,” said political expert Kerwin Swint.

Swint is an author, speaker and professor of political science at Kennesaw State University. He has run campaigns, written books and his work has appeared in several national and international media outlets. Swint said that the “Trump phenomenon” as well as this campaign season’s obviously splintered GOP is something that has been in the cards for a while and has the potential to have lasting effects.

“What’s going on in the Republican party is a real revolution,” said Swint. “It is serious, it is dramatic, it is significant and it’s going to have long-term consequences.”

While there are plenty of voters out there who have voiced their discontent with Trump, more surprisingly, said Swint, is the amount of resistance Trump is receiving from the, so-called, establishment Republicans. The establishment fears that a Trump nomination means a Clinton victory, but it goes beyond that.

“The other part of their thinking … is, ‘Good Lord, he might win,’ which might be worse,” said Swint. “President Trump would pay no attention or very little attention to the establishment.”

Swint also said that a number of Republicans would rather see Clinton win the general election than Trump – a party line-crossing that has not been seen in decades.

Trump has appealed, most abundantly, to white, blue-collar workers who are tired of Washington and who are willing to cross party lines to vote an “outsider” into the Oval Office. His ability to pick up Independent votes has given him an edge in the delegate count, said Swint, but the damage that he and others have been doing to the GOP this season has forced some voters to display their unhappiness in other ways.

  

Delegate count in the 2016 presidential race so far, according to CNN.
If a candidate does not receive the shown majority of delegates (1,237),
the party goes to a convention, which nominates a candidate for the general
election. Source: http://www.cnn.com/election/ 

Zac Carr, a 25-year-old Cobb County voter said his primary vote was cast as a symbol of his own unhappiness with the candidates this campaign season.

“I voted for Rand Paul despite the fact that he is no longer running,” said Carr. “I asked for a non-partisan ballet because I, like George Washington, believe that the two-party system only polarizes our country. I wanted to do my part by showing that I believe non-partisan is preferred over Republican or Democrat.”

Carr said that the “nastiness” in the Republican race forced his hand and initiated his Independent vote.

Lott Middlemas, a Florida voter and international relations and Chinese double major at the University of South Carolina, agreed that the GOP race has been ugly, but said that its dirty tactics might be good for the number of voters in a general election.

“I think that voter turnout on both sides will increase noticeably for both parties as a result of the inflammatory politics of the Republican party during this election cycle,” said Middlemas. “The Republicans have been talking for years about expanding their base of support by appealing to minorities, but I don't think they'll see that as being necessary anymore since they've managed to draw out many more white voters than usual without having to soften their stances on economic and social issues that are often important to minority voters.”

The Democrats, said Middlemas, will turnout in larger numbers simply because of their fear of a Trump presidency and Clinton, he said, will beat Trump handily.

Not so fast, says Swint. A Clinton win isn’t such a sure-fire thing in a head-to-head.

“There are people assuming that Trump wouldn’t have a chance in a general election against Hillary Clinton. I’m not necessarily in agreement with that,” he said. “One of the strengths of Trump is that he’s put together a pretty broad coalition … It’s certainly not a slam dunk [for Clinton].”

It is his ability to appeal to groups of varying demographics and political opinion that potentially makes Trump dangerous, said Swint.

Yet another scenario in the Republican race is a nomination by a convention. Trump leads by about 100 delegates with 460, but he does have to get through a still very present Ted Cruz, and some wonder if the other Republican candidates may be able to pull enough delegates away from Trump to prevent his receiving a majority (1,237 delegates) and force the party to the convention. In this scenario, said Swint, the Republican leadership runs the risk, should they nominate someone other than Trump, of losing grip on their party.

“I think if they do take it away from [Trump] at the convention, I think he absolutely will run independent,” said Swint. “And I think at that point, he would be real interested in just wrecking the party for the Republicans.”

A non-Trump convention nominee would not only anger Republican voters, said Swint, but it would also cause “wheeling and dealing” between presidential candidates, state governments and others – precisely the kind of Washington antics voters are tired of.

According to Middlemas, though, Republican voters don’t need to worry about a convention.

“Super Tuesday cemented Donald Trump's supremacy in this race,” he said. “Sen. Cruz might be able to win a few more states, but Trump will certainly have a majority of delegates by the time the Republican national convention rolls around.”

Whether or not Trump has solidified his nomination remains to be seen, but polls with only Trump and Clinton’s name on them have begun to show up. Current CNN polls show either Democrat defeating Trump in November, but November is still miles down the road, said Swint.

“The general election [polls] right now are meaningless,” said Swint. “The election’s months and months away. We’re going to have coalitions, we’re going to have world events, we’re going to have economic developments that are going to affect that.”

All we can do now, said Swint, is wait and watch.