Johanna Dunaway

Agenda Setting, Public Opinion, and the Issue of Immigration Reform

Objective. Agenda-setting theory is used to motivate hypotheses about how media coverage of immigration influences public perceptions of its importance. The authors seek to offer a more complete explanation of public opinion on immigration by exploring differences in the effects of immigration news in border and nonborder states. Method. This article employs content analyses of newspaper coverage of immigration and Gallup public opinion data over a 12-month period (January‐ December 2006). Respondents’ identification of immigration as a ‘‘Most Important Problem’’ is modeled as a conditional relationship between border state/nonborder state residence and media coverage, ethnic context, and individual-level demographics. Results. Media attention to immigration is greater in border states than in nonborder states; as a result, residents of border states are more likely to identify immigration as a most important problem than are residents of nonborder states. Conclusions. The analyses point to the importance of geography and news coverage in explanations of public opinion on immigration. The public’s attitude toward immigration has traditionally been different for those residing in states that share a border with Mexico and those living in nonborder states. Extant survey research, which focuses primarily on Anglo attitudes (Alvarez and Buttereld, 2000; Johnson, Stein, and Wrinkle, 2003), reveals that individuals residing in border states consistently rate immigration as one of the ‘‘most important problems facing the nation,’’ relative to individuals residing in nonborder states. However, immediately following the 2006 spike in national media attention toward immigration reform and the wave of immigration protests nationwide, public opinion polls revealed that national public opinion regarding immigration surged to

Markets, Ownership, and the Quality of Campaign News Coverage

The quality of political news coverage has implications for the information voters are left with to make political decisions. This article argues that the quality of the information found in political news is influenced by media ownership and market contexts. Using original data containing news coverage of competitive statewide races in 2004, coverage provided by multiple media outlets is examined as a function of ownership structure and market context. The results indicate that corporate ownership and market contexts matter in determining the quality of information offered in political news coverage.

Spatial Proximity to the U.S.—Mexico Border and Newspaper Coverage of Immigration Issues

This article examines how geographic proximity to the U.S.—Mexico border influences newspaper coverage of immigration issues. The authors investigate two questions: Do media organizations spatially proximate to the border offer more frequent coverage of Latino immigration than media organizations farther removed from the border? Do media organizations spatially proximate to the border offer more frequent coverage of the negative aspects of immigration than media organizations farther removed from the border? We find that news organizations closer to the border generate a higher volume of articles about Latino immigration, articles featuring the negative aspects of immigration, and articles regarding illegal immigration.

Traits versus Issues: How Female Candidates Shape Coverage of Senate and Gubernatorial Races

As female candidates may face greater challenges in establishing their “qualifications” for office, coverage of their personal traits may be pernicious, because it tends to de-emphasize substantive qualifications. This study focuses on relative amounts of trait and issue coverage of contests with and without women candidates. We find that races with female candidates yield more coverage of traits than male versus male contests and races with female candidates are less likely to generate issue coverage than trait coverage. Candidate gender and office interact; female gubernatorial candidates are most likely to garner trait coverage and least likely to engender issue coverage.

What Predicts the Game Frame? Media Ownership, Electoral Context, and Campaign News

While scholars have often bemoaned journalists’ heavy use of game-framed and “horse-race” coverage of elections, the contexts most likely to produce game-framed news have not yet been well identified. Our data collection across three election cycles (2004, 2006, 2008) and various levels of elective office (candidates for governor and U.S Senate), and across multiple media markets and types of news organizations allows us to examine the extent to which all three classes of contextual variables—the internal news-making context, the media economic market context, and the electoral political context—influence the provision of game-frame election coverage. We find that news organizations’ choices to rely heavily on game-frame election stories are dependent on both news-making and political contexts. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the relationship of media ownership to news quality, tempered by firm evidence that news outlets of all kinds tend to focus on the “game” of politics when electoral contests are close.

Media Ownership and Story Tone in Campaign News

The focus of this article is to understand the determinants of negative, positive, or neutral tone in campaign news coverage. Much of the extant literature suggests, to some extent, the negativity bias often seen in political news stems from profit making objectives. This article asserts that news outlet ownership structures and economic incentives, coupled with political context, influence the likelihood of positive, neutral, or negative tone in campaign news. The findings presented herein suggest that corporate, chain, and nonlocal ownership all have consequences for campaign news tone.

INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS ON THE INFORMATION QUALITY OF CAMPAIGN NEWS

Recent work highlights the fact that there are clear differences in the quality of the news product offered by different news outlets. What is not clear is why some news outlets consistently produce a more informative and less superficial news product while others do not. Media scholars suggesting an institutional view of the news media have acknowledged the idea that institutions can be multi-layered, and point to the need to understand specific institutional aspects of the media at all levels. Building from the idea that we can benefit from understanding the institutional similarities and differences between local media outlets, this article examines the quality or issue substance in campaign news coverage as a function of the institutional arrangements within media outlets and their economic and political contexts.

Reinforcing or Breaking Party Systems? Internet Communication Technologies and Party Competition in Comparative Context

Many scholars speculate about the political implications of Internet proliferation. The Internet might, for example, open new channels of communication, which should benefit ideologically extreme and electorally small parties. On the other hand, the Internet might push party systems toward normalization, ultimately reinforcing the extant dominance of incumbent parties. We draw on data from 205 small and extreme parties in 35 countries and focus on both party- and system-level outcomes to investigate some of the most pressing research questions from this debate. We find that where party systems were previously concentrated or restrictive, Internet proliferation has no effect on votes for small and extreme parties. By contrast, in more permissive settings, Internet proliferation has had the small—but measurable—effect of driving up votes for these parties. At the level of the party system as a whole, however, we find little evidence that Internet proliferation increases either polarization or fragmentation.

Doris A. Graber’s Contributions to Political Communication

To say that Professor Graber was an influential scholar is an understatement. The record of her published work appearing in top presses and premier journals spans disciplines and decades. As founding editor of Political Communication and inaugural chair of American Political Science Association (APSA’s) political communication section, her service and leadership laid the groundwork for structures and practices that underlie the legitimacy and contributions of our subfield today. Her ambitious combination of research and service would leave most of us with little left to contribute. Yet in addition to these lofty pursuits Professor Graber also found the time and energy to write one of the first and most widely used textbooks on mass media and American politics. Since the publication of its first edition in 1980, Mass Media and American Politics (Graber, 1980) has been a resounding success. Its popularity is fueled by a unique perspective and keen insight drawn from the quality and breadth of Professor Graber’s own research and her mastery of several fields. The groundbreaking themes in her work and those in the subfield she pioneered are reflected in all 10 editions of the text, exposing students in classrooms across the globe to the cutting edge of knowledge about mass media and politics as well as frank assessments of where existing scholarship or the conventional wisdom is lacking. A central strength of Mass Media and American Politics (Graber, 1980) is its broad multidisciplinary focus. It covers the structural and legal influences on news media behavior and content as well as the complex interplay between news media and governance at national, state, and local levels. Not to end there, due treatment is given to social, psychological, and behavioral effects from media exposure as well as structural and behavioral disruptions wrought by ever-changing communication technologies. Providing up-to-date coverage of research spanning several academic disciplines and the implications of the changing media environment is not easy. It is difficult to know whether the breadth of Professor Graber’s research enabled her ability to write such a comprehensive text, or whether maintaining the bird’s-eye view necessary for writing it fostered and sustained the scope of her original research contributions. Whatever the direction, the process produced some of the most important work in the field, and we

Elites are people, too: The effects of threat sensitivity on policymakers’ spending priorities

Recent research suggests that psychological needs can influence the political attitudes of ordinary citizens, often outside of their conscious awareness. In this paper, we investigate whether psychological needs also shape the spending priorities of political elites in the US. Most models of policymaking assume that political elites respond to information in relatively homogeneous ways. We suggest otherwise, and explore one source of difference in information processing, namely, threat sensitivity, which previous research links to increased support for conservative policy attitudes. Drawing on a sample of state-level policymakers, we measure their spending priorities using a survey and their level of threat sensitivity using a standard psychophysiological measure (skin conductance). We find that, like ordinary citizens, threat sensitivity leads even state-level policymakers to prioritize spending on government polices that are designed to minimize threats.