Media and Voting

Perhaps only one thing has united candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign: The media have treated them unfairly whether it be biased coverage, superficial coverage, or not enough coverage. For instance, while Bernie Sanders complained about the wild disparities in network coverage between himself and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio charged that the media were biased against all Republican candidates. "The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC. It's called the mainstream media" (Farhi, 2016). Complaints from candidates, political observers, and academicians that the media are not serving the public interest in election coverage are troubling because scholars note that the fundamental role of the media is to create an information environment that allows citizens to be able to learn about the important issues and be able to follow the actions of elected and government officials to make reasoned, intelligent voting decisions. Failure to provide such an environment has been identified as a primary reason democratic practices fall short of normative ideals (Delli Carpini, 2008). This essay, however, is not designed to debate the quality of media election coverage, but to explore the effects of media on voting, a focus of some of more seminal works in the field (e.g., Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) and a continuing interest in this journal.This special virtual theme issue compiles 10 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) articles that have explored how media affect intent to vote. The studies will be organized under three main areas: How do traditional media, specifically newspapers and television news, influence intent to vote? How has intent to vote been impacted by non-traditional media, particularly television talk shows and the Internet? What are theories and models that can explain media and intent to vote? Traditional Media and Voting IntentionsEarly studies of newspaper's influence on voting examined the effects of a very particular type of newspaper content, newspaper endorsements, because newspaper endorsements offered a clear, unequivocal message about who citizens should cast their ballots for and why (Robinson, 1974). Consequently, endorsements had an influence on who citizens voted for (McCombs, 1967; Robinson, 1972; St. Dizier, 1985). Robinson (1974) explored newspaper endorsement effects over five presidential elections (1956-1972) and found independents were more likely to vote for the endorsed candidates, even after controlling for party identification and other factors. In the three landslide elections (1956, 1964, and 1972), newspapers also caused party loyalists to abandon the losing candidate.Studies have consistently found that newspaper use predicts intent to vote because they contain both depth of information and mobilizing information, Not surprisingly, newspaper use proved a consistent predictor of intention to vote in the studies examined for this issue (Hyun & Moon, 2014; Kennamer, 1990; McLeod et al., 1996). Drew and Weaver (2006) failed to find a significant relationship, but newspaper use proved to be the sole media predictor in earlier studies (Drew & Weaver, 1998; Weaver & Drew, 2001). In contrast, results have been split on the relationship between television use and voting intention. Studies that have used either attention to or reliance on TV news content tend to find a stronger link between television news and voting than ones with television exposure because one can "watch" television without paying attention to it. Results from the studies included in this virtual issue were split with some finding a positive relationship (Elliott & Sothirajah, 1993; Hyun & Moon, 2014) and other ones did not (Drew & Weaver, 2006; McLeod et al., 1996). Furthermore, differences were not because of measurement issues. Drew and Weaver (2006) included both attention and use measures, and McLeod et al. (1996) combined both exposure and attention. …