Study: Negativity Ruled 2016 Political Coverage

A Harvard University study released in December concluded that media coverage of the 2016 presidential election was overwhelmingly negative, topped only by the 2000 Bush-Gore campaign, according to an Associated Press (AP) news story in U.S. News. Once "horse race" stories about polls were eliminated, coverage of issues relating to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's fitness for office were identically 87% negative for each candidate, according to the report from Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. The researchers looked at coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News Channel nightly newscasts, along with The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal newspapers. The media analysis firm Media Tenor judged the tone of stories; for example, a story about the FBI reopening an investigation into Clinton's e-mails was judged a negative for her, while a story about lawsuits against Trump's business was a seen as negative for him. With all stories included, 71% of the overall presidential race coverage was negative, and 29% was positive. By comparison the 2000 presidential race had a negative-to-positive ratio of 75% to 25%. That's very different from earlier, more positive campaign coverage trends; in the Kennedy-Nixon campaign in 1960, for example, three-quarters of the coverage was judged positive, according to the Harvard report. Overall, whether positive or negative, Trump received far more media attention than any rival. Yet, while the negative tone may have generated interest as measured by television ratings, it didn't seem to drive voter turnout since unusually large numbers of voters either abstained from the presidential election or entered write-in candidates per early evaluations by the U.S. Elections Project, which collects data on national voter turnout. But perhaps the biggest issue for mainstream news organizations was the trend of voters snubbing mainstream relevancy in favor of news sources that bolstered their own viewpoints — including fake news sites. David Bohrman, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who helped with NBC's political coverage, summed up to AP: "The traditional gatekeepers were out there saying 'this is true and this is not.' But they were lost in the noise of 4,200 other sources of information." For the full story, see http://www.usnews.com/news/entertainment/articles/2016-12-07/study-2016-campaign-coverage-was-overwhelmingly-negative

Google Offers New Election Search Trends Hub

Whether campaigning at the national, state or county level in today's digital-first environment, political pros want to track what engaged voters care about in real time, and what better gauge than Internet activity? Enter the newly launched Google Trends Election Hub, a trove of free research. Search Engine Land recently reported on how the new Google hub site takes a deep dive into this year’s election-related search trends across the United States, with real-time reports on president and vice president candidate search queries, by state, plus search data on state and county political issues. And if you wonder how engaged the electorate is online, Google reports this year’s election-related searches are up 240% over the same period preceding 2012’s Election Day. Just some of the goodies you can cull: The hub home page has a chart graphing national search interest in each candidate over the previous week, as well as links to daily state-by-state search interests, voter registration searches, and the top election issue-related searches by state during the past week. There are also charts graphing the number of “Vote for [presidential candidate]” searches during the past week, and tracking of searches for “how to vote,” which Google reports is at its highest rate ever. At the state level, candidates and causes can drill down to the county level on issue interests; for example, while the economy is the most searched issue on average across the swing state of Florida, immigration is more searched in southern counties in that state. There's even a YouTube election map so you can see how many people are watching Trump vs. Clinton videos. Check it out at https://www.google.com/trends/story/election2016