Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Horatio Alger Is Dying: Has U. S. Tv News Noticed?, Mark D Harmon

Annual Research Symposium of the College of Communication and Information

Terms such as “rags to riches,” “Horatio Alger,“ and pulling one’s self up by one’s “own bootstraps” are important to American self-identity. Several analyses, however, show social and economic mobility in the United States is in trouble. It is less frequent than in past generations, the U. S. now trails many nations in measures of movement, and one mechanism of mobility, education, is losing its effectiveness in that regard.

The researcher conducted a content analysis regarding social mobility terms in transcripts from NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC World News, MSNBC and Fox News. By various measures U. S. …