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Full-Text Articles in American Politics
Newspaper Coverage Of The 2008 General Election Presidential Campaigns, William L. Benoit, Jayne R. Goode, Mark Glantz
Newspaper Coverage Of The 2008 General Election Presidential Campaigns, William L. Benoit, Jayne R. Goode, Mark Glantz
Speaker & Gavel
News coverage of political campaigns is very important to the political campaign process. Some voters pay little attention to debates or other sources of information about the candidates and their policies. The news is one important source of this information. Newspapers can also supplement and reinforce the information possessed by voters who do attend to campaign messages. This study content analyzed news coverage of the 2008 general election presidential campaign (New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today). Horse race coverage was most common topic (45%), followed by themes about character (32%), and policy (23%). The tone of newspaper coverage was …
News Coverage Of The 2008 Presidential Primaries, William L. Benoit, Corey Davis, Mark Glantz, Jayne R. Goode, Leslie Rill, Anji Phillips
News Coverage Of The 2008 Presidential Primaries, William L. Benoit, Corey Davis, Mark Glantz, Jayne R. Goode, Leslie Rill, Anji Phillips
Speaker & Gavel
President George W. Bush was completing his second (and final) term in office and Vice President Dick Cheney decided not to run for president. Thus, the 2008 American presidential primary is the first “open” campaign (with no sitting president or vice president competing) since 1952 with highly competitive primaries for both major political parties. This study uses content analysis to investigate news coverage (national newspapers, network television news, and local newspapers) of the 2008 American presidential primary campaign. Most themes in the news concerned the horse race (66%) with somewhat more emphasis on the candidates’ character (18%) than their policy …