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Elections, news cycles, and attention to disasters
Abstract
Purpose:
Political elections, especially presidential elections, have a tendency to overshadow other events, including disasters. Response to disasters during elections, such as Hurricane Matthew and the Baton Rouge flooding in 2016, are often dependent on attention given to them from the media, as well as prominent political figures and political candidates candidates. The purpose of this paper is to explore how election cycles affect government response to disasters and ultimately demonstrate the dependency of crisis communication on media agenda-setting for presenting saliency of disaster risk and needs.
Design/methodology/approach:
Responses from presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as well as President Barack Obama, in regards to the Baton Rouge flooding and Hurricane Matthew, were observed using media reports and social media accounts. These results were matched with key events from the presidential election timeline.
Findings:
There is a positive relationship between news exposure and attention, and also between attention and civic response. In regards to the 2016 presidential election, news coverage of the release of the Donald Trump-Billy Bush tape distracted national attention from the approach, landfall, and recovery of Hurricane Matthew. Information subsidies provided by the candidates directed the media agenda away from the needs of the communities and individuals impacted by these disasters.
Originality/value:
Disasters are often assumed to be value-free because they are "blind to politics." Here, it is argued that this was not the case in relation to these two disasters. Thus, the authors encouraged more research be conducted to clarify the impact that political elections have on strategic news coverage of disasters and ultimately on disaster response.
... It is well established in the extant literature that mass media determine which issues are given social priority and that this is particularly true in political issues, such as perceptions of policies (Bright & Bagley, 2017;Golan, 2006;McCombs, 1972;Sweetser et al., 2008). According to McCombs and Shaw's agenda-setting theory, media do not tell people what to think, but they do tell people what to think about (Cohen, 1963;Reeves & de Vries, 2016). ...
... However, we also find that while the news articles on naloxone are generally informative and would support adoption, there remains a limited number of such articles. This implies that media may not be giving naloxone social priority (Bright & Bagley, 2017;Golan, 2006;McCombs, 1972;Sweetser et al., 2008), which according to agenda setting theory would imply that the media could be doing more to support the positive framing and thereby adoption of naloxone. Based on these results, we encourage the media to do more in regard to placing salience on the opioid epidemic and applying public pressure to the importance of naloxone adoption by law enforcement. ...
There is a movement to promote naloxone adoption by law enforcement and other stakeholders in the state of Mississippi. The purpose of this study is to understand how local media are framing the conversation about naloxone products, and to better understand how it might affect naloxone adoption among law enforcement. We searched for news articles published in Mississippi from January 2012 to July 2018 mentioning the words Narcan® and/or naloxone. Four main themes emerged from 25 articles: (a) positive and informative discussion of naloxone, (b) full articles persuading readers to use and/or advocate the use of naloxone, (c) government or organizational effort to increase the availability and use of naloxone products, and (d) negative or misleading information about naloxone. Better efforts to disseminate correct and persuasive information about the drug will have a profound and positive effect on the opioid epidemic in Mississippi and in the United States.
... Second, even though media use is often habitual, there is first evidence that the sharing of political news increases in election times (?). Political engagement on social media is typically most pronounced during elections (Lin, Keegan, Margolin, & Lazer, 2014;Stier, Bleier, Lietz, & Strohmaier, 2018), when election news is known to "overshadow" other news (Bright & Bagley, 2017). News discourse may be more political during campaigns, and political news sharing may increase relative to non-political news sharing. ...
Abstract:
How is political news shared online? This fundamental question for political communication research in today's news ecology is still poorly understood. In particular, very little is known how explaining news sharing differs from explaining news viewing. Based on a unique dataset of approximately 870,000$ URLs shared approximately 100 million times on Facebook, grouped by countries, age brackets, and months, we study the predictors of viewing versus sharing of political versus non-political news.
We first identify websites that at least occasionally contain news items, and then analyze metrics of the news items published on these websites. We enrich the dataset with natural language processing and supervised machine learning. We find that political news items are viewed less than non-political news items, but are shared more than one would expect based on their views. Furthermore, the source of a news item and textual features often studied in clickbait research and in commercial A/B testing matter. Our findings are conditional on age and time, but are robust across four different countries (Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Poland). Taken together, our findings call for stronger theoretical differentiation (a) between predictors of viewing and sharing of news, and (b) between the underlying mechanisms in sharing political versus non-political news.
... Karanikola et al. (2015) cautioned that exaggerations of hazards by media sources in their own self-interests can be problematic. Bright and Bagley (2017) noticed that election cycles can impact the extent of coverage of media events. Valencio and Valencio (2018) somewhat apologetically highlighted the many dilemmas involved in mass media reporting of catastrophic events, with the need to balance different expectations, perspectives, and needs desired by mass media consumers, all amid various logistical and financial limitations, leading to possible reduction of trust in the mass media. ...
Because of its ubiquitous nature and catastrophic impacts, flood information should be readily available and continually evaluated, to maximize utility for the public and professionals. Web-based tools can fill existing needs for actionable information to inform decisions regarding flood damage mitigation for new and existing structures. The goal of this research is to identify the current capabilities, gaps, and future demands of Web-based flood communication systems. To understand the current and potential niche of Web-based flood tools, a review of the literature concerning the effectiveness of mass media, grassroots-based “citizen science” efforts, and social media in communicating flood risk is conducted. Then, the strengths of 50 major, freely-available, Web-based flood information portals are reviewed. Results suggest that mass media often provide actionable information, especially for short-term benefit immediately before, during, and immediately after the flood for individuals and community leaders. Citizen science and grassroots efforts encourage planning strategies to prevent or mitigate flood. Social media is most beneficial in raising awareness of the flood hazard and communicating short- and long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, while mass media, citizen science, and social media have revolutionized the way that people plan for, survive, and recover from floods, their utility is largely restricted to addressing short-term information needs at the meso-scale or broader and/or conveying information about singular events to scientists and/or other professional interests. Actionable information to inform long-term planning and mitigating flood, for both the public and community leaders, remains lacking. A particular need is for communication mechanisms that satisfy several criteria simultaneously: wide broadcast, appealing delivery method, and focus on enhancing decision-making for long-term needs rather than solely for short-term benefit. Particularly useful would be a new, webtool that provides sufficient functionality to enhance flood risk reduction decision making, considering both the costs and benefits of mitigation.
... Scholars have studied the 2016 Louisiana Flood from various perspectives (Bosch, 2017;Bright and Bagley, 2017;Darr, Cate, and Moak, 2018;Scott and Errett, 2018;Yeo, Knox, and Jung, 2018); however, none focused specifically on the public's attention. Our study contributes to the growing public attention literature by comparing the flood with other disasters of varying types, scale, and scope; we systematically assess the local disaster against national and international events occurring simultaneously. ...
Objectives
This study explores trends of public attention to natural disasters, emphasizing the importance of public attention for disaster management and its relevance to policy adaptation.
Methods
Public attention was measured as Google Trends’ time‐series Search Volume Index (SVI). We compare the trend of SVI for the 2016 Louisiana Flood with SVI trends for other disasters of varying size, scale, and scope within the United States. Then, we compared the trend of relative SVI for the flood with other ongoing social/political events over the same observation period.
Results
Public attention to the 2016 Louisiana Flood formed and matured relatively faster than other national disasters in the comparison group. However, the flood disaster was not leading public attention at the national level.
Conclusions
Not late but less public attention might have affected disaster management operations for 2016 Louisiana Flood. Authors address some practical implications and strategies for rising public attention to natural disasters.
Patterns of news consumption are changing drastically. Citizens increasingly rely on social media such as Facebook to read and share political news. With the power of these platforms to expose citizens to political information, the implications for democracy are profound, making understanding what is shared during elections a priority on the research agenda. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no study has yet explicitly explored how elections transform news sharing behaviour on Facebook. This study begins to remedy this by (a) investigating changes in news coverage and news sharing behaviour on Facebook by comparing election and routine periods, and by (b) addressing the ‘news gap’ between preferences of journalists and news consumers on social media. Employing a novel data set of news articles (N = 83,054) in Mexico, findings show that during periods of heightened political activity, both the publication and dissemination of political news increases, the gap between the news choices of journalists and consumers narrows, and that news sharing resembles a zero-sum game, with increased political news sharing leading to a decrease in the sharing of other news.
This account of critical performance ethnography focuses on how Eclectic Truth Poetry Slam in Baton Rouge, LA, responded to a crisis-filled summer 2016. Summer 2016: political tensions were at a boiling point in a parish flooded with water and lost lives. Fall 2016: over half of all Eclectic Truth slam poems performed by local poets referenced that summer’s successive tragedies. With permission from local poets, I collected ethnographic fieldwork, theatricalized their slam poems, and adapted our co-created interviews to script Baton Rouge SLAM!: An Obituary for Summer 2016 for Baton Rouge audiences and beyond.
General journalistic principles guide the ways that gatekeepers evaluate the newsworthiness of events. These principles are adapted in the field of international communication and indicate some unique features, in particular, of international disasters reporting. The current research examined the presence, amount, and length of news coverage from 3 major U.S. newspapers on 292 global natural disasters from 2004 to 2014. Results showed that U.S. newspapers had a reasonable neglect of international disasters compared with domestic ones and a disproportional favor toward huge versus smaller size disasters. A systematic predicting model was evident: Severity was the most significant and the only consistent determinant of disasters reports, followed by the intensity of deviance. Geographic distance and degree of relevance between countries failed to predict any variance of news coverage. This finding might demonstrate a return to the news value that the newsworthiness of an event should be based on the attributes of the event per se.
This article expands the scope of agenda-building research, which has traditionally focused on the ability of press releases, press conferences, and political ads to influence media coverage. In-depth interviews with political reporters and editors at US newspapers during the 2012 campaign found that tweets from political leaders are used by journalists in ways that suggest first- and second-level agenda building. Participants gave examples of how political tweets have shaped their coverage in terms of the events they cover, the sources they interview, the quotes they use, and the background information they rely on to decide how to cover an issue. In addition, political tweets that contribute the most to coverage tend to have several elements in common.
Superstorm Sandy was an unprecedented meteorological event that devastated the Caribbean and the Northeastern Coast of the USA in October 2012. While many research efforts will focus on the atmospheric conditions that led to the creation and unusual track of the storm, this study evaluates the impact of Sandy on voter turnout in the 2012 US Presidential Election. The goals of this paper are to (1) determine if any alterations in voter turnout occurred, (2) assess the extent to which Sandy was responsible for any voter turnout changes and (3) investigate if the influence of Sandy on voter turnout was contingent upon social vulnerability. To accomplish these goals, voter turnout change between the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential Elections was analysed at the county and municipal level for both New Jersey and Connecticut. The notable decreases in voter turnout discovered in both states were likely due to the election occurring in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. The correlation, spatial clustering analysis, analysis of variance and multiple regression results all suggest that storm surge was more likely to be responsible for reduced voter turnout in New Jersey than in Connecticut. Specifically in New Jersey, the findings indicate that storm surge coverage, rather than height, was influential in reducing voter turnout and that this relationship was contingent upon the racial composition of the municipalities. Overall, understanding how Sandy affected voter turnout will help improve the resiliency of electoral systems to future natural disasters.
For several decades, media scholars have attempted to identify the key variables that shape the complicated international news selection process. At the heart of the research lies the question of what make a nation or an international event newsworthy? Research findings point to several key determinants of international news coverage including deviance, relevance, cultural affinity and location in the hierarchy of nations. The current study suggests that the newsworthiness of international events may result from an inter-media agenda-setting process. The current analysis points to significant correlations between the international news agenda of the morning New York Times and the international news agendas of three evening television news programs. The current study argues that inter-media agenda setting should be considered in future studies on the international news selection process.
This study compares differences in crisis preparation, information-seeking patterns, and media use on the basis of race in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Surveys are collected from 935 Katrina evacuees relocated in different areas of the United States. Results indicate differences in crisis preparation and information seeking on the basis of race. Results also demonstrate a continued need to create messages encouraging crisis preparation, especially among at-risk subpopulations.
When do voters hold politicians accountable for events outside their control? In this article, we take advantage of a rare situation in which a prominent election in a large city followed a devastating flood. We find that voters are willing to punish the incumbent mayor for the flood if they believed the city was responsible for flood preparation. Moreover, we find that the attributions of responsibility for flood preparation are shaped by whether respondents lived in a neighborhood hard hit by the flood and the degree of knowledge they possessed about local, rather than national, politics. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the psychol- ogy of attribution for voting behavior and electoral outcomes. Unlike the economy, or even war, it is not obvious that natural disasters are always relevant to citizens' political decisions. It makes intuitive sense that the economy, war deaths, and similar social outcomes are related to voting behavior. These macro political outcomes are arguably direct consequences of government policy, facilitating the attribu- tion of responsibility to the government. It is less clear whether voters should treat natural disasters as a political variable. Natural disasters probably cause more damage to human life and property than even the most severe economic recession, but there are few conditions under which reasonable people can actually believe that the government was responsible for a flood, an earthquake, or a tornado. In this article, we ask a simple but important question: who is held responsible for natural disasters and why? The psychology of responsibility attribution suggests that voters may be motivated to look for an explanation when catastrophes happen, and government plays a major role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters. Voters may choose to blame
This study examined whether the candidate-controlled public relations tools of political ads and candidate blogs were successful in influencing the issue and news agenda of the major television news networks during the 2004 presidential election. Data showed strong correlations between blogs and the media agenda. Advertisements did not correlate with the media agenda. Cross-lag analyses showed that the media set the candidates' agenda. The authors suggest intermedia agenda setting occurred as the media transferred their agenda to campaign blogs.
In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues--that is, the media may set the "agenda." of the campaign.
Media agenda setting refers to the deliberate coverage of topics or events with the goal of influencing public opinion and public policy. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of 4 prominent newspapers to examine how the media gathered and distributed news to shape public policy priorities during Hurricane Katrina.
The media framed most Hurricane Katrina stories by emphasizing government response and less often addressing individuals’ and communities’ level of preparedness or responsibility. Hence, more articles covered response and recovery than mitigation and preparation. The newspapers studied focused significantly more on government response than on key public health roles in disaster management.
We discuss specific implications for public health professionals, policymakers, and mass media so that, in the future, coordination can be enhanced among these entities before, during, and after disasters occur.
This study investigates the influence of systemic determinants on international news coverage in 38 countries. Systemic factors include traits of nations, magnitude of interaction and relatedness between nations, and logistics of news gathering. Multiple regression is implemented to assess 9 systemic determinants in each individual country. Findings indicate that the U.S. was the most covered country in the world. In spite of some variation, trade volume and presence of international news agencies were found to be the 2 primary predictors of the amount of news coverage. The study concludes that the prediction framework of international news coverage has probably altered in the post-Cold War epoch and, therefore, that the relevant problems need to be revisited.
Political scientists usually assume that physical environment helps determine political behavior. They would not, for example, expect a homogeneous political culture in a country sharply divided by mountains. Also, extreme variations in physical environment, such as droughts and floods, have been traditionally considered bad omens for governments. However, very little empirical research has been done on the relationship between natural disasters and attitudes toward government for three reasons. First, political activity seems more determined by social environment than physical. Also, since the individual is influenced by a greater number of social factors than physical factors, the former are more accessible for study and comparison. Finally, it is especially difficult to examine the effect of natural disasters, for they are rather uncommon and unpredictable. This research gap is unfortunate, since such catastrophes place great stress upon the social framework and thus test the adaptive capabilities of the political system.
Researchers have used surveys and experiments to better understand communication dynamics, but confront consistent distortion from self-report data. But now both digital exposure and resulting expressive behaviors (such as tweets) are potentially accessible for direct analysis with important ramifications for the formulation of communication theory. We utilize “big data” to explore attention and framing in the traditional and social media for 29 political issues during 2012. We find agenda setting for these issues is not a one-way pattern from traditional media to a mass audience, but rather a complex and dynamic interaction. Although the attentional dynamics of traditional and social media are correlated, evidence suggests that the rhythms of attention in each respond to a significant degree to different drummers.
This study investigates the influence of systemic determinants on international news coverage in 38 countries. Systemic factors include traits of nations, magnitude of interaction and relatedness between nations, and logistics of news gathering. Multiple regression is implemented to assess 9 systemic determinants in each individual country. Findings indicate that the U.S. was the most covered country in the world. In spite of some variation, trade volume and presence of international news agencies were found to be the 2 primary predictors of the amount of news coverage. The study concludes that the prediction framework of international news coverage has probably altered in the post-Cold War epoch and, therefore, that the relevant problems need to be revisited.
New reporters and government officials are usually sympathetic to the plight of victims during natural disaster. Yet for many
stranded victims, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s arrival to New Orleans, this was not necessarily the case. This article
contends that as a result of media portrayals and decisions of government officials, black disaster victims were seen and
treated as unworthy victims. The analysis draws upon reported news accounts and official decisions to examine how Katrina
victims were socially constructed as anti-social and deviant in media coverage, and, in turn, how those portrayals influenced
the ways government officials responded to disaster victims as criminals.
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