Thursday, March 23, 2023 lecture10: mass media POL214 - Objectives • Discuss changes over the past several decades in the ways in which Canadians get their news and information. • Explain the subtle ways the news media in uences Canadians • Describe different sources of media bias and their implications for Canadian politics. • Explain the role and responsibilities of journalist and the tools they use to shape and perpetuate political narratives. - The Changing Information Environment • Early Partisan Press - In the 19th and early 20th century, the news media was entirely print based. - This was also the era of the partisan press - journalistic norms of balance and fairness had not taken hold. - In fact, newspapers were directly subsidized by politicians and their parties until the early 20th century. • Rise and Fall of Yellow Journalism - By the early 20th century, newspaper circulation had grown to the point to which parties couldn’t afford to subsidize them. - Scramble to grow subscriptions led to less overt partisanship, but more sensationalism • This was known as yellow journalism • Rise of Radio - First commercial radio station was established in Montreal in 1919. fl 1 - Number of radio stations increased to 77 by 1932; radio sales increased from 50,000 in 1928 to over 173,000 in 1991? - Canadian National Railway constructed the rst national network to service their train. - Radio increased connection between politicians and the public. - Rise of sound bite journalism. • Broadcast Regulation - The rise of broadcast journalism created a dilemma - a tragedy of the commons problem - As more and more stations were established, signal quality began to deteriorate - Owners demanded government regulations of the airwaves - lead to the creation of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (now the CRTC) • Rise of Television - Television rose even more rapidly than radio - rising from 9% of households in 1950 to 98% in 1975 in the U.S. • Decline of Newspapers - Over 2/3 of journalists work for print news outlets, but print newspapers are on the decline. - Number of journalists employed has remained relatively constant, but shift towards free-lancing: less pay, fewer bene ts. - Why is this happening? • Declining consumer taste for local news = more preference for national coverage • Competition from online sources = dif culty in monetizing content • Rise of the Internet - Adoption of the internet has been even more rapid than television. • Cost-intensive traditional media is now in competition with (sometimes freE) information sources available online. fi fi fi 2 • Declining subscription mean less advertiser interest • Proliferation of choice for news consumers. • Social Media - Social media has increased user engagement with news content. • But: more power to select corporations (i.e. Facebook) to determine what content goes viral • More consumer choice means less politically interested can disengage entirely from political news. • While the politically interest can select into echo chambers. • Corporate Concentration - Paradoxically, all of this consumer choice has occurred alongside even less choice severe corporate concentration. - Canada has the highest vertical medial integration among democracies (Bell, Rogers/Shaw dominate) - Canada is number 1 on this list. - Internet news is an exception to growing corporate concentration in media. • Why? Internet provides a gateway to foreign news content. - Useful counterbalance? - Media Effects • Media Effects - The news media can subtly in uence Canadian public opinion with three other mechanisms: • Agenda-setting • Priming • Framing - Agenda-setting fl 3 • The strongest in uence the media has over public opinion (and even policy making) is agenda setting. • Editors and journalists choose which stories to cover and not cover (gatekeeping) - This process leads Canadians to see some issues as more or less important. • Media’s agenda setting power may vary by issue types: - Prominent issues - agenda is set by real world conditions, which are directly experienced by the public - concrete and obtrusive (i.e., unemployment) - Government issues - abstract, unobtrusive issues, where the government leads and news media mediate (i.e. the budget) - Sensational issues - concrete but unobtrusive issues where the media leads (i.e, environmental disasters) • Priming - Closely related to agenda setting - Citizens alter their evaluation of candidate or their vote choice in light of the agenda-setting effect of the news media. - As a result, citizens will evaluate politicians more strongly based on issues covered in the news media. - Example: • Imagine if a Canadian election were held in the next 2 weeks. - Media coverage is dominated by 2 issues: the rising cost of living and foreign interference in Canadian Elections. • People’s voting decisions would them be increasingly effected by their opinions on both of these issues. • Other issues might matter less for decisions: health-care, COVID-19, environment, etc. fl 4 • Framing - The nal media effect. - On any political issue, there are a number of different (and sometimes con icting) considerations that can be made to support or oppose parties and policy. - The considerations (i.e. frames), the news media emphasize in coverage shape the considerations we use to evaluate parties and policy. - Example: • One study found that experimental exposure to frames focusing on a rally by the KKK as a free speech issue increased the % of participants who believed the rally should be allowed by police compared to those who got a frame related to public order. • Media Effects - Journalists have the ability to subtly shape the public’s agenda and how they perceive political issues. • But, journalists are constrained by time and nancial resources = dependent on easily accessible sources. • Thus, sources (i.e. parties, internet groups, advocacy organizations) compete to shape the media’s agenda and the frames used in coverage. • Media Bias - The media play an important role in shaping public opinion, albeit subtly. - Can lead us to question the validity of the information we are receiving. - could the media be biased? • The answer is YES! But it is also complicated and nuanced. - Sources: • Corporate/Commercial • Regulatory • Organizational fi fi fl 5 • Ideological • Corporate Bias - The concentration of the media into an even smaller number of corporations may shape news content in particular ways. - One possibility is that corporate owners have policy preferences that are scally conservative and this is re ected in news content - a corporate owner bias. - BUT: not a lot of empirical evidence except on a select set of issues where outlets have clear pro t motive • Commercial Bias - A bigger issue • Hyper-competition = focus on news content that: - 1. Attracts readers and viewers (thus ad $) - 2. Is cheap to produce (e.g. soft news, infotainment) • The primary concern is to maintain pro ts and survive in an increasingly dire news media environment. - Pro ts require subscriptions and an audience for advertisers • Leads to infotainment and clickbait journalism. • Coverage of personalities, human interest angles • Emphasis on con ict and sensationalism - This is called episodic framing. - Commercial bias — horserace journalism: a focus on who is perceived to be winning or losing. • Focus on scandal - the creation of feeding frenzies - that crowd out substantive content. • Focus on public opinion polling rather than policy - But it is important to keep in mind that we all play a role in this bias - corporate media gives us what we want, even if it isn’t good for us. fi fi fl fi fl fi 6 • Organizational Bias - Journalists do not produce news content in a vacuum, they do so in organizations that are government by norms. - A few of them are every important : • Balance: a need to provide “both sides” of an issue • Reliance eon of cial or expert sources: to bolster the credibility of the story and guard against challenges of bias - Tendency to provide balance is useful in many circumstances, but… • Are there really two sides to an issue? Or are journalists elevating dubious claim and misinformation? • Are there more than two sides to a debate? Tendency to exclude marginalized voices. - Sauces craft strategies designed to manipulate media pathologies to disseminate their message. - This process is known as new management: • Press releases and spin • Sound bites • Limiting access • Strategic leaks • Regulatory Bias - Newspapers - Limited regulation on newspapers: mostly self-regulation via press councils that adjudicate complaints. - Some indirect forms of regulation: federal Income Tax Act allows advertisers to deduct cost of ads that are in newspapers that are at least 75% Canadian owned. - Explain limited foreign ownership of print media, but effects on news content are unclear. - Increasing push to provide government $ to print media may change this. fi 7 • Regulatory Bias - Broadcast - Considerable government regulation exists for broadcast media, through the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunication Communication (CRTC) - Two main thrusts: • 1) control access to the market to preserve signal quality: • 2) promote “Canadian content” to avoid media dominance by the United States. • Canadian Content Rules - Are Canadian content rules effective? Hard to say. • On the one hard, we can imagine less Canadian content with purely market forces. • On the other, we see a lot of regulatory tokenism: the airing of content from Canadians that happen to be popular internationally or at off-peak hours. • Rise of internet content is making this much more complex. • Promoting Canadian Culture - Tele m Canada has helped nance over 200 since 1986 and 2000 television programs since 1968; provinces also offer such funding (especially Quebec). - National Film Board directly produces and disseminates Canadian content, principally documentaries and dramas. - Most Canadian content is con ned to distribution on the CBC or in independent cinema. • The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - The CBC and its English and French divisions occupy a central place in promoting Canadian programming, particularly during prime time viewing hours. - Important for public affairs and news programming as well. • But, an increasing amount of CBC revenue comes from ad revenue, and hockey programming has historically been its most important draw. • Liberal Bias fi fi fi 8 - Also been allegations that news media content is biased against conservatives • Why? - Polls show that Canadians generally believe there is a bias against conservatives. - Journalists now overwhelmingly identify as left-leaning, especially on social issues like abortion. - Measuring bias is a very tough task - crux of the problem is how do we know whether differential treatment of Conservations and Liberals/NDP or other is deserved or not. • For example, a news story about corruption in the Trudeau government can’t possibly be both balanced and appropriately re ect the event. • Finding the media tone is more negative for one party isn’t suf cient to demonstrate bias. - We have yet to acquire good social scienti c evidence of liberal media bias in Canada • Even work in the US is mixed at best. - It is an open question. - Future Developments • Future developments - We are in the midst of massive changes in how citizens engage with news content. - Two particular concerns: • Rise of echo chambers • Rise of misinformation and “fake news” • Echo Chambers - Rise of the internet has fragmented the media marketplace. - Citizens are confronted with more options than ever before to receive their news. fi fl fi 9 • People have a psychological tendency to avoid sources of information that are uncomfortable due to their values or beliefs: selective exposure. - As a result, some people cocoon themselves in information that reinforces their beliefs. • This causes the media to primarily reinforce their prior beliefs rather than challenging it - known as the echo chamber effect • Might exacerbate polarization - However, Canadians consume and trust broadly centrist media. - Partisan media have little foothold and receive a trivial share of the news diet of Canadians online. • Fake News - Rise of outlets producing deliberately false information under the guise of news, which go viral through social media. • Why? It’s cheap to produce fake news content. • Intense ideologues are more likely to share fake news - an example of con rmation bias • Media literacy matters - older and less educated people are more likely to share fake news. • Fake News in Canada - We have yet to have a systematic study of fake news in Canada, but case of 2019 federal election is instructive - A lot of concern in the press about fake news stories published by the Buffalo Chronicle - In a Digital Democracy Project study that tracked the online behaviour of 750 people, only one person visited the website. fi 10
