Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Message Monopoly
Media
access is everything in a political campaign. With presidential
campaigns indistinguishable in many respects from product marketing,
the most seen and most talked about candidate has a definite advantage
in 'consumer brand awareness.'
This election season, ECOresearch Network is conducting a project that provides
a weekly
snapshot of international Web coverage of candidates. The project
provides two main indicators: (1) ATTENTION (amount of weekly coverage),
and (2) ATTITUDE (association with positive and negative words).
(more on methodology)
Not surprisingly, when Bush was in the midst of a very good September,
his attention rating was nearly twice that of Kerry's. In addition,
Bush has managed to maintain more positive attitude ratings than
Kerry in the study. Kerry's numbers have been shifting over the
past few weeks with his success in the debates, but the study still
shows an advantage to Bush.
We can say that in some ways the media reflect public attitudes,
and in other ways the public reflects media coverage. This dialectical
relationship between the media and the public can be examined from
various angles, and underscores the importance of media coverage
in shaping public opinion.
And speaking of shaping public opinion, the Sinclair Broadcasting
Group has ordered its local stations to preempt regular programming
a week before the election to show an anti-Kerry documentary (potentially classified as 'news'),
according to the Los
Angeles Times. No, we haven't had the Fairness
Doctrine since 1987, and yes, Sinclair owns 64 stations that
reach 25% of the nation. By the way, the Sinclair CEO is David Smith,
and his email address is dsmith@sbgnet.com.
- Adam