Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Study on Partiality of Political Coverage

From TalkLeft

I was surprised to read the results of this study:





First off, I think that it's only to be expected that Hillary is the focus of much of the political punditry. She has been campaigning as the political frontrunner for months and continues to do so in spite of her statistically tenuous claim to that distinction.

I was also struck by the lack of explanation into the methodology of the study. What is "scientific content analysis" and how can it determine what constitutes positive and negative coverage? If a member of the media says "critics believe ____" in some cases, that person is merely couching their own views in the amorphous third party of "critics" or the even more ephemeral, "some people." In other cases, the person is using the construct of "critics" or "some people" to raise a legitimate point and to attempt to further explore or explain that candidates point of view.

How does the scientific analysis determine which is which?

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