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Local Television News and Campaign 2000: Assessing Efforts to Increase Substantive Content
Author(s) -
Farnsworth Stephen J.,
Lichter S. Robert
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2005.tb00805.x
Subject(s) - content (measure theory) , political science , content analysis , media content , advertising , business , computer science , sociology , multimedia , mathematics , social science , mathematical analysis
Content analysis of local newscasts during Campaign 2000 reveals that stations that participated in two civil society efforts to increase the quality of news coverage devoted far more attention to coverage that included more extensive discussion of issues than did stations in the same market that did not participate in either program. Treatment stations as a group provided more information regarding the background of issues, more discussion of the details of policy proposals and more discussion of the possible consequences of those proposals should they be adopted. The differences were greatest between stations in mid‐sized and smaller markets.