The Mass Media\u27s Coverage of Political Campaigns

This study explores the media\u27s coverage of political campaigns focusing particularly on the differences in the amount of issue coverage used by different media outlets. By analyzing the transcripts of five media outlets (The New York Times, the NBC Nightly News, The O\u27Reilly Factor, The Rachel Maddow Show, and Anderson Cooper 360) I was able to compare and contrast the differences in types of media coverage as well as explore the reasons for those differences. I ran an independent samples T-test in order to find any statistical significance in the data. My study found that there were significant differences among the media outlets in the type of coverage each had. Some of the correlations to those differences were partisanship, length of story, percentage of political stories, and the type and length of the references or sound bites within the story