Push and Pull: Government and Media's Interactive Relationship

Over the course of the last few weeks, our group has been researching the many different ways in which media and politics interact. We have decided to try and synthesize all the information we have gathered into a cohesive final blog that describes this relationship.

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Mary Beth wrote in her blog post about how media informs us. Without media, the public would not be informed about what is going on in the political realm, what the issues are, who is a contender, or what is going on in the world.

As she says in her blog "The media acts as the bridge between the government and the people. The only way to gain political awareness is through media consumption. There is no direct communication between the United States and the American people. The media is the informant.”

Taylor focused a lot on trends and found that the trends of mass communication can be seen all throughout the political realm. Some of the particular topics that were focused on were demassification, convergence, interactivity, and globalization. She was able to use great examples to back up her research due to the current Presidential election. Our group posed the question “What has more influence: media on politics? Or politics on the media?”

Taylor came to the conclusion that media has more of a role on politics Due to the impact media plays on society, politicians have to carefully edit their actions. News today is all about the latest scandal and what can be made entertaining. When you combine politics and scandals, it can take things to a whole new level.

Matthew tended to agree with Taylor and found that issues of political stereotyping, socialization, narcoticizing dysfunction, agenda setting, and the two step flow theory all point in the direction that the media shapes politics. Media is the source of our political information. Media shapes the issues our politicians debate. Media creates identities for our political parties. The amount of information media releases to the public desensitizes the voters to political issues.

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Jordan’s research pointed to some conclusions that were different than those of Taylor and Matthew. Delving into researching the role of media as a political watchdog was much like diving into a whirlpool of murky water.  The relationship between the government and media is very cyclical in nature, with both entities pushing and pulling against one another. She agrees that media can frame political issues and set the agenda, but there are many avenues for the government to influence media. Jordan talks a lot about them in her most recent blog.

Finally, Carly focused on the economics involved. 

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She found that when the media tends to focus on the financial aspects, the public views the politicians negatively since all the focus is around them and their money. Even though some think the amount of money used for the campaigns is ridiculous, that money is what benefits the candidates in getting ahead in the race. The financial support of politicians is a huge topic in media currently, and will be for quite some time because money is always a point of contention and concern.

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In the United States, the media will always be inherently tied together with the political system. As the medium for transmitting the information, the media has an intrinsic power over our politics and how we view them. We are a people powered by technology and communication, with almost unlimited means of obtaining information. Because of this we must be careful to make sure we are analyzing media for ourselves, not just consuming it without thought.

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Super-PACs: Bad Publicity?

It has been made evident throughout my recent blog posts that campaign financing is a hot topic in the news lately. Specifically, we are hearing more and more about the Super PACs. These Super PACS, or political action committees, are not supposed to work directly with a candidate, but their financial support helps political candidates significantly with their campaigns.

In the New York Times, there is a section, which focuses exclusively on campaign financing. One of the articles in this section titled, “Campaign Finance (Super PACs),” discusses the 2012 Supreme Court decision made in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and how much it has impacted the current presidential campaign. In this case, it ruled the government, “may not ban independent political spending by corporations, as well as labor unions and other organizations, in candidate elections”.  Most people believe, “allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy”.

Many super PACs have a negative image because of the attack ads they put out against opposing candidates. For example, the video posted below shows an attack made against Obama from the super-PAC American Crossroads.

           Stephen Colbert, a “political satirist” who has entered the Republican presidential primary, has even created his own super-PAC. He has done so to poke fun at the concept of a super-PAC. To show this we need only to take a look at the name of his super-PAC “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow”.

Once again, going back to the Supreme Court decision of 2010, an article on NPR stated, “opponents argue super-PACS distort the electoral landscape by drastically increasing the expense of campaigns”. Due to this, Colbert has used his mock super-PAC as a way to draw attention to their corruptness. The media has liked his concept, considering how much attention they have been paying to it. It seems Colbert’s mission has been accomplished. 

I hope my mission has been accomplished as well, in informing you about the economic foundations involved in political campaigns. The media will surely be covering it even more as the elections creeps closer.

Sources:

Campaign Finance (Super PACs). The New York Times. (March 2012). Print.

"Super-PAC attacks Obama's open-mic gaffe in spy spoof". The Hill. (March 2012).

American Crossroads YouTube video.

"Stephen Colbert's Super-PAC comes to Austin". NPR. (March 2012).

Are Donations Representative of the Average American?

       

          As I mentioned in my previous blog post, when the media associates a politician with a lot of money, the public tends to view the politician in a negative light. A lot of times, news reports will cover how much money a politician is spending on a campaign, which allows for the agenda setting theory to kick in. We discussed this theory in class and our textbook defines it as, “the media not telling people what to think, but telling them what to think about”. Especially during election years, the media puts the public’s focus on campaign spending and big donors.

            According to an essay by Brittany Bramlett et. al., “a small and extremely wealthy set of people fund American political campaigns”. This is problematic to the American public opinion because, “donors are highly unrepresentative of the public” and “the prevailing view-point in high-donor neighborhoods can be characterized as cosmopolitan and libertarian, rather than populist or moralistic”. A press release said Obama is focusing on raising money from his small donors. According to the press release, “Obama’s small donor fundraising in 2011 outpaces all of his Republican opponents combined”. While these donors may not be representative of the majority of the voters, since they are able to give again and again candidates tend to focus on them. 

            In the Youtube video below, it highlights different clips from various news channels discussing Mitt Romney’s need for more small donor support. Small donors are necessary to keep a campaign running and with all of the different medium to advertise a political campaign, it is costing more money to do so.

            Below is a graph showing how much Mitt Romney has increased his small donors fundraising throughout his campaign. Clearly, they have become an increasingly large part of the presidential campaign.

Sources:

Bramlett, B., Gimpel, J., & Lee, F. (2011). The Political Ecology of Opinion in Big-Donor Neighborhoods. Political Behavior, 33(4), 565-600. 

Campaign Finance Institute. "Small Donors in 2011: Obama's Were Big, Romney's Were Not.

Youtube video: Having a Small Donor Problem Mitt Romney?

HuffPost Politics - Small Donors to Mitt Romney's Campaign. Graph.

The Media of Mass Communication. John Vivian.

Advertising Costs Big Buck$ for Political Campaigns

When most people think of politics one of the first things that comes to mind is money. In my portion of this blog, I'm going to discuss the economic foundations of media and politics. Politicians are often criticized for the amount of money they spend on their campaigns. During, political campaigns and election years, a large sum of money is spent on advertising alone. Just recently, The New York Times wrote an article about the criticisms Barack Obama was receiving due to the amount of time he was spending fund-raising for his 2012 presidential campaign. According to the article by Mark Landler, “Mr. Obama has attended 108 fund-raisers since filling his candidacy in April 2011, double the rate of George W. Bush at a similar point in his re-election campaign”.

Political cartoons often times are a great medium to show the public opinion on campaign spending. This one I found on CartoonStock successfully sends their message regarding campaign spending:

 Political cartoons seem to always appeal to the public opinion and this medium is popular because they do so in a humorous way. Another area of interest I found in my research is that during the primaries specifically, advertising costs are much more hefty. In a Washington Post article on the subject by Jack Gillum, he looked closely at the Republican Presidential Candidates to see how much money they were spending on ads during the primaries. Furthermore, he created a formula to determine the ad spending per each primary vote, only accounting for television advertisements. For Mitt Romney, the ad spending per vote was $12.70, Rick Santorum $3.01, Newt Gingrich $4.78, and Ron Paul $6.33. Clearly, Mitt Romney is focusing on getting his message out through the medium of television ads, which has always been a popular tactic among campaigns.

            An NPR segment focused on the amount of money candidates were spending in general on their campaigns in 2010 congressional elections and found it totaled to about $4 billion dollars.  In addition, they found that spending is up 80 percent from the last election, showing just how much they are trying to get their message out there to the public. As we’ve learned from class, there is a limit on the amount of money spent on campaigns put forth by the Federal Election Commission, but loopholes have been created to get the money that is necessary.

            Evidently, advertising has a huge impact on a campaign’s outcome, as well as its' wallet. In my upcoming blogposts I will discover the other economic aspects of politics in the mass media.

Sources:

Gillum, J. (2012, March 15). How ad spending among republican presidential candidates stacks up per vote. The Washington Post.

Landler, M. (2012, March 17). Obama faces criticism over time spent fund-raising. The New York Times.

Overby, P. , & Inskeep, S. (2010, November 2). Tracking the money spent on campaign ads. NPR.

Federal Elections Commission. www.fec.gov