Indexing Theory

Bennett, W. Lance

doi:10.1002/9781118541555.wbiepc180

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…But McQuail (1992) cautions that in politics the balance norm is rarely achieved because more attention goes to authoritative sources, or those of high political standing, for example, committee chairs. McQuail’s reasoning is consistent with the indexing theory (Bennett 2016), which postulates that media index sources and their views according to the power balances in political institutions that journalists deem likely to affect the outcomes of political conflicts or policy processes.…”

Section: Theorizing Visibility Of Political Actors In National Presssupporting

confidence: 55%

Politicians in Newspaper News: Who Attracts Coverage in Kenyan Politics

Ireri

Ochieng

2020

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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The present research examines the coverage of 349 Kenyan politicians in four English national newspapers between 2013 and 2017. Within the contexts of media coverage based on news values, and reporting as a mirror of political reality, the study investigates whether gender, tribe, party size, seniority, committee or party leadership, commenting on corruption and devolution, and criticizing the government predicted the visibility of members of parliament (MPs) in newspaper news. Findings show that seniority, committee or party leadership, commenting on devolution and corruption, and criticizing government emerged as the main predictors of the parliamentarians’ coverage in news media. Overall, committee or party leadership, commenting on corruption, and criticizing the government were the strongest determinants of the MPs coverage.

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Section: Theorizing Visibility Of Political Actors In National Presssupporting

confidence: 55%

Politicians in Newspaper News: Who Attracts Coverage in Kenyan Politics

Ireri

Ochieng

2020

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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“…Journalists select their news sources by weighting different actors according to their relative importance, and in Western democracies, relatively powerful sources are predominantly men (cf. Bennett 2015). This is also true when it comes to experts.…”

Section: The Pervasiveness and Persuasiveness Of Expertsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Gender Bias in Audience Perceptions of Male and Female Experts in the News: Equally Competent and Persuasive

Greve-Poulsen

Larsen

Pedersen

et al. 2021

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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Experts are prevalent and persuasive in modern media coverage of politics. The perceived competence of experts makes them popular sources in the media, and their statements can in some cases move citizens’ policy opinions substantially. However, men are generally used far more as experts than women are. Because of this predominance of male experts and general biases against women, we theorize that media audiences may find women to be less competent and consequently less persuasive as experts on policy issues. We investigate this through two experiments embedded in a survey with more than 2000 respondents in Denmark. Despite advances in gender equality, women are still in the minority among experts used in the Danish news media. However, despite this current gender imbalance, we find no gender biases against women as policy experts among the Danish news media audience. There are no significant differences in the perceptions of the competence of male and female experts, and the persuasiveness of the experts are also unrelated to the gender of the expert. These results hold across different policy issues, and across practically all demographics within the media audiences. These results are relevant both to the study of gender representation in the mass media, and to the study of gender biases more generally. Furthermore, the results are important for discussions on news media selection of experts.

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“…Authority endorsement may then go along with higher willingness to overcome personal resentments to establish coherent in-group norms and uphold societal unity (Jost et al, 2004). These cohesionseeking tendencies can also manifest as cross-partisan consensus among political elites (Merkley et al, 2020) and may be further intensified by exposure to news coverage, because political consensus tends to increase journalistic consensus through "indexing" (Bennett, 2015). Consensus coverage, in turn, can then reinforce public support for official authorities (Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou, 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Science-related populism declining during the COVID-19 pandemic: A panel survey of the Swiss population before and after the Coronavirus outbreak

Mede

Schäfer

2021

Public Underst Sci

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In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased public support for societal institutions including science, a phenomenon described as “rally-round-the-flag” dynamic. However, it is unclear if this dynamic has also reduced public resentment toward science such as science-related populist attitudes, that is, the preference of people’s common sense over allegedly elitist scientific knowledge. We test this, relying on individual-level data from panel surveys before and during the pandemic in Switzerland. Results show that science-related populist attitudes decreased after the pandemic started. The decrease was more pronounced among people who had been strong supporters of science-related populism prior to the pandemic, but otherwise spread equally across different sociodemographic and attitudinal segments of the Swiss population. This shows that the Coronavirus outbreak has the potential to undermine persistent (populist) resentments toward science and its epistemology among the general population.

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Indexing Theory

Cited by 18 publications

References 8 publications

Politicians in Newspaper News: Who Attracts Coverage in Kenyan Politics

Politicians in Newspaper News: Who Attracts Coverage in Kenyan Politics

No Gender Bias in Audience Perceptions of Male and Female Experts in the News: Equally Competent and Persuasive

Science-related populism declining during the COVID-19 pandemic: A panel survey of the Swiss population before and after the Coronavirus outbreak

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