The article “Media Ownership and Story Tone in Campaign News” by Johanna Dunaway focuses on the aspects of media that affect the overall tone or spin of the stories, specifically how media ownership affects the tone of political campaign stories. The purpose of the article and its study is, “to understand the determinants of negative, positive or neutral tone in campaign news coverage” (25). And quickly addresses the issue it sees with media ownership by corporations; the orientation of news stories to satisfy profit margins. “Corporate ownership is commonly linked to news media performance, including the tendency to offer superficial and/or negatively slanted news coverage on the basis that shareholder controlled, corporately owned news organizations are more likely to be driven purely by profit maximization” (26). (pdf link included). http://ejournals.ebsco.com.proxy.kennesaw.edu/Direct.asp?AccessToken=9II54IM8X9ZJEDKID5UXIR9KDE5E81MI1M&Show=Object Graber addresses in chapter 11 the ability of the media to sway voter opinion; taken in context of the article, this power to change the opinion of voters based on the profit margins of the corporation that owns the media outlet is an important aspect of media portrayal of candidates to understand for voters.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/10/14/bernie-sanders-wins-debate-on-social-media/ With such a heavy social media following and large popularity among young voters, Bernie Sanders seems to be emerging as a viable candidate. Is his early surge in support actually just media hype? Or is social media providing a mass media medium that is less affected by corporate influence and therefore a more accurate and credible representation of the middle class and younger voters' opinions? I prefer the latter.

https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-calls-trade-deal-disastrous/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=tw10052015 We have been reading about how mass media's message is meant to inspire consumer attention and generate profits, and we all know about the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizen's United case; I can only see the direction of our country heading toward a society and government completely motivated by consumer spending. In the face of this the fact that Bernie Sanders has not yet (to my knowledge) accepted and super PAC funds really says something about the purity of his campaign and motivations to run for office.

http://www.cio.com/article/2976083/social-networking/why-social-media-could-swing-the-2016-presidential-election.html Social media is playing an even larger role every new election. Hillary Clinton has been by far the most active candidate so far in social media organizations and it has reflected in her high polling numbers. Are there candidates in the race capable of taking advantage of social media to try to get in touch with voters? Or because most of them have already gotten their campaigns underway is it too late to go back and pull in younger voters through social media? I feel that if any candidate has the chance to put social media resources into full effect is Bernie Sanders, with some of his highest support coming from younger people.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-is-in-a-self-reinforcing-funk/ I'm starting to question if Hillary's campaign will survive the primaries. She continues to look more and more like the Washington Establishment/Career Politician that America has found unpopular since Nixon. But if Clinton does go down does that mean a Sanders nomination is upcoming from the Democrats? and if so could he even come close to attracting any of the more moderate Democratic party members or any moderates? This also makes me wonder if the Democratic Party will find Joe Biden to be the safer candidate in the general election.

So I'm not sure if you'll be able to open the link, it's to Galileo. But I was doing some research for my senior seminar class and I cam across an article that related to our class on "The News Media as Political Institutions" and thought it would make a good blog post. I'd link the pdf but i'm not really sure how.