Friday, November 6, 2015

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.

1 comment:

  1. The tone in which something is said or written can completely change the context of the message. It is so important to be able to determine the tone in which something was meant to be written so that the message is not miscommunicated.

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