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Abstract
This article proposes a theory of racial mediation and examines how candidate race affects media coverage of political viability. Using two different types of content analysis—manual and automated—the article assesses print media coverage of white and visible minority candidates in the 2008 Canadian federal election. The study reaches two substantive conclusions. First, it appears that candidate race does not influence reporting on political viability in the aggregate, but does affect how non-incumbent candidates with racial minority backgrounds are portrayed. Although non-incumbent white candidates receive fairly positive coverage of their electoral qualifications, this is not the case for visible minority candidates. Incumbency washes away these differences, suggesting that once minority candidates have, in effect, proven themselves with an electoral win, they will receive coverage that is equivalent—and sometimes even more favourable—than their white competitors. Second, this study demonstrates how methodological choices influence the conclusions reached by content analysts. The article highlights how a researcher using an automated approach to content analysis could reach different conclusions than a researcher relying on a manual approach. The article concludes with a discussion of the trade-offs that researchers face when studying the media coverage of minorities.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the helpful feedback provided by this issue's guest editors and reviewers. She thanks Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant and Keith Banting for advice throughout the project and Scott Matthews for first suggesting that a comparison of approaches would be useful. Farnaz Behrooz, Laura Carlson and Cory Leblanc capably performed the manual coding.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
[1] ‘Visible minority’ is the Canadian term for persons who are not Aboriginal persons and are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour. The largest visible minority groups in Canada are South Asian (e.g., Pakistani, East Indian, Sri Lankan), Chinese, Black and Filipino.
[2] Most of these studies relied on print media coverage. However, in their study of local television coverage, Schaffner and Gadson (Citation2004) found that African-American legislators actually received more coverage than their white counterparts. It should also be noted that while GershCitationon (2012) found few differences in the amount of print new coverage received by minority male legislators and their white counterparts, minority female legislators were less likely to be covered. Future research should investigate the intersectional effects of race and gender.
[3] A distinction should be made between racist coverage and racialised coverage. Racist coverage is that which contains explicit language about the superiority or inferiority of a group or individual on the basis of race. This is actually now quite rare in Canadian mainstream media. More common is racialised coverage which does not presuppose a racial hierarchy but is grounded in assumptions about racial differences.
[4] For additional details on the sample and other aspects of the research design, see Tolley (Citation2013).
[5] In describing what mentions of insider status would look like, the codebook noted, ‘By “political insider”, we mean candidates who are incumbents (i.e., currently hold the seat), have held a previous electoral office (i.e., ran for politics and won at either at the federal level or elsewhere), have been involved in political parties for some length of time, are noted to have support from the party machinery or elites, or is a superior political strategist. Any such mentions constitute portrayal as a political insider. Note that we are only interested in political insider status; references to the candidate's superior qualifications as, say, a lawyer or businessman are not relevant here. Moreover, we are only interested in previous elected experience if the candidate won; simply running is not indicative of insider status unless, of course, it is accompanied by other mentions of insider status. The mention may be direct (e.g., Candidate X is a political insider), but it is more likely to rely on adjectives that connote insider status (e.g., experienced politician, party stalwart, long-serving Conservative, well-known strategist, veteran Liberal) or refer to characteristics that are indicative of one's political insider status (e.g., prior political experience, has support from the party machinery, party faithful or elites). If the article includes no direct references to any of the above markers of insider status, then we will consider the candidate to not have been portrayed as an insider, and you would code “no” to this variable’. In describing what mentions of candidate quality would look like, the codebook noted, ‘Here you are looking for mentions that the candidate is a quality one because of particular personal characteristics. Note that here we are not referring to one's general “qualifications” for office, such as prior electoral experience (that is being coded for in V23), but rather to personal attributes that improve their quality as a candidate. “Quality” therefore refers to the candidate's high-profile or prominence, service to the community, that s/he is established in the community (e.g., long-time resident, long roots) or garners respect. Although there are, of course, other ways of thinking of quality, for our purposes, these are the indicators we will use. As such, references to other types of characteristics, even while potentially desirable or flattering (e.g., charming, smart, ambitious, pretty) will not be coded as quality mentions. Quality candidates may be described as having “long roots” in the community, those who have ties to the constituency, have performed a service to their communities and/or have made contributions or “given back” to the community. Quality candidates may be referred to as “stars” or as sought after; they may also be portrayed as having been recruited to run. They may be described using adjectives like “admired”, “touted”, “esteemed”, a “heavyweight”, “highly sought”, “high-profile”, “influential”, “outstanding”, “popular”, having a “strong network”, or being “well known”, “high-status”, “renowned”, “well-respected”, “award-winning”, “successful”, a “strong” candidate, or “prominent”, among other synonyms. Remember: quality mentions are not simply references to “good” or desirable qualities. It has to do with the candidate's qualifications on account of their profile, service to the community, and long residence within it. If there is any of this type of coverage, you would code “yes” for this variable. If there are no such mentions, you would code “no”’.
[6] The coders were all Master's students hired specifically for this project: one was studying journalism, one was studying international affairs and one was studying political science. One student was a visible minority, and the other two were white; there were two females and one male. There were no appreciable differences in the coding decisions of the three coders.
[7] A full list of keywords is available from the author.
[8] The Jaccard coefficient is calculated as follows:
where J = Jaccard coefficient.
a = frequency of target candidate names in the corpus.
b = frequency of keywords in the corpus.
c = frequency of co-occurrence of target and keyword.
The Jaccard coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with a 0 suggesting that the two sets are not at all similar (i.e., the candidates’ names and keywords never appear in proximity), while a 1 indicates they are identical (i.e., the names and keywords always appear in proximity).
[9] No hard and fast rules govern the section of the unit of analysis. Before deciding on the sentence-level, I experimented with other configurations, including so-called windows of words of varying lengths (e.g., five-word segments before and after the keyword in question). This tended to result in too many false positives, however, so I ultimately settled on the sentence.