How American Media Framed 2016 Presidential Election Using Data Visualization: The Case Study of the New York Times and the Washington Post

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of data visualization in the media coverage of the 2016 presidential election in the United States focusing on data-visualization projects from the New York Times and the Washington Post. This research aims to examine how media coverage of the election has been framed with infographics through mixed methods analysis. Another part of this article presents an investigation of data journalists’ working routines and so-called boundary-work (Boyles, J. L., and E. Meyer. 2016. “Letting the Data Speak.” Digital Journalism 4 (7): 944–954. doi:10.1080/21670811.2016.1166063) by conducting interviews with data reporters.

The mixed methods textual and visual analysis shows that framing the election as a game is still relevant for the election data reporting. Analysis of graphics before the election has demonstrated the prevalent game frame trend in data visualization pieces. However, this pattern has changed after the election with increased priority for the issue frame and policy coverage. Results have demonstrated that journalists tend to reinforce the game frame in the infographics. That phenomenon leads to a potential increase in political polarization and political skepticism. Analysis of the interviews with data journalists from two newsrooms shows that professional work routines affect their reporting and reinforce the detrimental influence of framing on the election coverage.

KEYWORDS:

• Data visualization
• 2016 presidential election
• framing
• data journalism
• computational journalism
• data-driven reporting

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank her thesis committee Professors Randall Smith, Yong Volz, David Herzog, and Antonie Stam at the University of Missouri who helped improve this project. Many thanks to the interview subjects for sharing their expertise and to the anonymous reviewers for their substantial and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).