Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2023
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04331 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
Table of Contents:
- In covering elections, journalists often use conflict frames which depict events and issues as adversarial, often highlighting confrontations between opposing parties. Although conflict frames result in more citizen engagement, they may distract from substantive policy discussion. In this work, we analyze the use of conflict frames in online English-language news articles by seven major news outlets in the 2014 and 2019 Indian general elections. We find that the use of conflict frames is not linked to the news outlets' ideological biases but is associated with TV-based (rather than print-based) media. Further, the majority of news outlets do not exhibit ideological biases in portraying parties as aggressors or targets in articles with conflict frames. Finally, comparing news articles reporting on political speeches to their original speech transcripts, we find that, on average, news outlets tend to consistently report on attacks on the opposition party in the speeches but under-report on more substantive electoral issues covered in the speeches such as farmers' issues and infrastructure.