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"Youth Voting and the Media"
by Diana Owen
Young voters constitute a substantial, yet largely untapped, voting bloc in American politics. While youth have earned a reputation for low turnout, there are indications that this trend may be reversing. Turnout among 18-29 year olds climbed to 49% in the 2004 presidential contest, while young voter turnout in the 2006 midterm election was the highest in over a decade (CIRCLE, 2004; 2006). In 2008, a potential 50 million voters, or almost one quarter of the electorate, will be 18 to 31 years old.
The “conventional wisdom” attached to young people’s civic engagement in general carries over to voting. In over 60 interviews with political party officials, consultants, campaign managers, candidates and office holders that I conducted in 2005, I found that people who occupy these roles portray young voters as disinterested, disengaged, and unreliable. To these political professionals, young voters are volatile and unpredictable—and therefore not worth targeting during campaigns despite their sizeable presence in the electorate. (I am currently conducting a second wave of these interviews).
Anecdotal evidence suggests that journalists have adopted the same “conventional wisdom” about young voters that is prevalent among political professionals. Stories employing a “disengaged youth” frame lament the fact that young people show little interest in candidates and issues, and fail to register or vote. Political opinion leaders use these stories, especially those appearing in newspapers, to reinforce their beliefs about youth voter apathy. Further, young people may become discouraged from participating as a result of the negative portrayals in the press.
In order to move beyond anecdotes and to systematically evaluate the nature and scope of media reports of youth voting, I conducted an extensive content analysis of newspaper coverage during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections (this study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts). The study addressed the following questions: How much coverage do newspapers devote to youth voting? To what extent do election news stories employ a “disengaged youth” frame in reports of young people and elections? What type of content appears in youth voting stories? The analysis spanned the period from April 1 to November 30 in each year. A total of 2,670 articles in over 50 major national and state and local newspapers were analyzed.
Coverage of young voters in the 2000 and 2004 elections provides the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of communications campaigns aimed at changing the “conventional wisdom” about young voters. An unprecedented number of youth voting organizations were active during the 2004 contest, including partisan and nonpartisan/nonprofit groups. In addition to voter registration, many of these youth voting organizations engaged in activities designed to garner positive media coverage of young voters. For example, the Pew-sponsored New Voters Project partnered with a coalition named “20 Million Loud,” and worked together on a media strategy that emphasized statistical data about youth voters, employed youth spokespeople, and promoted a message emphasizing the size and potential political clout of voters under the age of 30. Organizations staged large-scale celebrity events designed to bring young people together and to gain press attention. My study offers an opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of these communications campaigns in 2004 using the 2000 election as a baseline.
Two of its its findings are worthy of particular note. First, there was far more newspaper coverage of the 2004 presidential election in general than there was in 2000. Young voters were more visible in newspaper reports of the 2004 campaign in terms of the amount of coverage devoted to youth, the number of headlines that mentioned young voters, and the length of youth-focused articles. Still, articles making even the slightest reference to the youth vote constituted only 3% to 4% of all articles about the election campaign in both years. There were 26,343 election-related articles in the top twenty-six national newspapers (based on circulation) in 2000 of which 513 mentioned youth voting. In 2004, 34,894 articles in national papers focused on the election, and 937 referenced youth.
Second, newspaper coverage of youth voting was notably more positive than negative in both years. Positive media messages emphasizing young voters’ engagement in the election and their potential to influence the outcome increased to 42% in 2004 from 31% in 2000. The “disengaged youth” frame was apparent in 20% of youth vote coverage in 2000 compared to 15% in 2004. The balance of the content was neutral.
The study provides support for the contention that the presence of youth organizations on the ground and their communications campaigns influenced newspaper reports in 2004. Over 250 youth voting organizations received coverage. The activities of these organizations were mentioned in about half of all newspaper articles about youth voting. Coverage of voter recruitment efforts increased markedly between the two time periods. In 2004, 29% of coverage focused on voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives compared to 14% in 2000.
There was a decline in the percentage of articles mentioning youth-related issues in 2004 (32%) compared with 2000 (37%). Education barely edged out health care as the most frequently cited issue in 2000. The war in Iraq was the issue that garnered by far the most attention in 2004. The decline in the proportion of coverage devoted to issues in 2004 may well be due to the fact that a higher proportion of coverage was devoted to young vote recruitment activities, campaign events, and rallies.
Newspaper articles on youth voting rely heavily on quotations, opinions, personal accounts, and endorsements from a variety of individual sources. Young people are by far the most frequently mentioned individuals in stories, appearing in over 35% of articles in both election years. Aside from young people, the types of individuals mentioned in articles differed in 2000 and 2004. Celebrities appeared in 30% of articles in 2004 compared to 9% in 2000. Grassroots organizers, many of whom were associated with youth vote organizations, were mentioned in 21% of national newspaper stories in 2004 and 14% in 2000.
While these findings indicate that positive stories far outweighed negative newspaper accounts of young voters, the power of the “disengaged youth” media frame cannot be underestimated. On election night in 2004, the Associated Press (AP released a story that was widely reprinted with the headline, “2004 not the breakout year for youth vote after all.” The article cited exit polls, which are notoriously unreliable, as the basis for its conclusion, and left the impression that voter mobilization drives did not raise youth turnout. Youth voting leaders and scholars acted quickly to correct the inaccuracies in the article, and subsequent media stories noted that youth voter turnout actually had increased. Still, this single story had a significant influence on opinion leaders, and mitigated many of the effects of an entire campaign of positive coverage. Campaign managers, party officials, and political consultants interviewed in conjunction with this study in 2005 volunteered that this story reinforced their belief that young voters do not vote.
There are a number of plausible reasons why the election night AP story was able to have this kind of effect. The “disengaged youth” frame is familiar to journalists and their audiences. That a significant proportion of coverage in 2004 took a more positive look at young voters was out of keeping with the expectations of opinion leaders who were anxious to maintain the conventional wisdom. This story affirmed many of their decisions to spend resources on constituencies other than young voters. In addition, the AP story was the first story to come out on the youth vote following the election, which gave it particular prominence.
The 2006 election campaign marked the continuation of increased youth voter activation that was covered by news organizations in keeping with the more positive trends begun in 2004. Preliminary evidence from an ongoing study indicates that the conventional mantra of “disengaged youth” persists among some journalists, political consultants, and party activists. However, as the 2008 presidential campaign gears up, it appears that efforts to reach out to young voters by candidates, parties, and nonpartisan organizations may be redoubled. Young voters may, in fact, be at the forefront of novel campaign communications, such as blogging and text messaging, which may be outside the realm and resources of some conventional political consultants.
*Author’s Note: I would like to thank my research teams of Georgetown University graduate students: 2005—Sarah Brennan, Chris Grady, Paul Hitlin, Brian Pagels, and Kristine Patnugot 2007—Jennifer Doak, Sheetal Doshi, Tara Handron, Sarah Snodgress, and Kevin Michael Visconti.
Diana Owen is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of American Studies at Georgetown University.
REFERENCES
CIRCLE. (2004). “The Youth Vote in 2004.” This article may be found at http://www.civicyouth.org/quick/youth_voting.htm.
CIRCLE. (2006). “Young Voters in the 2006 Elections,.” This article may be found at http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS-Midterm06.pdf.
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