Abstract
This study is the first to examine US news coverage of voter ID laws. Voter ID requirements are central to ongoing political debates about voting procedures. Despite rare cases of voter fraud by impersonation and the strong polarization over voter ID among partisan elites, there is a surprising broad bipartisan support for voter ID among the American public. Using a range of inductive computational content analysis methods, we analyse news coverage of voter ID requirements from 2013 to 2023. We find coverage differs by outlets political leaning and demonstrate a link between news media discourse and elite framing on the issue. Donald Trump’s voter fraud allegations, however, appear to have substantially shaped left-leaning media coverage from 2016, raising concerns around whether this might have helped amplify electoral conspiracies, instead of offering the public alternative ways of thinking about voter ID laws.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 62-83 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Journalism Studies |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 16 Oct 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
This work is part of a larger PhD project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), grant reference ES/P000681/1. The research visit to Amsterdam University was made possible through the support of the ESRC\u2019s Overseas Institutional Visit award. I am grateful to Prof Damian Trilling for hosting the oversees institutional visit I did at Amsterdam University and to my thesis supervisors at Glasgow University, Dr Ana Langer and Prof Christopher Carman, for providing me with feedback throughout the research and redrafting process. We would also like to thank colleagues from the ASCOR Political Communication department, attendees of the 2023 Text as Data conference, and the three anonymous peer reviewers, for comments that improved the manuscript.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| ASCOR Political Communication department | |
| Economic and Social Research Council | ES/P000681/1 |
Keywords
- agenda setting
- automated content analysis
- democracy
- framing
- misinformation
- News media