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Exposure to negative media messages related to LGBTQ+ issues have been associated with negative affect, depression, stress, and psychological distress among that population (e.g. Rotosky, Riggle, Horne, & Miller, 2009). Frost and Fingerhut (2016) have suggested that this exposure to negative media messages is a form of distal minority stress, which has been theorized to contribute to anticipated stigma or unfair treatment (Meyer, 2003). Thus, in the present study, we predicted that individuals who were exposed to more negative messages in the media will have more negative feelings about the election, report more anxiety and fear, and anticipate more discrimination due to their LGBT identity. Further, we hypothesized that negative feelings about the election would relate to more anxiety, fear, anticipated discrimination. However, because connection with the LGBTQ+ community and spiritual well-being have been associated with better mental health (Pflum et al., 2015; Greenfield et al., 2009), the current study explored whether community connection and spirituality relate to the other relations tested. Participants (N = 207) were recruited online through various social media platforms and participated in an online survey using Survey Monkey. The survey included the following measures: the Exposure to Negative Campaign Messages (adapted; Frost & Fingerhut, 2016), a self-created Presidential Election 2016 Response Questionnaire, Discrimination Scale (adapted; Kessler, Mickelson, and Williams, 1999), Connectedness to the LGBT Community Scale (Frost & Meyer, 2012), State-Trait Anxiety Form for Adults (Form Y1; Spielberg, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1977), Fear and Sense of Control Scale (Salcioglu, Urhan, Pirinccioglu, & Aydin, 2016), Spiritual Index of Well-Being Scale (Daaleman & Frey, 2004), Centrality Scale (Quinn, Williams, Quintana, Gaskins, & Pishori, 2014), and questions about frequently used social media sites. Results revealed, contrary to our hypotheses, that more negative messages in the media was not significantly related to negative feelings about the presidential election, r = .05, p = .524, or state-trait anxiety, r = .079, p = .341. In support of our hypotheses, negative feelings about the presidential election were significantly related to more anticipated discrimination in everyday life, r = .631, p < .001, state-trait anxiety, r = .577, p < .001, and fear, r = .663, p < .001. Exploratory analyses revealed that those with more negative feelings about the election felt less connected to the LGBTQ+ community, r = -.224, p = .001, and had a lower spiritual life schema, r = -.362, p < .001. Additional exploratory findings highlight the possibility that spiritual well-being may moderate the effect of being exposed to negative media messages and should be examined more specifically in the future. In sum, feelings resulting from media exposure may be more influential to mental health than media exposure itself.

The US presidential election of 2016 between the republican Donald Trump and the democrat Hillary Clinton was special in the aspect of the fierce tone between the two candidates, largely by personal attacks and how the media to a large extent focused on this rather than political issues. Many evangelical leaders decided to endorse Trump, even though their earlier outspoken criticism toward Trumps previously controversial statements about women, immigrants and minorities. In six articles this case study examines how the authors from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal frame the relationship between Trump and evangelical leaders during the 2016 US election. This is done by using a framing analysis and the categories: actors, characteristics, motives and goals which help me to answer a couple of analysis questions and latter put it into context of Snow and Benfords (1988) three tasks of framing. In this way I can answer the first research question: ”How is the relationship between Donald Trump and the evangelical leaders represented in the selected cases and how can this be understood by using Snow and Benfords (1988) three tasks of framing; diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing?” The second research question “How can the framing of the relationship between Trump and the evangelical leaders be understood according to Hjarvards (2012) theory medialization of religion with a focus on media as language?” visualizes the attitudes and the shaping of frames contained in the articles. The study concludes that the three tasks of framing help assign causation, identify reasons, strategies and solutions to the phenomenon that is framed by the authors of the articles, but also how Trump and evangelicals are framed by the authors to rationalize the defined measures. The results show that the authors of the articles mainly focus on Trumps motives and goals to gain support of evangelical leaders vice versa the leaders which want to gain ground and influence the politics Trump is going to convey. This can be seen in both NYT and the WSJ articles through the framing of Trump and his fierce tone toward Clinton and her campaign. It is also recurrent that the authors of the article describe how Trump uses a language aimed at the Christian right and its leaders to promise them to pursue a value-conservative policy that favor them.

Murphy, Eloise, The Heady Mix of the 2016 Presidential Election: Twitter, Power, Politics, Gender, and Journalism, Doctor of Philosophy (Media and Communication), May 2020, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA The 2016 US presidential general election was unusual for a variety of reasons. Politically, the candidates were new and different in that Clinton was the first woman to be elected Presidential nominee by a major political party, and Trump was brash and the Republican Party’s dark horse who had never held a political office. Also, Trump used Twitter to amplify political speech that was abnormal for a presidential candidate. Journalistically, the coverage of the candidates was strange because, in general, non-alt-right media organizations amplified Trump’s atypical rhetoric by providing Trump with an unprecedented amount of free media coverage. Also, in general, media organizations did not acknowledge or tiptoed around the bizarre nature of Trump’s rhetoric. This extraordinary display of political and journalistic abnormalities revealed an angry electorate divided into political, economic, and sociocultural factions. The confluence of abnormal political speech, by Trump on Twitter, as well as the media’s obsessive unfiltered coverage of Trump, led to the question this dissertation asks: How did candidate representation and media coverage of candidate representation comport with and push against political and journalistic norms in the 2016 presidential election? This dissertation employs qualitative methodology and performs a critical discourse analysis through a feminist lens to examine how each candidate communicated their identity, performed power, and expressed gender on Twitter. Also, the dissertation analyzed how national newspapers and Sunday morning political talk shows recontextualized the candidates’ tweets, and whether journalistic norms of like objectivity, were demonstrated. The goals of this dissertation are to explain how Trump and Clinton represented themselves as candidates and how Trump used Twitter as his foot soldier to violate political norms. Also, this research demonstrates that the media enabled, normalized, and legitimized Trump’s rhetoric by engaging in tacit co-conspiratorial agenda-setting with Trump, by binding and blinding themselves to Trump’s rhetoric, revealing that the press relinquished their role as a watchdog of government corruption and overreach. KEYWORDS: Political communication, Journalistic norms, Twitter, 2016 Presidential election, Gender / Media & Communication

Political climates are undoubtedly changing across the nation and creating volatile fluctuations of attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. In a more entertaining season of presidential primaries, both parties – Democratic and Republican – have nominees that will once again be scrutinized by many across the country. I argue the levels of scrutiny will more likely than not be enhanced to new proportions. Since a consistent reliance on media involvement and attack ads have grown immensely amongst presidential candidates, this will translate into a wider gap in party polarization and subsequently tie into the trust of American citizens. Previous scholars have shown consistent data that political trust has no bearing on the actual turnout of presidential elections (Citrin 1974). But, historic distrustful ratings between major-party candidates may prove to alter political cultures for subsequent years. In this study, I thoroughly examine the growing significance of political trust on presidential voting in the United States.

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This study seeks to illuminate which understanding of democracy the written U.S. digital news media propagates to its readers, through the lens of the 2016 presidential election. This is done through discourse theory and analysis inspired by Laclau &amp; Mouffes work on nodal points and discursive webs. Other theories involve polyarchy as a definition of democracy as well as rational models for voter participation. Written digital articles related to the 2016 election, chosen through entering keywords related to democracy and voting, from a broad range of larger media houses are used as material for the study. The study found that the discourse created and mediated by the news articles, when taken as a whole, understands democracy as a contest between different demographical groups. Race or ethnicity are the most commonly referenced groups. The election is a battle between the candidates’ personalities to entice “their” specific groups to get out and vote. Policy or political issues are rarely mentioned in the articles. Voter participation is low according to the discourse, but that might not be such a big problem according to the discourse. A larger problem for democracy is corruption, political elitism and a poorly designed electoral system.

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