The media serve several functions when it comes to coverage of election results, whether it is the mainstream press engaged in reporting news or citizens using technology to share and participate in it. The most basic function is to report the vote. Another more complex task is to assign some meaning to those results, to fashion a narrative that resets the political landscape and leans forward toward the next election cycle.
A new study finds that no single unifying 2010 election-day message reverberated through the news ecosystem—even with results as decisive as those on Nov. 2.
Rather, the media conversation was more diffuse than it might have been in a simpler, more homogenized, media era and it varied substantially depending on what media one looked at.
These are among the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism of election coverage on four distinct media platforms, produced in conjunction with social media analysis technology from Crimson Hexagon.
A basic narrative of historic Republican gains and the voters' rebuke to Democrats certainly gained traction in the press. To some extent, however, that GOP romp theme was balanced by projections about future politics and policy debates, a focus on the electoral process itself, and grassroots calls to action.
Read the full report Parsing Election Day Media - How the Midterms Message Varied by Platform on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site.