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An ICMPA investigation of the photographic coverage of the 2012 U.S. presidential election & the GOP primaries.
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Click to read about how researchers coded the photos.
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Click the Pinterest button to see PrezPix's almost 9,000 photos on 110 Pinterest boards.
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21 News Outlets
Click the news outlets below to see how they photographically covered the 2012 GOP primaries and the general election.
- ABC News
- Atlanta Journal Constitution
- Bloomberg
- CBS News
- Christian Science Monitor
- Cleveland Plain Dealer
- CNN
- Daily Beast
- Dallas Morning News
- Denver Post
- Fox News
- Huffington Post
- Los Angeles Times
- Miami Herald
- NBC News (formerly MSNBC)
- New York Times
- NPR
- Philly.com
- Politico
- USA Today
- Washington Post
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General Election: Who 'Won' the Photo Race?
Click to see a chart comparing the "positive" - "negative" tone of photo coverage of Pres. Obama & Gov. Romney during the general election campaign.
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GOP Primaries: Who Got More Coverage?
Click to see charts comparing photo coverage of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich & Paul during the GOP primaries.
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How Many Photos?
Click to see a chart comparing the amount of photo coverage of the 2012 presidential election.
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PrezPix is a study led by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA), with research support from students at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
© Copyright Susan D. Moeller, 2012. All Rights Reserved.
How Were the Photos Coded?
A split-screen photo published by CNN and coded as a “neutral” photograph for both men. Both men are in the middle of speaking. Note further similarities in the angle of the men’s heads, their gaze, even their shirts. The most significant difference is the background. CNN repeatedly published this exact split-screen photo: on Sept. 17, 18, 23 and Oct. 1, 3, 15, 16 (twice), 17, 21.
The top photo, from Fox News, ran on Feb. 26, 2012, the bottom on Fox News on March 14. Note the difference in impact when a flag is in the background. Note too the difference when the candidate is gazing upwards, as in the bottom photo, rather than level at the viewer — even when the candidate has a serious expression in both photos.
Coding photographs is not an exact science.
The multi-part coding for each of the over 8,000 images* pinned to Pinterest included criteria both objective (e.g. ‘who is pictured in the photo’) and subjective (e.g. ‘is the candidate treated positively or negatively’). This study’s value is in the quantity of images assessed across 21 online news outlets over four months of the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. The researchers who evaluated the photos received training in coding images, and even given the inevitable subjectivity of some of those measurements, the consistency of the survey mechanisms identified strong trend lines. Those trends are identified throughout this study website.
For a sampling of photos coded by researchers see the photos below of Gov. Romney and Pres. Obama.
Researchers coded these photos with five rankings: very negative, slightly negative, neutral, slightly positive, very positive. The positive-negative ranking was arrived at via researchers coding such visual elements in the photograph as expression, gaze, number and type of people in the frame, camera angle and camera distance.
Note: When news outlets published split-screen photos of the candidates, the photo was pinned and coded twice: once for each candidate pictured.
All the photographs below come from the hundreds of images pinned from Fox News during the general election campaign in September and October 2012. Clicking on the images below connects to the photo’s Pinterest location.
A Fox News photo of Romney coded “VERY NEGATIVE.” (NB: the original image had a screenshot from the 47% video alongside the close-up of Romney)
A Fox News photo of Romney (right) coded “SLIGHTLY NEGATIVE.”
A Fox News photo of Romney coded “NEUTRAL.”
A Fox News photo of Romney (left) coded “SLIGHTLY POSITIVE.”
A Fox News photo of Romney coded “VERY POSITIVE.”
A Fox News photo of Obama coded “VERY NEGATIVE.”
A Fox News photo of Obama coded “SLIGHTLY NEGATIVE.”
A Fox News photo of Obama (left) coded “NEUTRAL.”
A Fox News photo of Obama (left) coded “SLIGHTLY POSITIVE.”
A Fox News photo of Obama (left) coded “VERY POSITIVE.”
(See here for a more in-depth explanation of the methodology of this study.)