Political Media Analysis

Media coverage as a form of political advertising has always been used by electoral candidates as a tool to boost visibility, awareness and popularity among the citizenry. This political media coverage aims to create a lasting image of a certain candidate and establish a credible and competent reputation in the public eye which would, in turn, sway attitudes to their favor and thus gain more votes. There is a symbiotic relationship to be found between media and politics. Politicians need the media to communicate with the people and in doing so, generate publicity to their advantage. Likewise, the media, as communicators, also need politicians as sources of relevant information to relay to the public (Davis, 1994). Of course, media firms do

In recent years however, many industries of varying natures of business have been using journalism merely as a tool in order to produce favorable public opinion (Spaeth, 2008). Newspapers, radio and television firms have long been privately owned, and have developed into very market-oriented corporations. Sometimes, to serve their own profitable interests, these media firms devote engage in sensational reporting. Since they have close connections with large and diversified corporations through partnerships and sponsorships, at times the media puts limits on that information is reported (Guioguio, 2015). One such industry that attempts manipulate the media is political campaigning. In the case of the 2008 US presidential elections, for example, the concept of “advertising” changed as campaign strategies took on various forms, including even news stories which, fundamentally, should be impartial. In this sense, journalistic work was used merely as manufacturer of a good image (Spaeth, 2008). Locally, the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism points out "mafia-like" dealings between political camps and media firm editors in an attempt to manipulate reporting in tabloids and broadsheets to advertise a candidate. As early as 1950 's, the practice of giving payoffs to

A study by Farc and Sagarin (2009) also suggests that attitude strength can predict political behavior and moderates the attitude-candidate choice relationship. Public attitude and public attitude strength are thus often studied in the context of the media reporting and its agenda-setting and priming effects.

Individuals do not widely observe the events surrounding the political landscape and only recognize few issues that may seem important at the given moment (Iyangar and Simon, 2000). Likewise, it was found that the greater prominence given by the media towards a certain issue creates a higher level of importance that people perceive the issue (McCombs and Estrada, 1996). Ladd (2006) also confirmed in his study that the more important people perceive an issue, the more it will have an impact on candidate preference. All these studies support the Agenda-Setting theory of Maxwell McCombs and Donald