(iPoster) Public Denial: Cable News Coverage of Election Deniers after January 6th

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Political Communication II & The Political Power of Film and Reality TV
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Communication II

Abstract

Does the mass media exacerbate coverage of extreme politicians during periods of democratic backsliding? Using denial of the 2020 presidential election in the United States as a case, I study whether and how cable news channels altered their coverage of election deniers after the January 6th Capitol Insurrection. I create an original and comprehensive panel dataset of Members of Congress’ news appearances from 2017 to 2024, extracted from 150,000 television transcripts from CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Using a Difference-in-Differences design, I find a significant and sustained increase in coverage of election deniers in the post-treatment period on the more liberal networks, CNN and MSNBC. At the same time, I find no significant change in coverage on Fox. My findings support prior work on the overrepresentation of polarizing elites on television, and provide strong evidence that participation in undemocratic shocks can raise politicians' national profiles in the long run. This work contributes broadly to the literatures on media gatekeeping, polarization, and public exposure to political elites, and poses important questions about the relationship between mass media and democracy.

Author

• Alexander Cohen, University of California, Berkeley