Exploration: Partisan Coverage of Harris and Key Issues in 2024 Presidential Race

‍Media Cloud is a powerful tool to quickly derive insights about how new media cover topics of interest. With the US presidential election looming, we deployed the tool in a brief exploration of how coverage of Kamala Harris differs by media partisanship across key election issues.

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In this exploration, as in a previous study we did on partisan coverage of VP Harris in 2021, media partisanship was calculated by linking Twitter/X users with voter registration records, and evaluating the frequency with which news domains were shared by Twitter/X users registered with each political party. This method (by Roberts et al, 2018) produced publication lists in five partisan quintiles, which we manually reviewed and ingested into Media Cloud to form news partisanship collections. Users can review these collections and others in Media Cloud’s Directory tool, and explore the data used in this writeup on our Search tool.

Coverage Mentioning Harris

Looking for stories that simply mention “Harris” from the date she became the candidate (07/21/24), we see a much higher proportion of articles from the Right quintile than any other. Four out of ten articles from the Right quintile mention Harris during this time period, more than 4.5x the proportion of articles mentioning Harris in the Center quintile (8.5% of stories). Though lower than the Right, the Left quintile is also notably higher than the set of centered quintiles; 26.7% of articles in the Left quintile mention Harris, which is approximately 3x the level in the Center quintile.  

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Normalized coverage for [Harris] by partisan quintile, 07/21/24-10/30/24

Examining the frequently appearing keywords in headlines, we see interesting differences in language between the quintiles in coverage mentioning Harris. The table below lists keywords that only appeared in the top 100  headline keywords for one quintile. (Center Left did not have any non-stopword uniquely prevalent headline keywords.)

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Uniquely Prevalent Headline Keywords by Quintile

We note that some of the prevalent Democratic political talking points (e.g., “Project 2025,” “MAGA,” “weird”) are uniquely prevalent in the Left quintile and not shared in the Center Left quintile, which could be evidence of the well-documented increasingly polarized political and media landscape. Similarly, “illegal” and “radical” are uniquely prevalent in Right quintile headlines and not shared by Center Right. 

Harris and the Border

The US political right holds immigration and the border as a key issue, critically emphasizing Harris’ role as the “border czar.” Querying [Harris AND border] for the last month, the disproportionate attention paid by the Right quintile is notable. 7.5% of all articles published by the outlets in the Right quintile mention Harris and the border (a full quarter of all their articles mentioning Harris), while all other partisan quintiles fall between 1.2%-2.5% of articles. As seen in the graph, the lowest daily proportion of coverage in the Right quintile is still higher than the highest day in any other quintile. 

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Normalized coverage for [Harris AND border] by partisan quintile, 9/30/24-10/30/24

Expanding the dates to look at the previous year, we can see the large jump in attention to this issue once Harris becomes the candidate. The Right quintile largely tracks with the others until July 21, 2024, the date that President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Harris. On July 20, the Right quintile outlets mentioned Harris and the border in 1.93% of stories; on July 21, it jumped to 8.3% of stories. Since Harris became the candidate, the Right quintile has mentioned Harris and the border in an average of 8.2% of stories, never dropping below 4.4% of daily stories and peaking at 15.8% of daily stories. For comparison, coverage of Biden and the border remains relatively stable during the same time period. 

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Normalized coverage for [Harris AND border] by partisan quintile, 10/30/23-10/30/24

Clear from the attention charts is that Harris and the border is an issue where the Center Right and Right quintiles diverge. (We wrote about other examples where the Right quintile departs from the Center Right in coverage of Kamala Harris in our recent paper in Feminist Media Studies.) To explore this further, we examined the top keywords present in headlines between the two quintiles, in stories mentioning Harris and the border.

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Comparative analysis of most frequent keywords in headlines, Right and Center Right quintiles

The Right quintile refers to Harris as the border “czar” with unique frequency; it does not appear in the top headline terms for the Center Right quintile. Publications in the Right quintile are using denigrating terms of “gang” and “alien(s)” more frequently in headlines, as well as referring to the issue as a “crisis.” Only the Right quintile had Springfield among the top headline terms (referencing the false claims about migrant eating pets) . The Center Right has more references to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza within [Harris and border] coverage, as well as election coverage of how the issue was playing in battleground states (Florida, Ohio).  

Harris and Abortion

A different and interesting pattern emerges when looking at articles that mention Harris and abortion, a key issue for the US political left. Querying [Harris AND abortion] for the period from when she became the candidate through today, we notice that the Left and Right quintiles track closely together in attention, at higher rates than the Center, Center Left, and Center Right quintiles, which also track together. The Left and Right quintiles report on this issue more than twice as frequently as the set of center quintiles do, at 3.7% and 3.9% of all articles, respectively, compared with 1.2%-1.6% for all other quintiles. 

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Normalized coverage for [Harris AND abortion] by partisan quintile,  07/21/24-10/30/24

Coverage in all quintiles peaked on September 11, 2024, the day following the presidential debate between Trump and Harris. The Right quintile had the highest attention to Harris and abortion at 10.8% of stories, closely followed by the Left at 9.2% of all stories. Looking only at stories that mentioned Harris on that day after the debate (09-11-24), one in five Harris stories from the Right quintile mentioned abortion, and one in four Harris stories mentioned it from the Left quintile (21% and 26%, respectively).  

Harris and Black identity/community

“Black” was among the top keywords in headlines in coverage of Harris for all quintiles, and both Harris’ own racial identity as well as US racial politics have been key themes in election discourse. The Left quintile has proportionately the most coverage mentioning [Harris AND Black], with 7.5% of all stories. Looked at another way, nearly one in three stories that mention Harris also mention Black in this quintile. The Right quintile is the next most focused on the issue, with 5.2% of all stories mentioning the keywords together. This means that approximately one in six stories that mention Harris also mention Black. The center set of quintiles published between 1.6-1.9% of all stories mentioning Harris AND Black. 

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Normalized coverage for [Harris AND Black] by partisan quintile,  07/21/24-10/30/24

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The differing peaks in coverage, evident from the attention over time graph above, indicate different events and stories driving coverage to [Harris AND Black] amongst partisan quintiles of media, which merits further study. From keyword analysis, we find that “women” is present in top headlines for coverage of the issue in the Left quintile, but not the Right. Exploring coverage of this intersectionality is a possible next step for research. 

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Conclusion

This exploration underscores how Media Cloud can help media researchers reveal nuanced differences in media coverage across partisan lines, especially in a polarized political environment like the US 2024 election. By focusing on issues central to the campaign—immigration, abortion, and identity—we can see that Harris’s candidacy elicits distinctive reactions from various media outlets, reflecting both ideological divides and the strategic choices of different political agendas. These partisan narratives can not only shape public perception of key issues but also amplify specific storylines associated with Harris, such as her role in immigration policy. Media Cloud enables researchers, journalists, and the public to investigate these trends, providing a clearer view of the complex interplay between media and politics.We hope this exploration has proved interesting and useful. To discuss this work or undertaking similar searches using our tools, please contact support@mediacloud.org.

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