If there is one truth about political journalism, it is that the game frame dominates. Politics is covered as a competition between left versus right, Democrat versus Republican; a battle of individuals and political factions, rather than a debate over governing philosophies and policies. For years, political scientists have warned that the practice of covering politics as a strategic game erodes public faith in governmental institutions. And now, with notable brazenness, political elites are exploiting this frame to achieve their own political goals. The loser in this equation is the American public.
In an analysis of election coverage of the 2016 presidential primaries, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center found that 56 percent of election news was dedicated to stories of the competitive game, 33 percent to stories about the campaign process, and only 11 percent to substantive policy-based concerns.
11 percent.
What started almost three decades ago as an observation about how elections are covered as if they were games has become the dominant story of how news covers just about everything. Americans in 2017 are instructed to think of all aspects of political life as a game: presidential elections, congressional elections, debates around tax reform, health care, foreign policy, national security, and climate change.
So prevalent is the language of competition and partisan strategy, in fact, that it has even come to dominate how journalists report on our least partisan institutions, the courts. Soon-to-be-published research by Matthew Hitt and Kathleen Searles shows that news increasingly uses the game frame as the orienting narrative that guides reporting of Supreme Court decisions. (The “5-4 Bush v. Gore” story was just the beginning).
Concerns about the game frame are old news. Harvard’s Tom Patterson was fretting about this 25 years ago in 1992’s Out of Order. In it, he wrote, “the dominant schema for the reporter is structured around the notion that politics is a strategic game.”
Journalists cover politics this way in part because it’s how they think about politics — as strategy and competition between individuals and opposing factions. But talking about politics as a game is also a way for journalists to pull back the curtain to show (or should I say construct) the behind-the-scenes machinery of politics. Game frames purport to give “the inside scoop” while playing into journalism’s perceived need for the dramatic and personalized (à la Lance Bennett).
As BuzzFeed’s Eve Fairbanks writes in her scathing critique of this politics-as-game genre pushed and perfected by Mark Halperin, the now-disgraced former political reporter, “the point at which politics becomes hard to understand is the point at which it is no longer politics but just competitive play, a Risk-style board game. Once there is only a handful of self-qualified players, we no longer qualify as a democracy, or perhaps even a polity.” To cover political life as a game played between elites tells citizens that politics is a spectacle to be watched, not an activity to be participated in. Such coverage creates what scholar Bob Entman refers to as a “democracy without citizens.”
In Spiral of Cynicism, Joseph Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson document the extensive effects of game-framing on political cynicism. They explain how the game narrative actually restructures our cognitive schemas related to politics such that our interpretation of subsequent political information occurs through this lens as well. This explains the devastating findings of the aforementioned study by Hitt and Searles. Not only does their work reveal that journalists are increasingly framing SCOTUS rulings as a game — it also shows that exposure to game frames reduces support for individual SCOTUS decisions, and the increase in game frames over time has harmed public support for the court as an institution.
The game frame and the party cues that accompany it also matter in terms of shaping how able and motivated our citizens are to think critically about policies that actually affect them. Work by Bert Bakker and Yphtach Lelkes shows that when information is simply embedded with partisan cues — “Republicans support this, Democrats support that,” even our most thoughtful partisans rely on these party cues to make their decisions, instead of on the quality of the arguments presented.
Neither this journalistic practice nor its cognitive implications are new. What is new, perhaps, is the extent to which politicians, interest groups, and political parties are actively capitalizing on the game frame that they know dominates how news stories will be told. In a deliberate attempt to activate tribal identities and mobilize their bases (and to keep details of domestic and foreign policy in the shadows), political leaders — President Trump chief among them — work to inject news coverage with “us versus them” signals to guarantee the story will be told their way.
Put simply, journalists’ reliance on this practice is allowing elites to further divide the country, avoid scrutiny, and distract citizens away from thoughtful policy debate on issues that carry real-life consequences.
It’s time for the game frame to die.
The challenge, of course, is in envisioning and articulating an alternative news frame that is not preoccupied with stories of warring ideological factions.
Assuming news narratives need protagonists, who will become the protagonist if the stories are not told in terms of Democrats versus Republicans, or Trump versus Clinton?
I am reminded of Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s response on CBS news with Dan Rather in 1996, following a particularly substantive presidential debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.
Rather, entrenched in the game-frame, asked Jamieson, “Who won tonight?”
Jamieson replied, “The American people.”
Maybe “the American people” can finally become the protagonist in 2018.
Dannagal G. Young is an associate professor of communication at the University of Delaware.
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify