China and the 1995 United Nations conference on women
This study looks at the ways in which China's hosting of the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women failed to improve China's international prestige. China made enormous commitments of resources to the meetings. However, China did not benefit because of its own internal policies, because of a series of political events that, in conjunction with media coverage, created a critical environment, and because of the deteriorating relationship between China and the US.
Bad News, Period
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. 1984. Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising. New York: Oxford University Press. Kernell, Samuel. 1986. Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Kinder, Donald, and Thomas Palfrey, eds. 1993. Experimental Foundations of Political Science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McCombs, Maxwell, and Donald Shaw. 1977. The Emergence of American Political Issues: The Agenda-Setting Function of the Press. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co. Miller, Arthur, Edie N. Goldenberg, and Lutz Erbring. 1979. "Type-Set Politics: Impact of Newspapers on Public Confidence." American Political Science Review 73:67-82.
Type-Set Politics: Impact of Newspapers on Public Confidence
This study combines survey data from the 1974 American National Election Study with the front-page content of 94 newspapers in an investigation of the relationship between the degree of negative political criticism found in newspapers and their readers' feelings of trust in government and a sense of their own political effectiveness. Although newspaper reporting was primarily neutral or positive, readers of highly critical papers were more distrustful of government; but the impact of criticism on the more stable attitude of political efficacy was modest. Level of exposure to national news interacted with critical news content primarily to affect feelings of trust, and not efficacy. This article posits a structural explanation of inefficacy as a result of accumulating distrust, where policy dissatisfaction, rather than dislike of incumbent leaders, acts as the main determinant of cynicism. In this model, media criticism serves as a “mediator” of political realities which eventually, although indirectly, affects political malaise.