Fox News coverage of the 2016 Democratic primaries favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Clinton received more overall coverage, but it was more negative in tone. Sanders received less coverage but it was mostly neutral or positive. Four coders analyzed Fox News coverage after five primary dates and found Clinton received 51% more primary focus than Sanders. Coverage was also more negative towards Clinton. Fox News coverage seemed aimed at their conservative audience by criticizing the Democratic frontrunner Clinton while taking a neutral stance on Sanders.

1. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 1
Introduction:
We conducted a content analysis of how the media covers presidential candidates during
the 2016 primaries. For our research, we chose to analyze Fox News video clips from their
website. Since there are a variety of candidates running for the presidential nominee, we decided
to narrow our focus by examining the two Democratic candidates, former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders. In the research we investigate many different factors
that help us determine what kind of coverage the network gave the candidates.
We established a coding sheet (Appendix A) for measuring the program clips. We coded
for the days after the following Democratic primaries: February 9th, March 1st, March 8th, March
15th, and March 22nd. For our research, we decided that coding on the days after the primaries
would presumably provide a significant amount of Democratic primary coverage. In our study,
we had a total of four coders. We decided to separate the coders into two categories. Coder one
and coder two coded on the days after the following three primaries: February 9th, March 8th, and
March 22nd. Coder three and coder four coded on the days after the following two primaries:
March 1st and March 15th.
As previously mentioned, coders one and two began coding on the days after the
February 9th primary. During the days after the primary, February 10th coders one and two began
their coding separately, in the morning, a day later February 12th they coded in the afternoon and
on the final day they coded on February 14th in the evening. The goal for each coder was that the
three days of coding would equal 30 minutes’ worth of coverage. We determined that both of
their 30 minutes of coding would equal 60 minutes and we established that 60 minutes’ worth of
coding would provide us enough information for us to analyze. The coding sheet measured Fox

2. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 2
News Programs for bias, poll driven, election outcomes and the coding sheet measured both
candidates on primary focus, tone, momentum, and the time spent talking about both candidates.
Methods:
We measured bias if whether or not the video clip showed favoritism towards either of the
two candidates. We measured if the program clips was extremely negative towards either the
candidates or a particular candidate. If the video appeared to show a balanced perspective
between both of the candidates, we categorized as being unbiased. We chose variables nine and
ten because we wanted to know how much focus was directed to both of the candidates.
The majority of the program clips did not last longer than seven minutes. We also realized
that many of the Democratic primary video clips lasted anywhere from two minutes to seven
minutes. Coders three and four followed the same coding protocol that was conducted during the
days after the February 9th primary, but this time they coded for the days after the March 1st
primary. Coders one and two continued the same coding pattern for the days after the March 8th
primary. However, during the days after the March 15th primary, we decided to change our
coding protocol. Instead coders three and four began their coding analysis in the evening March
16th, a day later they coded in the afternoon on March 18th, and coders three and four coded on
March 20th in the morning. We decided to alternate our coding protocol because we discovered
that when we began our first day of coding in the morning, we had a difficult time finding a
substantial amount of video clips that we could use for our research. Therefore, we hypothesized
that by coding in the evening on the first day, we would find more video clips than if we had
started in the morning. During our last days of coding for the days after the March 22nd primary,
coders one and two followed the revised coding protocol and began their first day of coding in
the evening.

3. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 3
In order to test how reliable our findings were, we decided to conduct an inter coder reliability
test (Appendix C). We gathered five Fox News clips each coder had to separately code those five
clips. Once we gathered our coding sheets, we began to analyze our inter coder reliability. Our
results (Appendix D) indicated that there was over 80 percent (N=5) agreement across all four
coders.
Results:
We had a total of 63 coding sheets among all four coders (Appendix B). An important factor
that we analyzed was bias. Our variables indicated that there was a 32 percent bias overall in our
research. In general the majority of the clips that we watched were news based coverage. As a
whole, we did not code a substantial amount of opinion shows to compare with the significant
amount of news based coverage. We concluded that based on our substantial quantity of news
based coverage was unbiased (The chi-square statistic is 7.9456. The p-value is .047149. The
result is significant at p < .05; N=63).

4. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 4
The poll driven variable overall results indicated that media did not cover a substantial
amount of coverage regarding this variable at 34 percent. Fox News showed no significance (The
chi-square statistic is 2.6967. The p-value is .440789. The result is not significant at p < .05;
N=63) on their media coverage in regards to the election outcome variable even though there
was 51 percent.
Fox News gave more media attention towards Hillary Clinton than as oppose to Bernie
Sanders. Our overall assessment indicated that Clinton received 51 percent more coverage over
Sanders. The primary focus variable overall on Hillary Clinton was 68 percent and Bernie
Sanders received overall 17 percent of primary focus (The chi-square statistic is 33.1852. The p-
value is < .00001. The result is significant at p < .05; N=63). Clinton received more “half” in the
time spent variable at 46 percent as oppose to Sanders who received 27 percent amount of
coverage. Clinton received 33 percent of the “all” time spent variable and Sanders who received
10 percent. For the time spent variables, our results were significant (The chi-square statistic is
29.6155. The p-value is < 0.00001. The result is significant at p < .05; N=63).
Even though Clinton received a substantial amount of coverage as oppose to Sanders,
Clinton did received more negative coverage in our overall analysis. She received 48 percent
negative coverage than Sanders who received 8 percent negative coverage. Sanders did,
however, receive more neutral coverage than Clinton. Fox News’s tone in terms of neutral for
Sanders was 60 percent. Clinton however, neutral tone was 35 percent. (The chi-square statistic
is 24.7367. The p-value is < 0.00001. The result is significant at p < .05; N=63)

5. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 5
Clinton received the most focus during the days after the March 1st primary at 72 percent and
the days after the March 15th primary at 90 percent. Sanders received the same amount of
percentages for the days after the March 1st and March 8th primary at 30 percent. Our results
show that Fox News appeals to their niche audiences. The network would give both candidates
coverage. However, since Fox News is labeled as a conservative network, we can assume by our
results that Fox News covered more on Hillary Clinton and reported more negatively so that their
niche audiences would be satisfied since their audiences are older conservatives. The network
did not seem to be so focused on Bernie Sanders. This could be a result from his party
identification. Our results could indicate that their coverage on Bernie Sanders was to show the
audience there might be issues in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

6. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 6
For the days after the March 8th primary Clinton received the most negative coverage at
70 percent and her momentum mentioned was at 60 percent. Clinton received most positive tone
during the days after the March 22nd primary at 27 percent. Sanders overwhelming received
positive tone coverage for the days after the February 9th primary by 60 percent and 50 percent
for the days after the March 8th primary. In addition, Sanders received the most momentum
coverage for the days after the February 9th primary at 70 percent. Sanders did not receive a
substantial amount of negative tone; the most negative tone that he received was for the days
after the March 1st primary at 17 percent.

7. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 7
On average of time spent, Clinton’s highest average was during the days after the March
1st primary and March 15th both equaling at 3.8. Sanders’s highest average was at 2.2 after the
days following the March 22nd primary. Clinton’s highest time average was a result of her
winning primaries. After March 15th, Fox News reduced the amount of time they spent talking
about Clinton due to Sanders winning primaries back to back. It was not expected for Sanders to
win as many states and Clinton’s campaign strategies are now in question.
Conclusion:
We examined the Fox News’s primary coverage of the Democratic candidates. We
focused on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. We had four different coders who were split into
half to code on different days. Coders would code after the day of the primary. We needed to
have 30 minutes worth of coverage. We coded three times in the week in order to get the 30
minute coverage. In order to test our inter coder reliability we gathered five Fox News clips and
each person would code separately. The results indicated that there was over 80% agreement
across all four coders.

8. Andrea,Nohemi,Adisa,Ana 8
The coding sheets focused on program bias, poll driven, election outcome, primary focus
on the candidates, candidates’ momentum, and time spent on the candidates. What we concluded
was that Hillary Clinton ended up having more coverage than Bernie Sanders but it was more
negative coverage. Even though Bernie Sanders had less coverage, his coverage was either
positive or neutral. In total, we ended up having 63 coding sheets. Overall, Fox News’s coverage
was true to their niche audiences, these are older conservatives, by reporting negatively towards
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.