Paige Ingram | May 16, 2007
Professor Mike Conway has spent the better part of his life reporting and studying news, but his latest research project has made him the subject of the news.
Conway is co-author of a study focusing on the oft-discussed media personality Bill O’Reilly. While many have accused the Fox News anchor of inciting fear and bias among his audience, what makes Conway and his colleagues’ research unique is quantitative data to back up their claims.
Conway, along with IU telecommunications professor Maria Elizabeth Grabe and journalism doctoral student Kevin Grieves, picked up where the Institute for Propaganda Analysis left off in the 1930s, using a system of coding speech that analyzes the use of propaganda.
"It was supposed to be a way for the public to determine if someone is giving them propaganda instead of facts," Conway said.
The IPA originally studied the rhetoric of Catholic priest Charles Coughlin, whose popular radio broadcasts during the years linking World War I and World War II often voiced anti-Semitic and even pro-Nazi views.
Conway said he chose O’Reilly as the subject of research because of his similar prominence in popular society, and tendency, like Coughlin, to "mix information with opinion and present their views as the true reality."
"He’s one of the most powerful people in media," Conway said. At the same time, people often raise questions about the journalistic merit of his views, he said.
"There’s a tendency of media researchers to consider him not a journalist," Conway said, quoting a study where only 11 percent of surveyed journalists labeled O’Reilly as "very close" or "somewhat close" to a journalist.
"While that may be the case, people are watching it," Conway said. "What is he doing?"
O’Reilly’s answer on May 3 was a direct response to the study.
"Did you know that I, your humble correspondent, call somebody a name every 6.8 seconds during my Talking Points presentation each evening? I should be ashamed. That astounding analysis comes from three Indiana University researchers," O’Reilly said on his Fox News show. "What the press release did not say, however, is that the researchers consider pretty much every description to be ‘name calling.’"
Conway counters that the study goes far beyond just the "name calling" analysis and that the research underwent two rounds of peer review prior to publication.
Media outlets have focused on the study, including USAToday.com, The View, Scarborough Country and a number of blog entries. Conway is mentioned in an O’Reilly entry on the Web site Wikipedia.
The focus of many of these comments has been of political leanings, accusing Conway and his colleagues of liberal tendencies. That is exactly the kind of discussion Conway said he hoped to avoid in his research.
"So much of the discussion seems to be, ‘Oh, this person is liberal, this person is conservative,’" Conway said. "We wanted to look at it dispassionately. That’s the whole point of the study — to get beyond just opinion."
Conway wanted to look at the situation systematically. And through two years of research and hours of coding, that is what he did.
The research team analyzed 105 segments of O’Reilly’s "Talking Points Memo," a segment that opens his nightly show on Fox News Network. The segments were recorded from shows airing between the first week of January to the last week of June 2005.
In these segments, they looked for the seven elements of propaganda previously identified by the IPA: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, card stacking and band wagon. Techniques were measured by the number of times they occurred in a minute, a strategy Conway said he thought would counteract the different lengths of the two men’s broadcasts.
The data shows that O’Reilly used all seven of these techniques. Most prominent in his verbiage is the use of name calling, occurring an average of 8.88 times per minute, or close to once every seven seconds.
A pattern also exists in the subjects of this name-calling. The "left-leaning media" led the pack, receiving 21.6 percent of the name calling during the studied time. Illegal aliens and terrorists also held prominence, receiving 26.8 percent and 21.4 percent respectively, with academics rounding out the top four, the study stated.
On the other hand, Americans, the U.S. military and the Bush administration were most commonly alluded to as victims in O’Reilly’s nightly commentary.
Aside from raw data, Conway and his colleagues also drew comparisons and contrasts between their current study and that of Coughlin in the 1930s.
This is where the study takes a more subjective stance. Conway said that he thinks every person is entitled to present his or her own opinion. At the 2006 International Communication Association conference in Dresden, Germany, Conway analyzed the data in way that highlighted the differences he saw in the rhetoric of Coughlin and O’Reilly.
"In his day, Coughlin was considered blunt and heavy-handed … but O’Reilly emerged as bolder and the less nuanced user of the propaganda devices," Conway said. "This conclusion is based on more even distribution of counts across devices in Coughlin’s than O’Reilly’s rhetoric."
While many O’Reilly supporters have vocalized their disdain of Conway’s findings, calling it one-sided in its focus on only one media personality, Conway encourages the criticism. And, he hopes these studies quell the idea that the data-based approach is biased, as O’Reilly and others have said.
"What I would like to see happen is an academic research," Conway said. "It would be nice to see someone look at someone on the left."
The goal is to link the past with the future, providing a foolproof forum for research.
"Taking a snapshot of O’Reilly through the propaganda analysis lens provides historical comparison with what was designated as propaganda more than 70 years," Conway stated. "This approach also provides a template for future content analysis studies."
Conway is co-author of a study focusing on the oft-discussed media personality Bill O’Reilly. While many have accused the Fox News anchor of inciting fear and bias among his audience, what makes Conway and his colleagues’ research unique is quantitative data to back up their claims.
Conway, along with IU telecommunications professor Maria Elizabeth Grabe and journalism doctoral student Kevin Grieves, picked up where the Institute for Propaganda Analysis left off in the 1930s, using a system of coding speech that analyzes the use of propaganda.
"It was supposed to be a way for the public to determine if someone is giving them propaganda instead of facts," Conway said.
The IPA originally studied the rhetoric of Catholic priest Charles Coughlin, whose popular radio broadcasts during the years linking World War I and World War II often voiced anti-Semitic and even pro-Nazi views.
Conway said he chose O’Reilly as the subject of research because of his similar prominence in popular society, and tendency, like Coughlin, to "mix information with opinion and present their views as the true reality."
"He’s one of the most powerful people in media," Conway said. At the same time, people often raise questions about the journalistic merit of his views, he said.
"There’s a tendency of media researchers to consider him not a journalist," Conway said, quoting a study where only 11 percent of surveyed journalists labeled O’Reilly as "very close" or "somewhat close" to a journalist.
"While that may be the case, people are watching it," Conway said. "What is he doing?"
O’Reilly’s answer on May 3 was a direct response to the study.
"Did you know that I, your humble correspondent, call somebody a name every 6.8 seconds during my Talking Points presentation each evening? I should be ashamed. That astounding analysis comes from three Indiana University researchers," O’Reilly said on his Fox News show. "What the press release did not say, however, is that the researchers consider pretty much every description to be ‘name calling.’"
Conway counters that the study goes far beyond just the "name calling" analysis and that the research underwent two rounds of peer review prior to publication.
Media outlets have focused on the study, including USAToday.com, The View, Scarborough Country and a number of blog entries. Conway is mentioned in an O’Reilly entry on the Web site Wikipedia.
The focus of many of these comments has been of political leanings, accusing Conway and his colleagues of liberal tendencies. That is exactly the kind of discussion Conway said he hoped to avoid in his research.
"So much of the discussion seems to be, ‘Oh, this person is liberal, this person is conservative,’" Conway said. "We wanted to look at it dispassionately. That’s the whole point of the study — to get beyond just opinion."
Conway wanted to look at the situation systematically. And through two years of research and hours of coding, that is what he did.
The research team analyzed 105 segments of O’Reilly’s "Talking Points Memo," a segment that opens his nightly show on Fox News Network. The segments were recorded from shows airing between the first week of January to the last week of June 2005.
In these segments, they looked for the seven elements of propaganda previously identified by the IPA: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, card stacking and band wagon. Techniques were measured by the number of times they occurred in a minute, a strategy Conway said he thought would counteract the different lengths of the two men’s broadcasts.
The data shows that O’Reilly used all seven of these techniques. Most prominent in his verbiage is the use of name calling, occurring an average of 8.88 times per minute, or close to once every seven seconds.
A pattern also exists in the subjects of this name-calling. The "left-leaning media" led the pack, receiving 21.6 percent of the name calling during the studied time. Illegal aliens and terrorists also held prominence, receiving 26.8 percent and 21.4 percent respectively, with academics rounding out the top four, the study stated.
On the other hand, Americans, the U.S. military and the Bush administration were most commonly alluded to as victims in O’Reilly’s nightly commentary.
Aside from raw data, Conway and his colleagues also drew comparisons and contrasts between their current study and that of Coughlin in the 1930s.
This is where the study takes a more subjective stance. Conway said that he thinks every person is entitled to present his or her own opinion. At the 2006 International Communication Association conference in Dresden, Germany, Conway analyzed the data in way that highlighted the differences he saw in the rhetoric of Coughlin and O’Reilly.
"In his day, Coughlin was considered blunt and heavy-handed … but O’Reilly emerged as bolder and the less nuanced user of the propaganda devices," Conway said. "This conclusion is based on more even distribution of counts across devices in Coughlin’s than O’Reilly’s rhetoric."
While many O’Reilly supporters have vocalized their disdain of Conway’s findings, calling it one-sided in its focus on only one media personality, Conway encourages the criticism. And, he hopes these studies quell the idea that the data-based approach is biased, as O’Reilly and others have said.
"What I would like to see happen is an academic research," Conway said. "It would be nice to see someone look at someone on the left."
The goal is to link the past with the future, providing a foolproof forum for research.
"Taking a snapshot of O’Reilly through the propaganda analysis lens provides historical comparison with what was designated as propaganda more than 70 years," Conway stated. "This approach also provides a template for future content analysis studies."
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