Three stories of one truth? Visual framing of AP CNN & FOX news Instagram coverage of the 2020 US presidential candidates

Abstract

Framing bias was suggested in earlier research and media outlets have been accused of partisan tendencies in accordance with the political leanings they are supposedly associated with in popular imagination. The 2008 election cycle presented compelling evidence for the influence wielded by social media platforms in political communication thereby establishing them as critical tools for candidates' electoral campaigns. The consequential role played by these digital platforms in electioneering has been increasingly recognized in the years since cementing their centrality to contemporary political journalism. Instagram is one such medium for distributing news. The visual platform provides news media outlets with the ability to distribute their content produced in non-native formats not original to the platform. This predominant visual approach is ideal for political news coverage and the visual framing of the presidential candidates by the media. This study looks for differences in visual framing of 2020 US presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump through the analysis of pictures posted on the Instagram accounts of the Associated Press CNN and Fox News to identify any partisan tendencies in their choices of images. No evidence was found of any substantial partisan tendencies in terms of frame choices in all three mainstream news outlets. Nevertheless the findings from a two-sample test of proportions indicate that Fox News demonstrated a statistically significant bias towards Trump in terms of the number of frames allocated to him in comparison to Biden during their coverage. Implications of the findings for visual political communication are discussed.