ePolitics 2004

Ten Internet web sites were monitored for 7 days during the start of the primary election season: January 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28 and 29. Each day, the sites were downloaded at 9:00 am and 5:00 pm., which marked the beginning and end of the workday. Each download took between 10 and 15 minutes. The order in which the sites were captured was rotated for each download time.

Eight of the 10 Web sites-ABC, AOL, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Yahoo! -were the top news eight individual news sites by unique visitors according to Nielsen/NetRatings rankings in November 2003 (the most recent available at the time of the study). The National Review Online and Salon were also included.

Eight of the ten Web sites, all but ABC and USA Today, were included in the 2000 study. Four sites from the 2000 study were dropped due to their discontinuance as news pages: Netscape, Go, Pathfinder, and MSN.

In 2000, the twelve Internet web sites were monitored for six days during the heat of the primary election season before Super Tuesday on March 7. The specific dates were February 23, 24, 27, 28 and March 5 and 6.

Inclusion and Screening

Once the web sites were selected, the election front page was found. If the site did not have a specific home page for its election coverage, the politics home page was used. For Salon, the News and Politics home page was used. For the National Review Online, the front page was used. The Yahoo! election page studied was the political page accessed from its own "News" link. While AOL is a subscriber service, its election coverage was accessed in a non-subscriber mirror Web site.

The URLs for the pages looked at it:

ABC: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/

AOL: http://www.electionguide04.com/

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/

MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/

National Review Online: http://www.nationalreview.com/

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/campaign/index.html

Salon: http://www.salon.com/news/index.html

USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/front.htm

Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/elections/2004/

Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/elections

On Tuesday, January 20, the first download occurred at 1:00 pm instead of 9:00 am. This download did not include ABC News or USA Today.

Coding Process

Researchers worked with a detailed, standardized coding scheme. Front pages for the 9:00 am downloads only were coded for content variables: number of stories, amount of original reporting, number of interactive elements, links to external sites, number of feature stories, etc. On Tuesday, January 20, the 5:00 pm download was used for front page coding. On Saturday, January 24, the front page was not coded, but the lead stories were.

Next, the lead story of each front page was coded. The lead story was selected as the most prominent story on the page. Each story was coded for content: number of sources, general topic, changes in lead story, etc. Then the story was coded for intent variables: story, trigger, and frame.

In all cases, coders worked with a defined set of rules per variable. Of particular note is the 50% rule in effect for story frame. When calculating story frame, coders identified all text that implies which frame the story is told around. If 50% or more of the text is told around that frame, the story is coded as having that frame. If multiple frames are used, but one did not dominate, stories are coded as straight news or no dominant frame.

Intercoder Reliability

Intercoder reliability measures the extent to which individual coders, operating independently of one another, reach the same coding decisions. Tests were performed throughout the project. No systematic errors were found. In addition, the coding supervisor reviewed decisions on intent variables when necessary and made any changes needed to bring coders to agreement.