Anticipating the video presidency: News coverage of television's emerging political function, 1900–1952

David Allen Baird, Purdue University

Abstract

This study was designed to document the “prehistory” of television's relationship with presidential politics. Prior to the widespread diffusion of television in the 1950s, the medium's development had been a matter of intense interest to the American press. Thousands of articles anticipated and eventually described the emergence of television's technological form, programming, and social effects. One strand of this speculation, and the focus of this study, pertained to the medium's implications for politics. Using the timeframe of 1900 to 1952 and working with a sample of 694 articles culled from seventy-six newspapers, magazines, and journals, the author identified the principal themes in the coverage of television's emerging political function. Points of emphasis included the premium that television would place on a candidate's physical appearance, the potential that television had for helping citizens more accurately evaluate a candidate's qualifications for office, and the role that television would play in campaigns, party conventions, and inaugurations. In addition, the study indicated that although an early and widespread optimism about television's political effects carried over into the 1950s, critics by then were growing more vocal in their contention that television's influence might not be as beneficent as many previously had assumed.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Ogles, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Mass media

COinS