A Content Analysis of State Political Party Newspapers

The history of the development of the party newspapers is
reviewed in the first chapter. The goal of the research was to
attempt to discover the uses and goals of state political party
newspapers.
Five propositions were proposed which would accomplish
this aim. The first proposition was to discover the extent to
which the state party paper is used to extend the publicity of
the state chairman. The second proposition was to discover to
what extent the party newspaper is used as a tool in finance and
fund-raising appeals. The third proposition attempted to reveal
to what extent the state paper is used to extend the publicity of
the incumbent governor. Proposition IV sought to ascertain
whether or not a party not holding the governor's office openly
criticized the state opposition party, while the incumbent party
merely spoke of its own accomplishments while neglecting the
opposition. The fifth, and final, proposition attempted to
ascertain whether less populous state Republican party papers were
more apt to relate themselves to the national Republican party
and administration.
The research method of content analysis was discussed
and the methodology used in this study was explained. The scores
for nine content categories were compiled and the findings from
a one-issue analysis of sixty-two papers confirmed Propositions
I-IV. The fifth proposition was disproven. A time analysis of six selected papers was performed and
these findings confirmed the findings of the one-issue analysis.
Furthermore, this analysis proved the existence of patterns of
column-inch space allocations in a state party newspaper.