No. 51 - Shichao Zhang, Shinae Lee, Chankyung Pak: Uncertain Election Polls, Uncertain News Coverage: Two-Sided Heterogeneity in News Outlet–Pollster Relations
Election polls and their news coverage function as a form of chained gatekeeping, shaping voters’ perceptions of fellow citizens’ preferences. The recent proliferation of polling firms equipped with low-cost, novel methods has not only multiplied competing results— confusing the perception of public opinion—but also compelled news outlets to selectively rely on trusted pollsters. To examine how outlets make these organizational choices, this study conceptualizes poll coverage as an interorganizational relationship between outlets and polling firms. By evaluating poll diversity at the outlet level, we find that highly insti- tutionalized outlets adhere to journalistic norms by diversifying their coverage, yet still exhibit a preference for legacy pollsters. Further, under conditions of dual heterogeneity, we show that emergent outlets tend to increase the visibility of less credible pollsters, thereby contributing to a more fragmented news ecosystem.
About the authors:
Shichao Zhang
Shichao Zhang is a doctoral student at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea. Her research inte- rests include science communication, public opinion, and cross-cultural communication. She received her M.A. in Media and Communication from the same university in 2023. She has conducted research on polling coverage, AI and media perception, digital media literacy. Her dissertation focuses on science popularization on digital media, trying to examine audience responses to online science videos under multimodality and platform-medi- ated environments. Methodologically, she is looking forward to using computational approaches to investigate transformations in the digital public sphere.
Shinae Lee
Shinae Lee is a doctoral student at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea. Her research looks at how media technologies, cultural expectations, and institutional structures interact to influence patterns of communication and the exercise of power in society. In particular, she is interested in how media reconstructs social reality, with a particular focus on the marginalized groups that emerge as a result—and the forms of solidarity they build in response. Also she has contributed to multiple grant-funded research projects in the fields of digital journalism, data analysis, and diaspora studies, working with institutions such as the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Korea Press Foundation, and the News Communication Promotion Committee.
Chankyung Pak
Chankyung Pak (Ph.D. Michigan State University) is an associate professor of the Department of Media and Communication at Kyungpook National University. His research interests lie in computational social sciences as applied to the study of transforming digital media ecosystems and their impact on the formation of public dis- course. He also investigates how generative AI (re)creates disjunctures between technology ethics and legal models. In 2022, he was a ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow.
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