Ethnic Media Election Coverage: A Content Analysis Method

Politicians’ recent attentiveness to ethnic media coincides with the emergence of diverse societies where linguistic, cultural, and racial minority groups are an increasingly important demographic. Not much is known, however, about how ethnic media cover elections. This paper outlines a methodology for examining election coverage by ethnic newspapers, drawing upon best practices used to analyze election news content in mainstream media, the theoretical underpinnings of journalism practice, and the author’s experience with coding ethnic news publications.