Obama Media Coverage Soars to Highest One-Week Volume Ever

With the U.S. presidential campaign heading into its final two weeks before the 2008 election, Sen. Barack Obama is coming off a record-setting week of press coverage in the U.S. news media.
According to the LexisNexis® Analytics 2008 election dashboard, Sen. Obama was the subject of 18 percent more U.S. media coverage than Sen. John McCain last week, in spite of the fact that Sen. McCain himself received more coverage last week than in any previous week since LexisNexis began tracking U.S. press coverage in early July. Sen. Obama, however, garnered coverage in 10,454 articles and transcripts in the U.S. last week, by far the highest volume of press coverage by any candidate in one week throughout the campaign.
Meanwhile, for the fifth consecutive week, Sen. Obama has maintained a clear edge over Sen. McCain in the tone of the media coverage regarding his campaign. Of the 10,454 stories that discussed Sen. Obama last week, 37 percent were positive, 30 percent were neutral and 33 percent were negative. Of the 8,834 stories involving Sen. McCain, 31 percent were positive, 32 percent were neutral and 37 percent were negative.

Coverage Sentiment - Behind the Numbers

- Palin coverage continues to decline - After bursting onto the national scene this summer as Sen. McCain's running mate and generating a massive amount of press coverage, Gov. Sarah Palin continues to receive less coverage by the week.  According to the election dashboard from LexisNexis, Gov. Palin was discussed in 2,085 stories last week, a 20 percent decline from the previous week and one-third of the volume of coverage she garnered when she was introduced at the Republican National Convention during the first week of September.
- Tone still similar for both VPs - Although Gov. Palin continues to generate far more media coverage than her counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden, the tone of the media coverage garnered by both vice presidential candidates is still very similar, according to the LexisNexis dashboard's Media Coverage Sentiment Index.  Of the 2,085 stories that discussed Gov. Palin last week, 17 percent were positive, 63 percent were neutral and 20 percent were negative.  Of the 482 stories involving Sen. Biden, 17 percent were positive, 66 percent were neutral and 17 percent were negative. Last week's media coverage of both vice presidential candidates was significantly more negative or neutral in tone as compared to coverage of the presidential candidates. More than 80 percent of last week's stories on Palin and Biden were either negative or neutral.

The LexisNexis Media Coverage Sentiment Index relies on sophisticated analytics that have been used by LexisNexis in business applications since 1995. The system detects patterns within the text of news articles and, based on those patterns, applies a scientific algorithm to assign a positive, neutral or negative sentiment to each article. The media sample for the index was created from a collection of more than 2,700 media outlets that includes virtually all major newspapers, magazines, Web sites, television and radio networks in the United States.

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