The public’s perception of the President of the United States has been a widely studied aspect in American politics since the birth of the nation in the eighteenth century. In recent years, with the inception of the 24-hour news cycle as a prevalent social characteristic, political scientists have deliberately analyzed the potential effects of the news media and its portrayal of the president on the public’s approval of him (Cohen, 2000; Wolf & Holian, 2006; Woessner, 2005; Schiffer, 2009; Cohen, 2004). These studies have concluded that issue saliency and media biases do have a significant effect under certain conditions; when considering an issue that is not salient, and presenting it to persons with little previous knowledge of political affairs, the news media can have a significant effect on the public. But when a salient issue is presented to a politically knowledgeable public with predisposed affiliations, the media effect on presidential approval becomes minimal . . . The majority of these studies, however, does not theorize on the effects of negative media portrayal, but rather focuses on basic media priming, issue salience, and their effect on public opinion. In fact, a long-held assumption of media influence is that when the news media portrays the President in a negative light, his approval ratings drop significantly. Interestingly, however, it has been suggested that this common hypothesis is possibly a misconception.

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• Social Science