From Political Unknown to an Unwanted Incumbent: Comparing Media Coverage of the 2020 and 2016 US Presidential Election Within Nondemocratic Media

In a time of declining support for democracy and intensifying rivalry between democracies and autocracies, understanding how nondemocratic nations portray U.S. elections is vital. And yet, despite the enormous attention U.S. presidential elections attract around the world, the manner in which international media makes sense of U.S. campaigns remains unclear, with only a limited number of comparative studies conducted and even fewer looking at non-Western, nondemocratic nations. Furthermore, current comparative frameworks remain biased toward Western conceptualizations of media and their role in democratic countries, with nondemocratic or transitional democracies used to support theoretical models developed elsewhere. Thus, this study offers strategic media narratives as an alternative means to understand transnational similarities and differences in election reporting emerging from four non-Western, nondemocratic nations by comparing their coverage of the 2020 and 2016 U.S. presidential campaigns. Results show substantial shifts in the nature of coverage, albeit with some similarities between campaigns. Trump remained negatively discussed in both elections, but with reporting in 2020 associating his leadership character to his policies. Whereas Clinton was negatively covered in 2016, Biden was neutrally discussed in 2020 with focus on his character and policies drawn in contrast to Trump. Both political parties were negatively covered, with Chinese, Russian, and Iranian narratives associating Republicans and Democrats as pursing confrontational relations with each nation. Most importantly, discussions of U.S. democracy were substantially more frequent and negative in 2020 compared to 2016. Taken together, the study contributes theoretically and empirically to the study of comparative election research by theorizing the role of narratives in international campaign coverage, addressing the gap in research into nondemocratic media reporting of international elections, and provides one of the few cross-time comparisons enabling insight into the drivers of how and why coverage of U.S. elections change.