Generation "Undecided"

When a generation comes of age in America, their journey to political adulthood is narrated by the media. This study explores the how the millennial generation's civic and political engagement is described by digital and televised political news. Further, through a journal analysis, a study of millennials reactions to these media discourses expands academic understanding of the relationship between the group and the news system. A discourse analysis of 199 episodes of popular cable news programs from the 2012 Presidential Election including Hardball, The Rachel Maddow Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report produced four discourses. These include: Connecting millennials to minority groups, reflecting on youth turnout and demographic shifts, describing youth and entitlements, and interviewing youth for humor. A discourse analysis of the 2,097 most popular articles from the 2012 Presidential Election produced three discourses. These include: Referencing millennials as technologically driven, connecting millennials to minority groups through polls, and the use of humor to convey information to millennials. The digital and televised news analyses suggest that there are many perspectives used to describe the role of the millennial generation in the election and the media is divided in its approach to the group. A discourse analysis of 1,122 journal entries collected from millennials reacting to the same digital and televised news coverage produced three discourses describing the millennial relationship to political news. These include: Recognition of bias and framing, a challenge to the descriptions of millennial identity, and a variety of perspectives on the usefulness of humor in political news coverage. Similarly, this analysis suggests there are a variety of ways millennials describe and relate to political coverage. Presented in this study is an expansion on Hall and Jefferson's (2007) representation model, proposing a secondary model that takes place as a generation comes of age and replaces a previous control culture. This study details the relationship between the changing contemporary American media system and the country's largest and most politically and civically engaged generation in its history, with implications for future work in political communication, media studies, and communication and technology.