Please read this report alongside the Time Cover Index, available for download below.
introduction
In a world where print is turning digital, Time Magazine remains profitable for a simple reason: consumers see the cover and they pick the issue up. Whether images picture celebrities, political cartoons or graphic war images, Time’s cover art has existed at the highest caliber for decades. Covers are raw, controversial, questionably offensive and most importantly, they get people interested. Time executives are experts in hooking an audience through a single, thought-provoking image, whether it be positive or negative. Nowadays, the public is transfixed by Donald Trump, to every extreme, and Time knows this. To date, the magazine has published 33 covers featuring him. These covers have no doubt impacted public perception of the president, but is Time only selling magazines, or is it selling political ideologies too?
In the 1940’s, two decades into its life, Time Magazine underwent a shift in its attitude towards political reporting. The earlier generation felt above and apart from politics in their writing, says Robert Vanderlan, author of Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce’s Media Empire. The new generation “conceived of intellectual life as inseparable from political involvement,” he says, as if having an opinion constituted their youth. Today, the magazine still carries a strong political involvement. It leans neutral or slightly left, and reports either complex analysis or a mixture of fact and analysis, according to the Barbara and Mike Bass Library in Ohio.
The president and the media have quarreled since Trump began his presidential campaign. The media openly calls him ignorant, unfit and a racist, and he retaliates on Twitter and in press conferences. For example, at a Rose Garden news conference in 2018, the president told Cecilia Vega, ABC news reporter, “I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” in front of all guests. While Chris Wallace, Fox news anchor, has argued the media should be “objective witnesses to what is going on,” Columbia Journalism Review writers Jon Allsop and Pepe Vernon argue objectivity is “morally inadequate.” Reporting him as a racist, for example, isn’t perverted but a truth that must be told.
Time plans its covers with the intention of conveying each week’s news in a single image. In an interview with FIPP, a global trade association specializing in media content, D.W. Pine, creative director at Time, said, “The mission is to make a clear and graphic impact as simple as possible…. It’s been said that the cover of Time is the most important real estate in journalism.” If this proves true, Time’s underlying political ideologies found in its covers have the ability to tip the scales in politics, more so than any other piece of media.
image index & classifications
All 33 covers of Trump can be found in the attached index, ordered by date of appearance and classified alphabetically for convenience and usability. In my analysis of the images, I found 5 with positive connotations, 5 with neutral connotations and 23 with negative connotations.
| Positive | A, I, J, K, AC |
| Neutral | E, N, X, Z, AE |
| Negative | B, C, D, F, G, H, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, AA, AB, AD, AF, AG |
This varies greatly to the statistics of Barack Obama’s ratings. Out of the 25 covers in the Time Magazine Vault that he appears on, I found 11 with positive connotations, 13 with neutral connotations and 1 with a negative connotation. Comparatively, Time has been harsher on Trump than Obama during their respective presidencies, in terms of both frequency and content.
Images were classified based on the expression of the subject, the words on the cover and the general feeling accompanying the image. For example, image K was classified with a positive connotation because it shows Trump in a powerful stance, with a simple caption reading “Donald Trump: 45th President of the United States of America.” To someone who doesn’t know Trump, this would most likely invoke positive feelings towards him. Image N was classified as neutral because while it pictures Trump, it does not show his face, nor do the previewed articles reference him. To someone who doesn’t know him, this image likely wouldn’t elicit a response. Lastly, image S was classified with a negative connotation because Trump, dressed in a suit, looks into a mirror and sees himself as a king, which conjures feelings of dislike among those who value traditional American Democracy. His demeanor is prideful, displaying arrogance and narcissism – qualities constituting a poor leader. Someone unaware of Trump’s character would most likely look poorly on him after seeing this image.
gathering data
Such classifications are always subjective, so to gather more data on these images, a focus group participated in a survey. The survey was broken up into four sections with a total of 29 questions. The first section asked for name, gender and age to evaluate if demographics had a notable impact on responses. Section 2 comprised of 14 questions, all of which contained a Time cover where participants answered: How evocative is this image? They selected an answer from 1-5, “1” meaning “not evocative at all” and “5” meaning “very evocative.” The term “evocative” references any reaction, because the first step in selling a product is getting a consumer’s attention. This section measured an audience’s reaction to one image versus another, no matter what emotions the reaction prompted.
Section 3 contained five questions. Each asked: You’re buying an issue of Time Magazine. Based on the cover, which one are you choosing? Participants then chose one cover image from two possibilities, which simulated a consumer at a store choosing which magazine to buy. Section 4 included six questions, where a cover image accompanied each, asking: What is your immediate reaction to this image? Participants could select as many answers as they saw fit, from choices: happiness, laughter, embarrassment, disturbing, enragement, indifference and other, where they wrote their own reaction. This section gave participants the opportunity to express exact feelings about an image, rather than just noting they had a reaction like in Section 2. At the end of the survey, participants could answer: Do you have anything to add about your responses or the images you’ve seen in this survey?
Ten questions in the survey were controls, where Trump is not pictured, in order to create a baseline for measuring results. These questions pictured other recent presidents or related images. Controls were vital, not only for comparison, but also to conceal the purpose of the survey. If participants knew the purpose, they might feel swayed to answer the questions a certain way. It was clear their data related to consumer choices and Time Magazine, but with these distracting control questions, a participant would not be able to identify the purpose: to evaluate the role of Trump’s image in creating a reaction among consumers, leading to a possible purchase.
demographics and limitations
One experimental limitation was the reach of the survey. Ideally, there would be equal representation among genders and age groups. In this survey, 85% of participants were female and 15% were male. Also, 61% were Generation Z, 9% were Millennials, 15% were Generation Y, 12% were Baby Boomers and 3% were the Silent Generation. Consequently, 50% of the responses came from women in Generation Z. Another limitation was its inherent political nature during political unrest in the country. The survey began with the following note: This survey is meant to interpret consumer preferences and in no way reflects your political identity and/or ideologies. Please do your best to answer the questions based on the images before you rather than your preconceived notions about the people. Despite the statement, participants might have answered questions based on their political beliefs. However, these responses cannot be discounted because in simulating a consumer purchasing a magazine, such biases are present. With these limitations and possible errors in mind, results can be evaluated conditionally, but
cannot be broadcasted as fact.
Section 2 results and analysis
Results for Section 2 can be found in the box and whisker plot above, which provides two key pieces of information: the average of the scores (marked with an x on the graph) and the interquartile range (the box on each line). The averages rank images from most evocative to least. The interquartile range shows scores from the 25th percentile to the 75th. In other words, the shorter the box, the higher the concentration of scores in that range.
Images in this section are classified numerically because they consist of Trump, Obama and George Bush, rather than being alphabetically listed in the index with images of only Trump. Although half of the images depict other presidents, the three with the highest reaction ratings are images 4, 7 and 14, all picturing Donald Trump. Image 4’s average rating reads 4.324 out of 5. It pictures Trump standing over a crying, immigrant child. The background displays a bold shade of red with the caption “Welcome to America.” Image 7 scores a 4.029, showing an enlarged frown with five checkboxes over Trump’s face – four of them marked with red checks: bully, showman, party crasher and demagogue. The final, unchecked box reads “the 45th President of the United States,” implying that a man who fits all of these offensive terms might soon be the president. Image 14, a series of three covers, scores 3.735. The three were published at different times but act as a storyline of Trump in a storm and eventually being flooded by water.
“Image 14 was the most thought-provoking for me,” says Dru Richter, senior finance and economics double-major at the University of South Carolina (UofSC). “I viewed it as Trump both swallowed in work and unable to do his job due to external factors.”
Results from Section 2 support the idea that controversial covers depicting Trump spark more of a reaction than controversial covers of other presidents. However, not all Trump covers rank higher than all other covers. Ones of both Obama and Bush are competitive, including images 3 and 6, which indicates that while Trump’s negative connotation covers might be striking, participants felt similarly about other presidents’ negative connotation covers. While the public may have a strong reaction to images showing Trump in a negative manner, that reaction isn’t unique to him, but applies to all presidents.
Section 3 results and analysis
Section 3 records surprising results, deviating from the hypothesis the most. The questions pin two images against each other and ask participants to “buy” one. The first group includes headshots of both Obama and Trump. The majority of participants selected Obama’s cover. This question acts as a control because neither image stands out as severe, so participants likely chose whoever they prefer.
The second question considers if images are stronger than words on a cover, and vice versa. The first cover shows Trump’s face morphed into Vladimir Putin’s, a rather shocking and thought-provoking statement, while the second cover displays red block letters regarding the president’s impeachment. Nearly the same percentage of participants who chose Obama’s image in the first question chose the cover with words. This contradicts the premise of the experiment, that images with a negative connotation have the largest impact on a consumer.
“The big, red letters caught my attention first,” says Aubri Romes, a senior studying marketing at UofSC. “Maybe another cover with duller type wouldn’t be as eye-catching.” While the image of Trump as Putin makes a sharp statement, it takes a moment to decipher – a moment some consumers don’t have. In this case, the cover with words appealed more to consumers.
The third question pits a political cartoon of Trump and Nancy Pelosi firing subpoenas and tweets at each other against a neutral image of Trump walking down a hallway. The first image is comical and creative, offering a unique piece of art reflecting current events. The second, however, is unremarkable. It makes no forthright statements about the president, and surprisingly, more than three-fourths of participants selected it.
“Animated covers are less appealing to me in comparison to real photos,” says Emma Roof, a junior public health major at UofSC.
Both the fourth and fifth questions produced nearly 50/50 results – too close to devise which consumers found more appealing. Further, results were so even that consumers might have no preference.
Section 3, in conjunction with Section 2, shows that while negative connotation covers of Trump spark a reaction, they don’t necessarily translate to sales. Some do, but not all.
Section 4 results and analysis
Section 4 allows participants to clarify their reactions. In all but one question, “disturbing” is the most prevalent selection. “Embarrassment” and “enragement” also frequent the answer choices. Other emotions, “indifference,” “laughter,” “happiness” and “other,” fluctuate based on the question, with “laughter” rating highest on cartoon images.
While “disturbing” makes sense for certain covers, like in questions 2, 5 and 6, its frequency among comical images feels bizarre. In these cases, like questions 1 and 4, “laughter” and “embarrassment” were expected to overpower feelings of discomfort. Instead, they rank either equal or lesser, showing participants might feel negative towards any image of Trump, no matter how he is depicted.
Another surprising result is the abundance of “indifference” responses. For each image, “indifference” is selected at least once and up to 10 times. In questions with the highest “indifference” ratings, questions 1-4, “disturbing” and “embarrassment” also produce high results. In two of these, “enragement” scores high as well. This data contradicts itself because “disturbing,” “embarrassment” and “enragement” are arguably the three strongest word choices and pairing them with a word meaning “lack of emotion” shows the variability of the participants’ feelings toward the images. For one person, an image of Trump and Hillary Clinton, smiling and holding a sign reading “the end is near” brings feelings of embarrassment towards the United States and those pictured. For someone else, it brings nothing.
“I found that image very funny,” says Tim Jones, 58-year-old Operations Manager at Lenovo, a global technology company. “I see two losers with sheepish grins, telling each other the end is near because they both think they’ll become president, but also telling the world the end is near because one of them will become president.”
Section 4 reveals new interpretations of the image set due to the inconsistency of answer choices. First, preconceived notions about Trump might be so strong that no matter how he is represented, participants saw him in their own biased manner. Second, preconceived notions about Trump might be so weak that participants made capricious decisions because they didn’t know better. Based on public opinion of the president, the former more likely reigns true.
conclusion
Results from all sections of the survey indicate the difficulty in predicting consumer behavior when Donald Trump’s image is involved. Results from Section 2 exhibit that while Trump’s image elicits the greatest reaction, the negative connotation images of other presidents don’t fall far behind, suggesting strong reactions are a product of any presidency. Section 3’s results show that while negative connotation covers of Trump translate to sales, they don’t conquer the market, challenging the idea of a one-size-fits-all product for news consumers. Section 4’s results propose that the very image of Trump will have emotions attached, based on each consumer and no matter the connotation of the image, which proves the subjectivity of the entire survey. The survey showed that Time’s covers of Donald Trump are viewed with preconceived notions, but paradoxically, years of these covers appearing in the public have inevitably formed some of those notions present within the participants.
When designing the cover of Time, “we have the newsstand buyer in mind,” said D.W. Pine in the interview with FIPP. The creative team will meet “for hours on end,” discussing concepts and captions to draw consumers in.
Whether or not Time has an underlying political agenda, these images sway consumers due to their very nature. Through these images, Time tells consumers that Trump is inadequate and laughable, and at his very best, stoic. Of the 33 covers, Time chose only three covers of Trump smiling, two of which mock him, images H and AB. It occasionally represents his power positively, like in images I, J and K, but for the most part, Time’s covers paint him in an embarrassing light, mocking him visually through carrot-orange skin and mustard-yellow hair, like in images F, G, P, Q, AA, AD and AF. In addition to the cartoons, other common covers render closeup images of his emotionless face, like images B, D and V, or sketches depicting him struggling with or abusing his power, like images L, M, O, R, S, W, AB and AG.
If these images appeared inside the magazine, their connotations wouldn’t be as meaningful. However, their place on the cover means that people who aren’t looking for political news, in addition to Time readers, can receive messages passively, by glancing at the cover in a store, for example. Every Time cover speaks to the company itself – not only what it stands for, but what it is willing to associate its brand with.
While Time is a reputable source, consumers must also understand that they are selling a product. Every company is. If a cover is evocative, controversial or sparks even the slightest interest, it was planned to be. Similar to how a marketing campaign slowly draws consumers in through repetitive images leading to brand identification, these negative connotation covers of Trump condition someone into a certain belief system through repetitive messages on a series of covers. To be a productive news consumer, someone must recognize the impact of negative connotation images and think about it actively rather than accepting the underlying messages passively. Whether or not Time intends to, they are selling an ideology along with their magazine.
References
Allsop, Jon, and Pete Vernon. “How the Press Covered the Last Four Years of Trump.”Columbia Journalism Review, 23 Oct. 2020, www.cjr.org/special_report/coverage-trump-presidency-2020-election.php.
“Behind Time Magazine Covers: a Q&A with DW Pine.” FIPP, 14 Jan. 2019, www.fipp.com/news/behind-time-magazine-covers/.
“Chapter 6: Journalism and Politics and Time Magazine.” Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce’s Media Empire, by Robert Vanderlan, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
“Detecting Bias.” Barbara and Mike Bass Library, Loraine County Community College, 2020.
“TIME Magazine Vault.” The Vault, Time Magazine, 2020, time.com/vault/year/2020/.
“Trump has testy exchange, insults female reporter.” YouTube, Associated Press, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_IWReOz8YE.
