Tracking the Coverage of Public Policy in Mass Media

Bibliographic Data

ID7960754
AuthorsStuart Soroka (0000-0001-7524-0859), Christopher Wlezien (0000-0002-0719-697X)
Year2019
Volume47
Issue2
Pages471-491
Publication date2019-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolicy Studies Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0190-292X • E-ISSN: 1541-0072
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/psj.12285
OpenAlexW2898301415
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited38

The average citizen often does not experience government policy directly, but learns about it from the mass media. The nature of media coverage of public policy is thus of real importance, for both public opinion and policy itself. It nevertheless is the case that scholars of public policy and political communication have invested rather little time in developing methods to track public policy coverage in media content. The lack of attention is all the more striking in an era in which media coverage is readily available in digital form. This paper offers a proposal for tracking coverage of the actual direction of policy change in mass media. It begins with some methodological considerations, and then draws on an expository case—defense spending in the United States—to assess the effectiveness of our automated content‐analytic methods. Results speak to the quantity and quality in media coverage of policy issues, and the potential role of mass media—to both inform and mislead—in modern representative democracy

Democracy · Economics · Government (linguistics · Mass media · Media coverage · Media policy · Media relations · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Public opinion · Public policy · Public relations · Quality (philosophy · Sociology · Tracking (education · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics

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