It's (Change in) the (Future) Economy, Stupid: Economic Indicators, the Media, and Public Opinion

Abstract

Economic perceptions affect policy preferences and government support. It thus matters that these perceptions are driven by factors other than the economy, including media coverage. We nevertheless know little about how media reflect economic trends, and whether they influence (or are influenced by) public economic perceptions. This article explores the economy, media, and public opinion, focusing in particular on whether media coverage and the public react to changes in or levels of economic activity, and the past, present, or future economy. Analyses rely on content-analytic data drawn from 30,000 news stories over 30 years in the United States. Results indicate that coverage reflects change in the future economy, and that this both influences and is influenced by public evaluations. These patterns make more understandable the somewhat surprising finding of positive coverage and public assessments in the midst of the Great Recession. They also may help explain previous findings in political behavior. A growing body of work demonstrates a link between economic conditions and both attitudes about government policy and preferences for spending (e.g., Durr 1993; Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002; Soroka and Wlezien 2010; Stevenson 2001; Wlezien 1995). There also are vast literatures exploring the degree to which support for governments and leaders follows economic trends. Some work focuses on economic conditions and assessments of presidential/government performance and voting (e.g.

Economic News Through the Magnifying Glass

“…Fogarty's (2005) study of economic coverage on the front page of the New York Times showed that there were more stories about the economy when unemployment changed, but not when the Index of Coincident Indicators changed. This is in line with Soroka, Stecula, and Wlezien (2014), who showed that journalists are future oriented. The volume of economic news is responsive to change in the Index of Leading Indicators, which indicates where the economy is heading, but not to change in Index of Coincident Indicators, which indicates the current state of the economy.…”

“…1 While the change and asymmetry effect has been confirmed in several studies which focus on the tone of economic news, fewer studies look at whether the visibility of economic news (including positive, negative, and neutral stories) is responsive to (negative) change in economic indicators. Harrington (1989), Fogarty (2005), and Soroka, Stecula, and Wlezien (2014) all found that the visibility of economic news reflects changes in economic indicators, but with notable variation. Harrington (1989) showed that US television news paid more attention to the economy when unemployment increased and Gross National Product deteriorated, but only during non-election years.…”

The myopic voter? The economy and US presidential elections

“…While there are advantages to objective measures, there are advantages to subjective ones as well, most notably that they register actual public perceptions of the economy, which may differ in important ways from what we get using particular objective measures. Some of the differences may be informative about economic effects on the public; others may reflect bias, including political support (Wlezien et al, 1997;Anderson et al, 2004;Evans and Andersen, 2006;Enns et al, 2012;Soroka et al, 2015; also see Ladner and Wlezien, 2007). 16 The correlations between perceived business conditions and four quarter moving averages of income growth and GDP are shown in Table 5.…”

“…It is not clear why voters would do this, but one possibility is that they use late economic information to indicate future economic trends. There are other possibilities, of course, including the characterization of the economy in mass media coverage leading up to elections (Healy and Lenz, 2014; also see Soroka et al, 2015).…”

Making Austerity Popular: The Media and Mass Attitudes Towards Fiscal Policy

“…Thus, we also add to an emerging body of work concerned with the place of the news media in the political economy (e.g. Kayser and Peress 2012;Larcinese, Puglisi, and Snyder 2011;Soroka, Stecula, and Wlezien 2015).…”