Making Issues Matter: Local Media and Policy-Based Evaluations of Politicians

Abstract

Does local news help the public use issues to evaluate politicians? While local media may inform the public about the views of their representatives, such coverage could instead push people towards evaluating politicians based on personal traits or constituency service. Local news also allows politicians to justify the stances they take and potentially persuade constituents to change their own policy views. Using a survey experiment and two observational studies we assess these competing accounts from 2006 to 2021. We find exposure to local newspaper and television coverage increases the public’s use of issues to evaluate their representatives and see no evidence such exposure leads the public to change their positions to align with the politicians rep- resenting them. These findings portray local media as policy watchdogs that increase the public’s reliance on issues to evaluate their elected officials, even during an era of severe economic challenges for local news.