studying media events in the european social surveys across research designs, countries, time, issues, and outcomes

Abstract

Scholars often study isolated media effects in single country using one method at one moment in time. We seek to generalize the research in this area by examining hundreds of press-worthy events across dozens of countries at various points in time with an array of techniques and outcome measures. In particular, we merge a database containing thousands of national events with five waves of the European Social Survey to conduct analyses across countries and individuals as well as within countries and subjects. The results suggest that there is an impressive degree of heterogeneity when it comes to how citizens react to political developments. In particular, some events generate significant opinion changes when groups of individuals who are "treated" are compared to "control" cases. However, other events produce modest or even null findings with methods that employ different counterfactuals. Thus, findings of both strong and weak media effects that scholars have uncovered over the years could be a function of methodological choices as well as context-specific factors such as institutional arrangements, media-systems, eras, or event characteristics. Data limitations also make some research designs possible while they preclude others. We conclude with advice for others who wish to study political events in this manner as well as discussion of media effects, broadly construed.

Unexpected Event during Survey Design: Promise and Pitfalls for Causal Inference

“…Surveys are generally conducted at the same time in different regions of a country or, also, in different countries. If this is the case, researchers can use these units as additional counterfactuals by testing for the effect of the event in a location where it should not exist (see Pollock et al, 2015). This test can be used to rule out that a global time-trend or any other simultaneous event that might be affecting the outcome of interest in different countries or regions bias the causal estimates.…”

The corrosive effect of corruption on trust in politicians: Evidence from a natural experiment

“…The results indicate that this event has no impact on trust in politicians (Table A6, supplementary materials). Furthermore, since the fieldwork of ESS-6 in Denmark coincided with the fieldwork in Spain, we follow Pollock et al (2015) and use Denmark as a counterfactual and test the impact of the Bárcenas scandal among Danes. The Bárcenas scandal had no impact on trust in politicians in Denmark (Table A6, supplementary materials).…”

How Well Do People Report Time Spent on Facebook?

“…[23,50,65]). International comparative work can be particularly fraught due to measurement error [54,67,2]. Because social media is one of the largest growing sources of information access globally [55], it is important to assess the accuracy of these questions in different regions and cultures in order to support this research.…”