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5 - Did Fox News Affect Dyadic Representation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2025

Kevin Arceneaux ,
Johanna Dunaway ,
Martin Johnson  and
Ryan J. Vander Wielen
Kevin Arceneaux
Affiliation:
Sciences Po, Paris
Johanna Dunaway
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
Martin Johnson
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Ryan J. Vander Wielen
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
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Summary

This chapter highlights the role media play in political accountability. If Fox News’ entry and presence can shape candidate and member perceptions about what districts want (as we saw in Chapters 3 and 4), can Fox News also shape how responsive representatives are to constituents’ policy preferences? This responsiveness to the district – also known as dyadic representation – is the subject of our examinations in Chapter 5. To test this question, we quantify the degree to which representatives’ voting behavior diverges from what it should be (if they were faithfully following district public opinion). Here we find, once again, that Fox News increases the tendency for Democratic members in marginal districts to “move rightward” in response to rising Fox News availability in the district. In this analysis, our measures reflect the tendency for Democrats in right leaning districts to err on the conservative side of the median voter in their district, and that tendency gets worse as district-level availability of Fox News increases.

Keywords

Dyadic representationcongressional districtslegislative responsivenessconstituency influenceparty composition
Type
Chapter
Information
The House that Fox News Built? , pp. 84 - 101
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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