6 - Newspapers, Voting and Agenda-Setting

Summary

Chapter 6 deals with national newspaper effects, especially the claimed influence of the Sun over the voting behaviour of its readers. The associations between newspaper reading and political attitudes and behaviour over the past decades is traced, together with the popular claim that the media, notably national newspapers, set the election agenda for the population. A large body of research finds little or no evidence of strong newspaper effects on party voting and national election agendas. Instead we find strong effects of the normal demographic variables that are usually associated with many forms of social and political behaviour – the standard model of the behavioural sciences.