How News Media Influence Political Participation

Hamburg.
The next speaker at ECREA 2010 is Adam Shehata, whose interest is in the extent to which the news media influence gaps in political participation between socioeconomic groups, and how this can be analysed from a cross-national comparative perspective. The study examines nine European countries, and builds on an institutional framework that examines the joint impact of institutional mechanisms on participation.

There are two dimensions of influence here: institutional strength (the effects of news consumption on political participation, which is a necessary condition for influencing gaps), and the distinctiveness of the population base of the media (the socioeconomic characteristics of news consumers). The hypothesis here is that news media use has a positive effect on political participation, and that news media institutions with a low-education bias (targetting less educated audiences) will narrow gaps in participation between socioeconomic groups, while those with a high-education bias will widen such gaps. Further, news media use is likely to narrow gaps in voting participation than other, less widespread forms of political participation. These hypotheses were tested using European Social Survey data.

First, the study examined the mean scores of news consumption across socioeconomic groups. Also, TV news media had mainly a low education bias, newspapers had a high-education bias (and were read more in northern European countries, where overall education gaps were also lower).

Newspapers had positive effects on participation, TV had week effects overall. However, newspapers also work to increase gaps in participation between socioeconomic groups – especially in southern countries, where they were read less overall.

This means that TV most resembles a weak institution (with little effect on political participation); newspapers are an additive institution, especially in northern European countries. Papers narrow gaps in voting in northern countries, but widen them in southern countries. They also widen gaps in expressive activities in all countries, but more in the south. But overall, too, media influence on participation seems to be relatively small.