Replication Data for: How the News Media Activates Public Expression and Influences National Agendas

We demonstrate that the news media causes Americans to take public stands on issues, join national policy conversations, and express themselves publicly more often than they would otherwise --- all key components of democratic politics. We recruited 48 mostly small media outlets that allowed us to choose groups of outlets to write and publish articles, on subjects we approved, and dates we randomly assigned. We estimate the causal effect on proximal measures, such as website pageviews and Twitter discussion of the articles' specific subjects, and distal ones, such as national Twitter conversation in broad policy areas. Our intervention increased discussion in each broad policy area by $\approx$ 62.7% (relative to a day's volume), accounting for 13,166 additional posts, with similar effects across population subgroups.