The information environment and participation

This is the data used for our paper "The Information Environment and Participation: When Reading a Newspaper Increases the Prob- ability of Voting". The data are in Stat format and are comprised of edited survey data from the 1999 (doi:10.4232/1.2865) and 2009 (doi:10.4232/1.11323) European Election Study (www.piredeu.eu) linked to EES media content data (doi:10.4232/1.5178). There are 35,575 cases. Variables and measurement are describe in https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1107744/The_Information_Environment_and_Participation.pdf.
For more information please see the related resources section.

Data for this research comes from two main sources: the European Election Studies 1999, 2004 and 2009 (see Van Egmond et al., 2010) as well as the concomitant EES Media Studies (Schuck et al., 2010). The European Election Studies are EU-wide surveys “about electoral participation and voting behaviour in European Parliament elections.” The EES Media Studies consist of wide-ranging content analyses on a sample of national news media coverage (television and newspapers) in all EU member states.

The EES Media Study includes two ‘quality’ (i.e. broadsheet) and one tabloid newspaper from each country. For countries without relevant tabloid newspaper the most sensationalist-oriented other daily newspaper was included. These media outlets were selected to provide a comprehensive idea about the news coverage in each country.

If you have any questions please contact the authors.<p>Research on media effects

The traditional media play a privileged role in informing citizens through their provision of news and current affairs programming. Contemporary developments in media and political structures, such as the expansion of commercial broadcasting and weakening of political partisanship, further elevate the role of the media.

For this project, we start from the understanding that the news media can influence political knowledge and we further advance this understanding, by using a cross-national approach, to understand under which conditions the news media matter.

For decades, researchers viewed the media as having a minimal effect on opinion and behaviour. More recent work has revised those conclusions but the empirical record is mixed with some studies reporting positive effects for the mass media while others report null or even negative effects.

Our project

Through developing and comparing new techniques for assessing media effects using existing large cross-national surveys linked to media content, we aim to more clearly specify the role of the media on opinion and behavior and under what conditions the media matter.

This project also demonstrates the potential for secondary data analysis to address major debates within and across political communication and media studies.</p>