Television and Press Coverage of the 1997 British General Election

The aims and objectives of the project were :<br> to assess the impact of structural change in media coverage of politics through a content analysis of main evening television news programmes and national newspapers in the run-up to and during the four week general election campaign; <br> to examine the nature and extent of change since the 1992 election in the national newspapers and television news and to compare this news with other countries, based on comparable studies in Germany (1990, 1994), Spain (1993 and forthcoming) and the USA (1992, 1996);<br> to explore the dynamics and outcomes of the agenda setting battle at the next general election;<br> to address questions of media effects, via a triangulated collaborative venture involving the ESRC-funded CREST panel survey and the proposed experimental study of television news by David Sanders and Pippa Norris.