Replication Data for: Does Newspaper Coverage Influence or Reflect Public Perceptions of the Economy?

Citizens' economic perceptions can shape their political and economic behavior, making those perceptions' origins an important question. Research commonly posits that media coverage is a central source. Here, we test that prospect while considering the alternative hypothesis that media coverage instead echoes public perceptions. This paper applies a straightforward automated measure of the tone of economic coverage to 490,039 articles from 24 national and local media outlets over more than three decades. By matching the 245,947 survey respondents in the Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior to measures of contemporaneous media coverage, we can assess the sequencing of changes in media coverage and public perceptions. Together, these data illustrate that newspaper coverage does not systematically precede public perceptions of the economy, a finding which analyses of television transcripts reinforce. Neither national nor local newspapers appear to strongly influence economic perceptions.民众的经济感知会塑造其政治与经济行为，因此探究此类感知的成因便成为一项重要的研究议题。现有研究普遍认为，媒体报道是民众经济感知的核心来源。本文在检验这一研究设想的同时，也考量了另一替代假说：即媒体报道实则是对公众感知的呼应。本文采用一种简便的自动化分析方法，对三十余年间24家全国性及地方性媒体机构发布的490,039篇经济报道的语气进行量化处理。通过将消费者态度与行为调查（Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior）中的245,947名受访对象数据与同期媒体报道的量化指标进行匹配，我们得以评估媒体报道与公众感知的变化时序关系。综合上述数据可见，报纸报道并未系统性地先于公众的经济感知出现，对电视新闻文稿的分析也进一步印证了这一结论。无论是全国性还是地方性报纸，似乎都未对民众的经济感知产生显著影响。