Media Systems, News Content and Public Perception of Political Reality - A Cross-National Survey, 2009

Public opinion constitutes one of the cornerstones of democracy. Citizens are assumed to hold preferences for particular polices, know where parties and candidates for office are located on the relevant policy dimensions, and cast their votes accordingly. In other words: Democracy functions best when its citizens are politically informed. In order to express attitudes and act according to their self-interest, citizens need relevant and up to date information about current affairs. In many respects, political relevant information is more widely available now than at any time in history. However, several scholars have questioned the quality and the form of information provided by the news media. A central hypothesis in this project is that media systems matter for the information available to the public. How commercial and public broadcasting is organised within a country, or the relative importance of newspapers to television, are all factors that can influence the information provided by the news media, and thus the potential effect on the public. The overall purpose of this project is to study the information given by the news media to the public, and how this information influences public's knowledge and perception of political reality. The data set consists of a web-based cross-national survey conducted in six countries: the US, UK, Norway, Sweden, Belgium and The Netherlands. The survey will let us study between and within country variations in political knowledge and public perception of political reality as well as respondent's media exposure and attention.

舆论是民主政治的基石之一。民众被假定会对特定政策持有偏好，知晓各政党与公职候选人在相关政策维度上的立场，并据此投下选票。换言之：当民众具备政治素养时，民主制度才能发挥最佳效能。为了表达自身态度并基于自身利益行事，民众需要获取与时事相关的最新信息。在诸多方面，当下与政治相关的信息获取渠道比历史上任何时期都更为广泛。然而，已有多位学者对新闻媒体所提供信息的质量与形式提出了质疑。本项目的核心假设为：媒体体系会对公众可获取的信息产生影响。一国之内商业广播与公共广播的组织模式，或是报纸相较于电视的相对重要性，均会影响新闻媒体所提供的信息，进而对公众产生潜在影响。本项目的总体目标是研究新闻媒体向公众传递的信息，以及这些信息如何影响公众对政治现实的认知与看法。本数据集包含一项在六国（美国、英国、挪威、瑞典、比利时与荷兰）开展的网络跨国调查数据。通过该调查，我们得以研究各国间以及一国内部在政治认知、公众对政治现实的看法，以及受访者的媒体接触与关注度方面的差异。