Patterns in the politics of drugs and tobacco: The Supreme Court and issue attention by policymakers and the press

Past research has demonstrated lasting effects of important Supreme Court decisions on issue attention in the national media. In this light, the Court has served as an important agenda setter. We significantly expand on these findings by arguing that these salient Court decisions can raise the perceived importance of political issues and induce heightened, short-term policy attention in the broader political system. Using measures of media attention, congressional policy actions, and presidential policy actions, we utilize dynamic vector autoregressive modelling to examine the Court’s impact on issue attention in the macro policy system regarding tobacco and drug policy. Overall, this study suggests that the Supreme Court’s most important decisions might significantly affect broader issue attention in the American political system

When All the World\u27s a Stage: The Impact of Events on News Coverage of South Africa, 1979-1985

A time series analysis was used to investigate: (1) whether a significant increase in news coverage of South Africa occurred during the critical years of 1979-1985 ; (2) whether the geographic origin and/or sociopolitical impact of events, rather than deaths per se, caused the increase; and (3) the manner in which the increase occurred. Results indicated that two symbolic events (i.e., a series of riots in twenty-one South African townships, internal to South Africa; and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Bishop Desmond Tutu, external to South Africa) cumulatively were responsible for a significant rise in news coverage of South Africa. The relationship of these symbolic sociopolitical events to the forces that shape short-term news headlines and long-term social change in general, including the imminent demise of apartheid in particular is discussed

LESSONS IN EVALUATING COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGNS

Builds on the findings of the first and second papers. It examines specifically how campaigns with different purposes (individual behavior change and policy change) have been evaluated, and how evaluators have tackled some of the associated evaluation challenges that the first three papers raised as important to address. It features fi ve brief case studies in which the main unit of analysis is not the campaign, but the campaign's evaluation. The case studies provide a brief snapshot of the real experiences of campaign evaluations. The paper also features cross-case lessons that highlight important findings and themes

Monetary policy in the media

Media coverage of monetary policy actions is a central channel of a central bank’s communication with the wider public, and thus an important factor for its credibility and policy effectiveness. This paper analyses the coverage which ECB monetary policy decisions receive in the print media, and the determinants of its extent and of its favorableness. We find that that the press critically discusses the ECB’s policy decisions in the context of prior market expectations and of the inflation environment, and that the media’s coverage of decisions is generally highly responsive to ECB communication – in particular its Press Conference on meeting days. However, the paper also finds clear limitations in this regard, thus underlining the critical monitoring role assumed by the media. JEL Classification: E52, E58accountability, communication, coverage, ECB, media, monetary policy, press, transparency

Mass Media, Social Control, and Health Behavior Change: A Longitudinal Analysis of Media Effects on Drunk-Driving Behavior, 1978-1995

Previous research in the area of public health communication has predominantly focused on a direct association between information in the media and health behavior change. The dissertation seeks to broaden this theoretical framework by examining complementary routes of media effects on behavior. Specifically, it is argued that by stimulating response from social institutions and facilitating change in the social acceptability of problem behaviors, the media may set in motion formal and informal mechanisms of social control that lead to behavior change. This proposition was tested in relation to the decline in drunk-driving (DO) behavior in between 1978 and 1995. In the first step, an elaborated content analysis procedure revealed that the grassroots movement against DO was instrumental in setting the media agenda for the DO problem but was no more influential than policy-makers. In the next step, the results demonstrated that policy-makers\u27 actions followed the frames and solutions advocated in the media and that the impact of news stories on policy-makers\u27 attention and behavior was primarily manifested in periods of intensive policy-making. The third step of the analysis tested hypotheses regarding the media\u27s contribution to the emergence of an unequivocal social norm against DO. The findings suggested a small independent contribution of media coverage to social disapproval of DD but could not convincingly distinguish between a direct effect (through social learning) and a mediated effect (through social interaction). In the final step, an analysis of all three routes of media effects on DD behavior (I.e., media-behavior, media-policy-behavior, and media-norm-behavior) provided some compelling evidence of mediated media effects on DO behavior and some ambiguous findings regarding direct media effects. In addition, there was evidence that media effects on DO behavior varied by the level of resistance demonstrated by drivers of different age groups to different types of social control efforts. Overall, the results of this study support the argument that by neglecting to consider media effects on health behavior change that are mediated by other social structures, previous studies may have underestimated the contribution of mass communication channels to processes of health behavior change

‘Offline’ vs ‘online’ media: Claim-makers, content, and audiences of climate change information

This paper aims to explore both similarities and differences between offline and online climate change communication in terms of claim-makers, content, and audiences. It is based on academic peer reviewed papers directly relevant to the communication of climate change by the media, published in English language between 2010 and 2016. Interdependences between offline and online media are often cited, especially in terms of web searches of information already reported by traditional media (both print and television). In some other cases, the study of the intermedia agenda shows that the debate originated on online blogs triggers and conditions the attention of print media. This interdependence is also showed by a polarisation between ‘activists’ and ‘contrarians’ in both online and offline arenas. However, while the web offers greater space for interaction and a variety of sources, the dominance of the ‘old media’ point of view seems to undermine these attempts

A SWIFT change after Lisbon? The European Parliament's salience in the media

The case of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) has generated a heated discussion between the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission concerning the data exchange via bank transfers between the EU and the US. However, although the case had attracted opponents and critics from within the European Parliament in discussions about both security policy and citizen rights since the disclosure of the SWIFT service in 2006, the issue became most salient in the European quality press at the time when the European legislature rejected an interim agreement in February 2010. The paper investigates the variation of media coverage over time by drawing on a comprehensive content analysis of quality newspapers in six EU countries as well as on interviews with the respective correspondents in Brussels. It argues that the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty is responsible for the Parliament’s greater visibility in the press – it gave the institution the power to veto the agreement. Yet, the study not only discovers variation over time but also across countries which is being related to the role of the national parliaments in the SWIFT debate suggesting some form of rivalry in the mediated public sphere exemplified by the German case. Despite being a single yet crucial case study, it has positive implications for the democratic deficit debate. Since the media hold the important function of transmitting news and information to Europe’s citizens their reportage could potentially lead to more public awareness of the EU and its representative body in the post-Lisbon era

New approaches to understanding the role of the news media in the formation of public attitudes and behaviours on climate change

This article examines the role of news media on climate change and sustainable energy in the shaping of audience opinions and beliefs and the possible relation of these to behaviours. It reports on a series of studies conducted between 2011 and 2014 which develop existing approaches to audience reception analyses by using innovative methodologies which focus specifically on the negotiation of new information in response to existing beliefs, perceptions and behavioural patterns – both in the short and long term. Audience groups are introduced to new information, to which the range of responses is examined. This approach allows for an exploration of the interplay of socio-political and personal factors as well as the identification of the potential informational triggers for change. The findings suggest that media accounts are likely to have a shaping role in relation to behaviours under a range of specific and coinciding conditions

Constructing a Social Problem: The Press and the Environment

The U. S. daily press might seem to be in a strategic position to function as a claims-maker in the early construction of a social problem. But in the case of the manufacture of environmentalism as a social reality in the 1960\u27s and 70\u27s, the press was fairly slow to adopt a holistic environmental lexicon. Its reporting of environmental news even now only partially reflects concepts promoted by positive environmental claims-makers, such as planet-wide interdependence, and the threats to it by destructive technologies. The movement of environmental claims seems to have started with interest-group entrepreneurship using interpersonal communication and independent publication, gone on to attention in government, then finally--and incompletely--been put on the agenda of the daily press. Once on the press agenda, coverage of environmental issues may have improved. But there are some constraints, possibly inherent in the press as an institution, that limit its role in the incipient construction of some social problems