Studying media events in the European social surveys across research designs, countries, time, issues, and outcomes

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave via the DOI in this record.Scholars often study isolated media effects using one method at one time point in one country. We seek to generalise the research in this area by examining hundreds of press-worthy events across dozens of countries at various points in time with an array of techniques and outcome measures. In particular, we merge a database containing thousands of events with five waves of the European Social Survey to conduct analyses across countries and individuals as well as within countries and for specific respondents. The results suggest that there is an impressive degree of heterogeneity when it comes to how citizens react to political developments. Some events generate significant opinion changes when groups of individuals who are 'treated' are compared with 'control' cases. However, other events produce modest or even null findings with methods that employ different counterfactuals. Thus, findings of both strong and weak media effects that scholars have uncovered over the years could be a function of methodological choices as well as context-specific factors such as institutional arrangements, media systems, eras, or event characteristics. Data limitations also make some research designs possible while they preclude others. We conclude with advice for others who wish to study political events in this manner as well as discussion of media effects, broadly construed

Manipulated vs. measured: Using an experimental benchmark to investigate the performance of self-reported media exposure

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Media exposure is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences, and yet scholars have struggled with how to operationalize it for decades. Some researchers have focused on the effects of variously worded self-report measures. Others advocate the use of aggregate and/or behavioral data that does not rely on a person’s ability to accurately recall exposure. The present study introduces the prototype of an experimental design that can be used to improve measures of exposure. In particular, we show how an experimental benchmark can be employed to (1) compare actual (i.e., manipulated) and self-reported values of news exposure; (2) assess how closely the self-reported measures approximates the performance of “true” exposure in an empirical application, and (3) leverage the experimental benchmark to investigate whether a variation in question wording improves the accuracy of self-reported exposure measures

Replication data for: Replication Files for "Partisan Perceptual Bias and the Information Environment"

Article Abstract: "Perceptual bias occurs when beliefs deviate from reality. Democrats and Republicans are thought to be especially susceptible to this type of biased information processing. And yet we know little about the pervasiveness of perceptual bias outside the domain of 'performance issues' (e.g., unemployment, inflation) or how individual-level partisan motivation interacts with the information environment. We investigate these issues in two studies that examine perceptual bias on a wide range of political topics spanning two decades. Using survey data as well as an experiment with diverse subjects, we demonstrate that people perceive the world in a manner consistent with their political views. The result is a selective pattern of learning in which partisans have higher levels of knowledge for facts that confirm their world view and lower levels of knowledge for facts that challenge them. This basic relationship is exaggerated on topics receiving high levels of media coverage." Notes: The zipped archive contains Stata data files for Study 1 (JeritBarabas_1_EnvData_Study1.dta, PB1.dta, PB2.dta, PB3.dta, PB4.dta, PB5.dta) and Study 2 (JeritBarabas_1_LabData_Study2.dta)