Doctoral Dissertation: Economic news and public perceptions of the U.S. Economy

有公认的政治学发现，国民经济的表现会影响公众舆论和选举，但人们对这种影响的因果路径知之甚少。由于证据表明，公民对国家经济表现的看法在这一过程中发挥了关键作用，因此需要对这些观点的形成方式进行更多的研究。这个博士论文研究项目考察了大众媒体新闻报道对公众对经济的看法的影响。研究了代表公众看法的两个因变量：公众对经济表现的评价和经济作为一个重要的公共问题的突出程度。这项研究为信息流在民主进程中的作用提供了新的见解。从精英和新闻来源传达信息的媒体内容预计将对公众舆论产生影响，这种影响独立于实际的客观经济表现衡量标准的影响。为了评估这一假设，将利用原始内容分析来开发代表来自电视和新闻纸的经济新闻内容的数据集。将这些数据集与代表实际经济状况的时间序列数据一起使用，将允许在六年内测试独立媒体对集体舆论的影响。此外，来自小组调查的数据将被用来调查在两年时间内个人经济观点变化的来源。

There are well established political science findings that the performance of the national economy influences public opinion and elections, yet little is understood about the causal path along which this influence travels. Since evidence indicates the critical role of citizens' views of national economic performance in the process, more research is needed on the ways in which these views are formed. This Doctoral Dissertation Research project examines the influence of mass media news reports upon public perceptions of the economy. Two-dependent variables representing public perceptions are studied: public evaluations of economic performance and salience of the economy as an important public issue. This research provides new insights into the role of information flows in democratic processes. Media content conveying messages from elite and journalistic sources is expected to exert an effect upon public opinion which is independent of the effects of actual objective measures of economic performance. In order to asses this hypothesis, an original content analysis will be utilized to develop datasets representing economic news content from both television and newsprint. Using these datasets along with time-series data representing actual economic conditions will allow testing for independent media effects on collective public opinion over a six-year period. In addition, data from a panel survey will be used to investigate the sources of changes in the economic views of individuals over a two-year time period.