The Economics of News Content

Abstract

This dissertation examines media content. Specifically, I ask why the media reports the issues that it does. Many explanations have been provided in the past, including theories of journalistic integrity, media bias, and event-driven coverage. This dissertation further develops and tests the profit-seeking theory of news coverage. In this framework, news firms report stories that attract and hold the attention of the audience so as to increase market share of the audience.Chapter 2 reexamines the agenda setting hypothesis, asserting that much of the research that supported it relied upon inappropriate methodology and design to explain a temporal and cyclical phenomenon. To address these problems, I propose and test the profit-seeking theory of media content. In this, and contrary to the agenda-setting hypothesis, public issue salience drives issue content in the news, rather than issue content in the news driving public issue salience. Chapter 3 examines the affect of public opinion, specifically macropartisanship upon issue coverage in the news. As such, I ask if reporters follow the ebb and flow of mass opinion in deciding which issues are newsworthy and which are not. Chapter 4 asks if the public opinion affects the ability of institutional actors, specifically the president, to influence the media agenda.Findings indicate that public opinion does affect subsequent news coverage. The public's perception of the importance of some issues affects the amount of subsequent coverage of those issues. Changes in macropartisanship affect subsequent issue coverage in the news and public issue salience and presidential popularity affect the ability of the president to assert his agenda into the media.