Media in Context and The 2015 General Election: How Traditional and Social Media Shape Elections and Governing

The 2015 British election media study we propose is timely and important in an era of declining support for the major parties. In the last two elections the leading parties have formed governments with roughly 35 percent of the vote, with 2015 currently promising a similar scenario and possibly another coalition. The election also promises debates--including more leaders' debates--on major constitutional issues pertaining to national and regional devolution and their consequences for Westminster, as well as on the possibility of a referendum on continuing EU membership, all in a context of continuing austerity. Media reporting and framing of such subjects is likely to be critical to the dynamics of the election, to public opinion, and to the election's aftermath.

Yet although their effects on voters have consumed research on electoral politics in Britain, the US and other democracies since the 1940s, the question of media effects remains unsettled. Moreover, the issue of the difference that social media has made, supplementing or replacing the information provided by traditional media--television, newspapers and radio--further muddies the waters. In this research we both seek to address several pressing questions pertaining to media effects on governance and elections and also to gather timely and high quality data on media coverage during and after the 2015 British general election to share with the user community.

The substantive questions we will examine within our study are:
1) The flow of campaign information. Traditional academic models depict campaign information flows as linear, from elites to opinion leaders to masses, but this may no longer be accurate in a world in which social media can provide a platform for opinion leaders (and masses) to produce information. While some think that social media have made opinion leaders even more important, others argue that it has cut them out of the picture, with information flowing directly to the consumer.
2) The changing media landscape matters in a second way--not in terms of the flow of information but, more straightforwardly, for where if at all people obtain political information in a world of declining newspaper readership and trust in media. Moreover, the traditional media no longer play the same gatekeeping role, potentially diluting their influence on the issue agenda. For example, traditional campaigns in the UK followed a pattern in which parties held morning press conferences that launched the "theme of the day." While the media may not have always framed the theme in the way parties would have wished, the press conference set the issue agenda for 24 hours. That no longer seems to be the case.
3) The role of the media, both social and traditional, in the post-election period. Interpretations of election results may be important in two respects: in conferring legitimacy upon the outcome and thus fostering what is sometimes known as "losers' consent," and in providing a narrative about the mandate the incoming government enjoys.

Our study will also address four deficiencies in existing studies of British media election coverage: that they tend to focus on election coverage, ignoring non-election coverage and thus not permitting analysis of the overall news context or the prominence of the election as an issue; that the data are either not made publicly available or only made available years after the election; that recent British election studies have permitted little understanding of media effects due to very few questions about media habits; and that British media studies tend to rely exclusively on survey data, ignoring the benefits for establishing causation and effect sizes offered by field experiments.

The proposed research brings together investigators with a unique combination of expertise in human and automated traditional and social media content analysis and statistical modelling skills.

By examining flows of campaign information, as well as by linking them to individuals, we are able to understand both where social and traditional media fit in the contemporary information environment, the implications for governance, and media's effects on individual attitudes and behaviours. These research foci allow us to address ESRC strategic priorities such as influencing behaviour and informing interventions. In addition, based on the implications of the research outputs our project will inform debates about how to enhance the quality of political life in Britain by illustrating where media appear to have a positive influence and where its influence is less positive or detrimental. In light of ongoing discussions regarding media (e.g., Leveson inquiry, Political and Constitutional Reform Committee's inquiry on voter engagement in the UK), the data will allow us to identify and deliver policy recommendations by providing a more in-depth understanding of the nature of media coverage of politics and its effects on governance and the British public.

1. Potential Policy and Societal Impact
- The user community outside academe is large and diverse. It consists of all those institutions and individuals who have a professional interest in media, media regulation, elections and electoral processes. One segment of this extra-academic user group is centered around political parties: elected office holders, party officials, campaigners, and those working in research institutes and thinktanks connected to political parties. A slightly different group consists of those representing social groups and organised interests and who equally have a stake in the outcome of elections, and sometimes in providing their members with relevant information and advice (labour unions, employers organisations, churches, sundry cause groups, formal lobbyists, etc.). Another component consists of media organisations and journalists who provide audiences (the mass audience as well as more specialised and targeted audiences) with information on elections. Finally there is a plethora of firms (mainly, but not exclusively, SME's) that cater to the rest of the extra-academic user community (market research companies, media and campaign specialists, consultancy firms, etc.).
- The research findings will also contribute towards evidence-based policy making in the area of media and media regulation. The findings should give clear indications of the impact of social media competition on the production of electorally relevant information, and of variation by source and mode (e.g., TV vs. newspapers). Public broadcasters in particular are interested in fulfilling the remit of informing citizens and can base policy recommendations on the indications from our research about the influences on, and of, their election coverage. The workshops at the 2015 EPOP conference and in London in September will advance these areas of impact. Furthermore, the briefing paper we will write after the stakeholder workshop, and the discussion paper with IDEA, will have implications for policy recommendations regarding engaging citizens in representative democracy that may be of interest to bodies such as the Leveson Inquiry and the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the UK (to which Banducci and Stevens gave evidence as party of its inquiry into voter engagement on July 10, 2014).
2. Research Area Impact
Another benefit of the research is to the UK Research Area: The visibility of the UK as a venue for research on matters pertaining to electoral behaviour, electoral representation, the role of the media, and democracy will be promoted. The innovation of automated media coding also places the UK at the forefront of research using content analysis, while the methods we use to discern media effects using the survey data will have applicability to a rich set of causal questions in the social sciences in general.