Media and politics : an exploratory study into the relationship between media exposure and public support for MPs in New Zealand

This thesis assesses the relationship between media exposure of leading New Zealand politicians and their public support ratings, as measured by public opinion polls. It examines the complex symbiotic, yet often critical and adversarial, relationship that exists between media and politics. The hypothesis - the greater the amount of media coverage a politician receives, the greater the likelihood he/she will gain high public support - is based both on observations of the ways politicians and journalists interact, and an examination of a variety of media effects theories, especially those of agenda-setting and the leader schema. The theory of agenda-setting suggests that the public will think of people they have seen in the media when asked who they think is a suitable leader. The concept of the leader schema suggests that people have a set conception of how they think a prime minister or leader should act, and that media appearances are an important element of this schema. These theories suggest that politicians who are prominent in the media will gain higher levels of public support than those who do not, because they are seen as both important and leader-like. This hypothesis was tested using regression analysis. A content analysis of five months' media coverage of ten leading MPs was combined with these MPs' ratings in Heylen preferred prime minister polls to create the data set. Media exposure (in conjunction with a variety of other independent variables) was regressed against the dependent variable of poll results, in order to determine what the various relationships were. Given the exploratory nature of this research, the results were supportive of a link between media exposure and poll ratings. It was concluded that media exposure does have some influence over poll ratings, the strongest influence being for exposure which is recent (within the final three days of the polling period) and/or prominent