Effects of Television News in British General Elections, 1997

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The research used an experimental design to assess the extent to which UK voters' political perceptions are shaped by the content of television news coverage. The research involved: 1. administering a pre-test questionnaire to a randomly selected sample of 1125 respondents; 2. randomly assigning respondents to a series of groups; 3. exposing each group of respondents to a distinctive selection of video news items; and 4. administering a post-test questionnaire to each respondent. The purpose of the research was to establish the extent to which changes between pre-test and post-test responses varied according to the type of video footage that respondents had seen. Three core sets of hypotheses were tested: 1. the agenda-setting hypothesis, where respondents' perceptions of the issue agenda are affected by the content of television news; 2. The time-balance hypothesis, where respondents' perceptions of the political parties are affected by the amount of politically-neutral television news coverage each party is given; 3. The effects of positive versus negative party images on party support, where respondents who were shown video footage that portrayed a particular party in a positive (negative) light should be more likely to evaluate that party positively (negatively) than respondents who were shown politically-neutral coverage.Main Topics:The theoretically-relevant questions on the questionnaires were of three types: 1. Questions relating to respondents' social characteristics: class, age, gender, housing status, etc. 2. Questions relating to respondents' political preferences, party images and issue priorities. These questions were asked on the relevant pre- and post-test questionnaires. This allows the researcher to determine the precise extent to which different groups of respondents changed their preferences, images and priorities after they had been exposed to experimental manipulation. 3. Questions relating to media habits, political interest and media interest. Variables for this dataset were created from the questionnaire responses to these questions. Standard Measures A number of scales measuring political attitudes were those used in the 1997 British Election Study (held at the Archive under SN:3887) to ensure cross-study comparability