Estimating the Effect of News Media Consumption on Political Participation
This report explores whether there are variations in the relationship of media use and political participation across markets in the United States. Using an independent data set of 37,000 randomly slected respondents from a representative sample of 100 U.S. markets, the study finds that reading the newspaper is positively linked to voting while watching television is not. The overall effect of media, however, is not very strong and varies across markets.