Effects of Newspaper Coverage on Community Issue Concerns and Local Government Evaluations

Abstract

Sociological theory suggests that media and other elements of community social systems mutually influence each other over time. Utilizing results from eight surveys conducted over an 8-year period and a content analysis of an urban daily newspaper, an analysis was conducted to examine the causal relationships among newspaper coverage of community issues, public concerns about them, and evaluations of related government services. The results showed that amount of newspaper coverage was related to higher levels of concern about community issues and poorer evaluations of government services. A time-series analysis indicated a 2-way effect between newspaper coverage and public concerns about the issues. Newspaper coverage of issues had a one-way effect on evaluations of government services, whereas evaluations had a one-way effect on public concerns.