When: Friday, June 15, 2018 from 16.00 to 17.00, followed by drinks

Lecture: Tracking the Coverage of Public Policy

The nature of media coverage of public policy is of real importance for both public opinion and policy itself. It is nevertheless the case that scholars of public policy and political communication have invested rather little time in developing methods to track public policy coverage in media content. This paper offers a proposal for tracking coverage of the direction of policy change in mass media and then implements it focusing on defense spending in the US.

Prof. Christopher Wlezien is Hogg Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds or has held positions – both permanent and visiting – at various universities in the United States and other countries, many in Europe. His primary, ongoing research develops and tests a “thermostatic” model of public opinion and policy, and his other major project assesses the evolution of voter preferences over the course of the election “timeline.” He has published numerous articles and chapters as well as a number of books, including Degrees of Democracy and Who Gets Represented?