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Replication Data for: "Making Austerity Popular: The Media and Mass Attitudes Towards Fiscal Policy"

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: "Making Austerity Popular: The Media and Mass Attitudes Towards Fiscal Policy"
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/9AWUYJ
 
Creator Hicks, Timothy
Barnes, Lucy
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description What explains variation in individual attitudes towards government deficits? Although macroeconomic stance is of paramount importance for contemporary governments, our understanding of its popular politics is limited. We argue that popular attitudes regarding austerity are influenced by media (and wider elite) framing. Information necessary to form preferences on the deficit is not provided neutrally, and its provision shapes how voters understand their interests. A wide range of evidence from Britain between 2010 and 2015 supports this claim. In the British Election Study, deficit attitudes vary systematically with the source of news consumption, even controlling for party identification. A structural topic model of two major newspapers' reporting shows that content varies systematically with respect to coverage of public borrowing --- in ways that intuitively accord with the attitudes of their readerships. Finally, a survey experiment suggests causation from media to attitudes: deficit preferences change based on the presentation of deficit information.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Fiscal policy
Political economy
Public opinion
Political communication
 
Contributor Hicks, Timothy