The Press and Its Influence on British Political Attitudes under New Labour

Neil T. Gavin and David Sanders

Political Studies, 2003, vol. 51, issue 3, 573-591

Abstract: To explore the impact of the press in Britain during the first New Labour administration, we used aggregate‐level analysis to assess the relationship between the economic content of press and changes in the public's political and economic attitudes. We examine the effects on attitudes of economic coverage in the broadsheets, ‘black top’ and tabloid newspapers. The results suggest that the broadsheets and ‘black tops’ do exert an influence on voters’ views, whereas the tabloids do not. The impact is, however, not global, but confined to particular segments of the population. The modest effects we have charted, nevertheless have important cumulative political significance in the medium‐ to long‐term, and they put press influence into sharper and more realistic perspective than many current accounts. Methodologically our results suggest the need for further work to focus on press effects on specific groups of voters.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9248.00442

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:51:y:2003:i:3:p:573-591

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0032-3217

Access Statistics for this article

Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith

More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().