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While the MM are probably not instrumental in changing pol'al att's during a campaign, voters do learn from the information available in the media. It is hyp'ed that in providing pol'al information the MM set the agenda for the campaign, influencing the salience of att's toward the pol'al issues. 100 voters who initially told interviewers they had not yet definitely decided how to vote in the upcoming 1968 Presidential election were interviewed. Their response to open ended questions asking each R to outline the key campaign issues as he saw them, were coded into 15 categories representing the key issues & other kinds of campaign news. Concurrently, those media known to provide most MM pol'al information to these voters were content analyzed using the same categories. While less than perfect, there is a high degree of consensus among media about the signif issues of the campaign. The rank-order r between the emphasis on the campaign issues by the composite of the media & voters' independent judgments of what were the more important issues was +.967. Judgments of voters who had a preference for one party but did not feel fully committed usually show a higher r with issues reflected in all news than with issues reflected only in news of their party, casting doubt on the process of selective perception. R's whose judgments on important issues show high salience of affect (that is, a strong feeling of liking or disliking), are not likely to recall acquiring recent pol'al information, esp if they have high pol'al interest; but people with high pol'al interest & low salience of affect towards issues did recall acquiring pol'al information. AA.

All media are social -- Theorizing the media -- Who pays for it? -- In the hands of a few -- Big Brother knows you're watching -- The makers and the breakers -- Fear & loathing on cable news -- Doing gender and sexuality in media -- Unequal images in an unequal age -- Are we robots? -- Or are we rebels?

This study analyzes whether media coverage covers messages from parties' electoral programs (manifestos). Electoral programs contain detailed information on a party's future policy-making. However, few voters read electoral programs. Still, prior research often assumed that the content of manifestos is known to voters because media disseminate the content of manifestos to voters. This dissertation evaluates this "mediation assumption" empirically, and analyzes whether and how the mass media cover parties' electoral programs during the electoral campaign. If media coverage did not reflect parties' electoral programs, citizens would have no chance to base their vote choice on evaluations of those programs. This study introduces the concept of the manifesto-media link in order to describe how media coverage can reflect programmatic offers. The manifesto-media link is formulated as three conditions that can be empirically evaluated and tested in a similar way to the conditions of the responsible party model. These are: First, media must cover similar issues to those that parties cover in their electoral programs. Second, media coverage must link issues with parties that emphasize these issues more than their competitors, in order to inform about the parties' issue priorities. Third, media must frame parties as left or right in a way that represents how parties emphasize left or right positions in their own manifestos. Methodologically, the study combines secondary content analytical data on media coverage during the electoral campaign with data based on electoral programs. The findings suggest that the manifesto-media link is stable and robust. There is little to no systematic bias in favor of a certain type of party, however there are differences between quality and tabloid media. These findings contribute to our understanding of political representation and the functioning of political competition.