ArticleAuthors: Hans-Christian Baumann; Pei Zheng; Maxwell McCombs (2018)
The role of the press as a political watchdog is crucial to the functioning of democracy. Especially in the run-up to elections, voters depend on the media’s presentation of parties and candidates to make informed, responsible choices at the ballot box.
But who, then, influences the news media? Empirical evidence in the United States and Europe suggests that political party campaigns and election coverage in the news media are interconnected and influence each other. This study tests whether such agenda-setting effects between party campaigns and the media also take place in the general elections in the world’s largest democracy, India. India’s western-type political system has a dis...