Mediated Uncertainty

When Do Media Matter Most? A Study on the Relationship between Negative Economic News and Consumer Confidence across the Twenty-Eight EU States

“…Such bias may even occur in structural manners, with coverage more negatively skewed when certain parties are in office (Merkley 2018). Empirical research supports this, by consistently showing that economic decline is associated with higher volume of news (e.g., van Dalen et al 2017b) and more negative tone of the coverage (Fogarty 2005;Soroka 2006;van Dalen et al 2017a), while at the same time the opposite-economic growth positively affecting volume and tone-is not found, or only to a limited extent.…”

The Economy, the News, and the Public: A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Economic News on Economic Evaluations and Expectations

“…This series is constructed by aggregating component series selected on the basis of economic significance, cyclical correspondence, and data quality. In contrast to measures like unemployment rates or GDP, CLI is composed of several national economic indicators and provides therefore a more complete measurement of the state of the national economy (see also Blood & Phillips, 1995;Soroka et al, 2015;van Dalen et al, 2015van Dalen et al, , 2016, who all used it as an indicator of the national economy). Related to business cycles, CLI reflects trends that the public is more likely to be concretely confronted with than rather abstract indicators alternatively used to summarize the state of the economy.…”

The economy. How do the media cover it and what are the effects? A literature review

“…Exposure to economic news positively affects people's knowledge of this topic, especially for those citizens with few -negative-real-life economic experiences and those who have no alternative sources of information such as interpersonal communication (Kalogeropoulos, Albaek, De Vreese, & Van Dalen, 2015). An extensive base of empirical research shows how economic news is key to citizens' perceptions of the economy (e.g., Behr & Iyengar, 1985;Blood & Phillips, 1997;Damstra & Boukes, 2018;De Boef & Kellstedt, 2004;Doms & Morin, 2004;Goidel, Procopio, Terrell, & Wu, 2010;Hetherington, 1996;Soroka, 2014;Soroka et al, 2015;Van Dalen et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2002), while a small subset of studies report no or minimal effects (e.g., Haller & Norpoth, 1997;Hopkins, Kim, & Kim, 2017;Lischka, 2016;Wu, McCracken, & Saito, 2004).…”

“…Uncertainty can be conceptualized as a subjective experience shaped by external circumstances, such as a crisis; however, uncertainty can also be part of mediated information itself. A recent study by Van Dalen et al (2016) looks into the impact of uncertainty when this is explicitly mentioned in economic news articles, and finds a negative effect on consumer confidence, above and beyond the impact of tone. Svensson, Albaek, Van Dalen, and De Vreese (2017a) investigate the impact of ambiguous economic news and identify economic uncertainty as the mediator through which consumer confidence is affected.…”