Media Systems, News Content, and Public Perception of Political Reality

Project leader: Toril Aalberg

The overall aim of this project is to study the information given by the news media to the public, and how this information influences the public’s knowledge and perception of political reality. Our research will contribute to the research agenda in two areas: (i) One important goal is to investigate how the information given by the news media varies across different media systems and types of media within these systems. Does news content vary across media systems in that the amount of information, the focus of information and the use of news frames varies significantly, or is there no significant difference in the information provided by the different news media in different media systems? (ii) A second goal is to study how between and/or within system variations in news content may influence political knowledge and public perception of political reality.