1. Measuring the Volatility of the Political agenda in Public Opinion and News Media
- Author
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Chico Q. Camargo, Scott A. Hale, Peter John, and Helen Margetts
- Subjects
FOS: Computer and information sciences ,History ,Sociology and Political Science ,Großbritannien ,Public opinion ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,050602 political science & public administration ,news ,Political science ,agenda setting function ,Computer Science - Computation and Language ,Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie ,Communication ,05 social sciences ,Great Britain ,General Social Sciences ,Articles ,Bundesrepublik Deutschland ,0506 political science ,GLES ,ddc:300 ,political agenda ,Computation and Language (cs.CL) ,Physics - Physics and Society ,Computer Science - Information Theory ,Politikwissenschaft ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Federal Republic of Germany ,Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) ,050105 experimental psychology ,Politics ,History and Philosophy of Science ,Political agenda ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) ,Messung ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Zeitreihe ,Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture ,Social sciences, sociology, anthropology ,News media ,politische Willensbildung, politische Soziologie, politische Kultur ,Erhebungstechniken und Analysetechniken der Sozialwissenschaften ,Nachrichten ,Operationalization ,Salience (language) ,business.industry ,Information Theory (cs.IT) ,Fractionalization ,Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods ,Political economy ,ddc:320 ,öffentliche Meinung ,public opinion ,AcademicSubjects/SOC00010 ,measurement ,Volatility (finance) ,time series ,business ,politische Agenda - Abstract
Recent election surprises, regime changes, and political shocks indicate that political agendas have become more fast-moving and volatile. The ability to measure the complex dynamics of agenda change and capture the nature and extent of volatility in political systems is therefore more crucial than ever before. This study proposes a definition and operationalization of volatility that combines insights from political science, communications, information theory, and computational techniques. The proposed measures of fractionalization and agenda change encompass the shifting salience of issues in the agenda as a whole and allow the study of agendas across different domains. We evaluate these metrics and compare them to other measures such as issue-level survival rates and the Pedersen Index, which uses public-opinion poll data to measure public agendas, as well as traditional media content to measure media agendas in the UK and Germany. We show how these measures complement existing approaches and could be employed in future agenda-setting research., Comment: Copyright is held by the authors, and the article is published by Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2021