How convincingly do the two studies establish media influence, and why Literature review

How convincingly do the two studies establish media influence, and why they reach rather different conclusions about the media's role - Literature review Example In this study, the authors have conjectured that newspapers have a long term effect on voting patterns. It was believed by these political theorists that the data obtained from the BHPS could provide substantial insight, into the changes that transpire between elections, during pre – elections and in election years. The significant feature of the BHPS is that it gathers information about newspaper reading habits, on a daily basis. In general, many newspapers recommend to their readers the candidate to vote for, and this usually constitutes the basis for their classification. However, the BHPS adopted a markedly different categorisation, by classifying newspapers according to their long – term support to political parties (Newton and Brynin 2001, 272). The BHPS study, fails to consider the partisan attitude of newspapers, and chiefly concentrates on national daily newspapers. A significant disadvantage with the BHPS data is that its questionnaires did not query readers, regarding the amount of time dedicated by them for reading newspapers. Respondents were also not questioned about their interest in the political content of the newspapers read by them (Newton and Brynin 2001, 272). These lacunae in this study render it suspect. In the working paper Was it the Sun that won it again? the author based his study on the data obtained from the 1997 British Election Campaign Study. The latter entailed a four wave panel study, and was carried out between spring of 1996 and the weeks immediately after May 1, 1997, the Election Day. The first phase of the study involved direct interaction with the respondents. In this first phase of this study, the 1996 British Social Attitudes survey had supplied the respondents with the necessary questionnaires (Curtice 1999). The second phase of the study consisted of interviews over the telephone, and was conducted during the first two weeks of April 1997. By that time the election