The relationships between exposure to news shows and interest in the 2007 election and involvement in politics: Combining the quantitative content analysis of election coverage with social research data

Abstract

This research combines the quantitative content analysis of election coverage and survey data analysis to demonstrate the effect of TV shows on democratic politics in Japan. First, we classified 31 private TV shows into two categories-"hard news" and "soft news"-via the quantitative content analysis of coverage of the 2007 election. Secondly, we examined the effects of the programs on interest in the 2007 election as well as political involvement using the Asian barometer 2/CSES3 dataset. The results show that: 1) exposure to "hard news" positively correlated with interest in the election as well as political involvement, 2) exposure to "soft news" had a positive correlation with interest in the election only among less-informed people. This study reveals the importance of quantitative content-based classification to distinguish the particular effects of TV shows on democratic politics in response to diversifying forms of political news coverage.