Professors, papers and parliaments : How the media affects politicians’ references to research

• Main Author: Mankler, Anders
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen 2015
• Subjects: knowledge use; media; earned income tax credit; surplus goal; Sweden; mechanisms; Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies); Statsvetenskap (exklusive studier av offentlig förvaltning och globaliseringsstudier)
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-264945

Knowledge matters in politics and a wide range of factors influence politicians’ use of research. One element that has been identified as relevant is the media. However, this has mainly been a theoretical conclusion, in want of empirical underpinning. In this thesis the topic is examined intensively through a quasi-experimental comparison and a mechanism tracing. The cases in focus are the Swedish earned income tax credit and surplus goal, and the concrete hypotheses concern whether the intensity and cohesion of the media coverage of research influence politicians' references to knowledge in debates. The results of the comparison suggest that there is a correlation between the intensity of the media coverage and the use of references in debates, whereas it is harder to say anything about the cohesion. Furthermore, a series of mechanisms explaining the relationship in detail are proposed. Among these is one indicating that vote maximi-sation encourages alignment of knowledge use with the media coverage, and another illuminating the practice of cherry-picking research results that are mentioned in the press. The conclusions thus not only tell us something about how the media influences knowledge use, but also advance the debate on symbolic knowledge use among politicians.