SCOTUS and The New Media Landscape

• In Event: Courts and the (New) Media

Abstract

Media coverage of the Supreme Court matters a great deal when it comes to public opinion about the Court, knowledge of political institutions, and the rule of law. This project aims to understand the nature and influence of media coverage of the Supreme Court in an increasingly diverse and fragmented media landscape. We propose and beta-test a web application that allows for the automated collection of Supreme Court news coverage from a wide variety of mainstream and non-traditional news sources online, in real time. Drawing from a large sample of articles collected, we catalogue important features of this coverage, providing a comprehensive portrait of the Court-related news that Americans consume in the modern era. We show that topical coverage differs remarkably across outlets. Furthermore, we find that new media coverage differs systematically with respect to ideological content, tone, and complexity. We show that the new media landscape presents Americans with a portrait of the Court that is more ideologically polarized yet overly positive and simplistic. We also show that the content coverage of similar events differs remarkably. Using these insights, we conduct survey experiments to explore the public’s perceptions of rulings and institutional support. Our results demonstrate how changes in the media landscape contribute to declining confidence in the Court and the rule of law.

Authors

• Justin Wedeking, University of Kentucky

• Michael Zilis, University of Kentucky