More Than Sports and Traffic? Content of Local News in the United States

• In Event: Visibility in News Coverage: Attention to Actors and Issues

Abstract

In this study, we conduct the first Big Data content analysis of local News in the US, relying on more than 500,000 word-for word transcripts stemming from a new, proprietary data base and state-of-the-art Bayesian text modeling. We document that the local news agenda is mainly driven by traffic, weather, sports and other local news, and crime. In a second step, we assess to what extent consumer demand drives the local news agenda, and find substantive associations for traffic reporting and national news reporting.

Authors

• Tobias Konitzer, Stanford U

• Rebecca Weiss, Stanford U

• James Hamilton, Stanford