Voting Behaviour, the Economy and the Mass Media: Dependency, Consonance and Priming as a Route to Theoretical and Empirical Integration

This study looks at three areas of theoretical and empirical development in mass media research (Dependency Theory; Priming Theory; and Noelle-Neumann's concept of Consonance) and at their relevance to some outstanding theoretical issues in the modelling of voting behaviour and public opinion. The author examines aggregate and individual level models (with a xvpredominant, though not exclusive, focus on the economy, and economic issue and perceptions). The object is to explore the potential contribution that a media dimension can make to the explanatory underpinning of models of voting behaviour and public opinion.