Newspaper Coverage and Public Concern About Community Issues *

At the community level … the evidence suggests that media coverage of an issue causes an increase in the number of people concerned about an issue. At the same time, the amount of coverage media devote to an issue is influenced by the public. Translated into general systems terms, feedback loops should exist between media coverage and public concern about issues over time. Based on the above discussion, it might be expected that these feedback loops will take two different forms. ¹