Mass media attention to welfare state reforms: evidence from Britain, 1996–2014

One of the core questions facing political scientists is how politicians are able to implement cutbacks without suffering electoral backlash. A possible explanation might be that the mass media refrain from reporting on welfare state reforms in a consistent way. In order to explore this, two unique datasets have been collected: one contains information on all policy reforms of British old age pensions and unemployment protection from 1996 to 2014, and the other contains hand-coded media articles that allow the tracking on a monthly basis of what reforms are picked up. It is found that the mass media report on cutbacks, but not on expansions, and that they prioritise easy-to-understand cutbacks over cutbacks that are more technical in nature.