13:30 - 15:00
Panel Session 4
Room: Zoom
Moderator: Kamil Marcinkiewicz
Constituency focus and attitudes to MPs in the UK: how media deserts break the link
Lawrence McKay
University of Manchester, Manchester

In advanced democracies, people generally prefer that members of parliament focus on their local constituencies (Grant and Rudolph, 2004; Vivyan and Wagner, 2016; André et al, 2017). It is often assumed that people are aware when MPs are doing so, and that focus affects attitudes towards the MP, because MPs can offer evidence of their focus via the local media. However, the UK is seeing growth in ‘media deserts’, areas without effective local newspapers to cover the MP (Ramsay and Moore, 2016). In the United States, Hayes and Lawless (2015, 2018) show that this affects constituents’ ability to evaluate the local member. In media deserts, we might therefore expect the link between a member’s constituency focus and attitudes to the MP to be weaker, or even non-existent. I test this relationship using a high-quality proxy for constituency focus – talking about the constituency in the House of Commons (Kellerman, 2016) – and recent British Election Study data on perceived constituency focus and trust, alongside the Ramsay and Moore (2016) classification of constituencies according to the presence of significant local daily newspapers. I show that perceived constituency focus and trust have a statistically significant positive association with ‘real’ focus, but there is no such relationship in media desert constituencies. Thus, media deserts may reduce a) the incentive to demonstrate focus, and b) the potential accountability of MPs who ignore their constituencies. This may add to the case for support for local media, as the British government is exploring (Cairncross, 2019).


Reference:
Fr-P4-03
Session:
Political Communications
Presenter/s:
Lawrence McKay
Topic:
EU Politics
Presentation type:
Oral presentation
Room:
Zoom
Date:
Friday, 19 June
Time:
14:00 - 14:15
Session times:
13:30 - 15:00

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