Media Content as Social Indicators

Abstract

The idea that measures of mass media content might complement survey research in monitoring social change is as old as public opinion polling itself. This article argues for social indicators to parallel economic indicators based on media content. Developed here is one such indicator, the "Green field Index" of Readers' Guide entries. Usefulness of such an index is argued in terms of recent findings on the "agenda-setting" function of the media, which imply that public attitudes and opinions may be more closely correlated with media coverage than with more objective social conditions. This is illustrated with four separate measures of the "drug problem" among American youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which suggest that media indicators are as good as objective measures and poll data for monitoring change. Usefulness of the Greenfield Index is demonstrated in two applications: (1) to decomposition of the issue of race relations into more subtle component shifts in media attention, and (2) the exposure of media coverage of crime and criminal activity as subject to the periodic cycles that characterize fads. Linked to more objective measures and public opinion surveys, media indicators like the Greenfield Index afford relatively inexpensive means to assess social change at the macro level.