The Voice of the People in the News: A Content Analysis of Public Opinion Displays in Routine and Election News

Reporting on public opinion is an important task of journalists in democracies. There are several ways in which journalists can portray public opinion: (1) opinion polls (2) inferences to public opinion (3) vox pops (4) covering protest and (5) social media references. These public opinion displays vary in how explicitly they refer to public opinion, how representative they are of the larger population and how active the role of citizens is. Based on an extensive content analysis of all public opinion displays in Flemish print and television news, this paper analyzes when and how public opinion is represented in the news and under which circumstances which representations are more likely to be used. Our results show that in routine news, journalists most often turn to general inferences to public opinion in print news and vox pops in television news. Elections strongly influence how public opinion is portrayed in the news, with a large increase in the reporting of polls. However, more implicit public opinion displays based on journalists' own interpretation of news events still comprise a significant part of public opinion coverage.