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Case Salience and Media Coverage of Supreme Court Decisions: Toward a New Measure

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Political Research Quarterly

Published online on

Abstract

Judicial behavior is contingent on case salience. Unfortunately, existing measures of case salience have met with some skepticism. After discussing the characteristics of an ideal measure of salience, the authors construct a new measure of case salience. This new measure expands on prior studies by examining coverage in four diverse newspapers and includes coverage anywhere in the paper, instead of concentrating on front-page coverage only. By developing this new measure, the authors uncover patterns about national media coverage of the Court and provide a potentially more useful measure of case salience.