Replication Data for: \"Making Austerity Popular: The Media and Mass Attitudes Towards Fiscal Policy\"

What explains variation in individual attitudes towards government deficits? Although macroeconomic stance is of paramount importance for contemporary governments, our understanding of its popular politics is limited. We argue that popular attitudes regarding austerity are influenced by media (and wider elite) framing. Information necessary to form preferences on the deficit is not provided neutrally, and its provision shapes how voters understand their interests. A wide range of evidence from Britain between 2010 and 2015 supports this claim. In the British Election Study, deficit attitudes vary systematically with the source of news consumption, even controlling for party identification. A structural topic model of two major newspapers' reporting shows that content varies systematically with respect to coverage of public borrowing --- in ways that intuitively accord with the attitudes of their readerships. Finally, a survey experiment suggests causation from media to attitudes: deficit preferences change based on the presentation of deficit information.是什么因素导致个体对政府赤字的态度存在差异？尽管宏观经济立场对当代政府而言至关重要，但学界对其对应的大众政治维度的认知仍较为有限。我们提出，公众对于财政紧缩的态度会受到媒体（及更广泛的精英阶层）的叙事框架影响。针对赤字议题形成政策偏好所需的相关信息，其传播并非中立，而信息的呈现方式将塑造选民对自身利益的认知逻辑。2010至2015年间英国的多维度实证证据均支持这一论断。在英国选举研究（British Election Study）中，即便控制了政党认同变量，个体对赤字的态度仍会随新闻消费来源的不同呈现系统性差异。对两家主流报纸报道开展的结构主题模型（structural topic model）分析显示，其关于公共借贷的报道内容存在系统性差异，且该差异与各自受众的态度倾向具有直观的契合性。最后，一项调查实验证实了媒体对公众态度的因果影响：赤字政策偏好会随赤字信息的呈现方式不同而发生改变。