In 2005 Prince Edward Island’s plebiscite on replacing the single member plurality (SMP) voting system with a mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system was defeated. In New Brunswick a similar referendum, recommended by the Commission on Legislative Democracy in 2004, was never held. This thesis investigates media coverage of these recent electoral reform initiatives in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Specifically, it examines local newspaper coverage of each province’s electoral reform initiatives and analyses the findings to determine if the newspapers demonstrated any bias for or against the implementation of a new voting system. It concludes that in each province the local newspaper media demonstrated a pro-electoral reform position, though there was considerable variation between the newspapers with respect to the breadth of coverage, the amount of bias and how that bias was articulated to readers. / Graduate
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3271 |
Date | 29 April 2011 |
Creators | Dowson, Janice |
Contributors | Pilon, Dennis |
Source Sets | University of Victoria |
Language | English, English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Thesis |
Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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