This study examines if the media have an impact on the judiciary. A longitudinal dataset of media coverage is related to Supreme Court of India corruption case decisions during the time period 2001-2010. The study investigates two phenomena: media agenda setting on the issue of corruption and its impact on court decisions through priming judges to give harsher sentences and Pre-Trial Publicity (PTP) and its impact on court decisions. In the first level of analysis, agenda setting research on impact of issue salience is extended to the realm of the judiciary, looking at if increased issue salience of corruption has an impact on court decisions. The findings reveal that media coverage prior to a court decision primes judges to give harsher verdicts in corruption cases. For the second phenomena looking at PTP effects on judges, quantitative analysis centered on whether varying amount of PTP matters. The findings were statistically insignificant pointing towards no PTP impact on court decisions. The qualitative case study analysis focused on the tone of PTP coverage and provides an explanation for this result pointing towards neutral PTP. This finding further provides evidence of why PTP coverage does not have an impact on court decisions, since the media do not lobby for particular outcomes in individual corruption cases.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:683448 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Joseph Antony, Pradeep Thomas |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=229421 |
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