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Investigating media coverage of the Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick electoral reform initiatives

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

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3271
Date29 April 2011
CreatorsDowson, Janice
ContributorsPilon, Dennis
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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