Who deliberates better? A comparative analysis of media content during the 2000 United States presidential election

Scholars studying political deliberation have determined that policymakers occasionally decide issues on their merits and occasionally decide more on the basis of political considerations. Deliberation theorists tend to be less sanguine about the potential for deliberation among the populace, although very little empirical evidence exists to substantiate that claim. Benjamin Page, in Who Deliberates, identifies deficiencies in elite deliberation as it appears in the mainstream media, and advocates an increased role for more populist genres so that issues are given thorough consideration and the promise of deliberative democracy can be fulfilled.; The growth of the Internet in the last ten years has provided an ideal laboratory in which to study the relative deliberative abilities of the citizenry. This dissertation tests the theory that more populist genres can enhance democratic deliberation by conducting a comparative analysis of media content during the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. Specifically, it compares content from the opinion pages of the New York Times with that from Internet Usenet discussion groups to determine which genre best presents both balance and comprehensiveness regarding two general areas of contentious legal issues.; The resolution of these issues---the focus of the case study---occurred during the 36 days following the election while courts attempted to determine the identity of the President-elect. The first area concerned the matter of recounting the ballots in Florida, while the second called into question the legality of certain absentee ballots from the same state. In addition, two indirect variables of deliberation were measured: the awareness of the significance of the conflict, and the absence of obstructions to deliberation.; This study found that the New York Times, representing the elite genre, generally performed better than the populist media, with one notable exception. While the Times showed an indifference to the substantial concerns about absentee ballots, the Internet showed superior deliberation. These findings support the theory that when elite genres fail to adequately deliberate---often when elite values diverge from populist ones---populist genres may perform a compensatory function by more thoroughly considering the merits of an issue.