Political Influence Index Pilot Study Results

The Political Influence Index project was designed to develop an assessment instrument for comparative national measurements of the influence of media on politics/government and the influence of politics/government on media. The aim was that this index would capture the relationships and interactions of media and politics and the distribution of power between media and political actors.The hope was that implementation of the index would create a dataset for use in a variety of media, political, and political communication research settings. The index would be far more focused and precise than existing transparency, corruption, and free press indices that are widely used in a variety of media, political, and policy research. The index was initially developed in 2013-14 and a pilot test was conducted in 2015 to assess its applicability in a variety of media, political and cultural settings. The test implementation was made in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, India, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States. Unfortunately, while the initial findings were encouraging, a lack of funding for the project has meant we have not been able to develop it and apply it to a wider range of countries. We are very grateful to all those who helped construct the index in their country and the working paper that resulted from the project can be downloaded below. Project director: Robert G. Picard Funder: John Fell OUP Research Fund, University of Oxford