Thinking inside the (black) box: Agenda setting, information seeking, and the marketplace of ideas in the 2012 presidential election

Abstract

Scholarship on agenda setting and electoral politics often suffers from lack of access to data on deliberative processes, a shortcoming that often leads to inflexible theoretical outcomes. In this article, I assess the viability of a new data source—Google web search data—for use in social science research. Such data, when collected and applied appropriately, offer a unique lens through which information on patterns of information seeking can be drawn. I examine data on the final phase of the 2012 US presidential election and present findings along two lines. First, sensitivity tests demonstrate that web search information can proxy for public opinion. Second, testing of hypotheses finds that candidate presence on the campaign trail, although generally correlated with increased interest in political issue, is subject to media- and event-specific modifying effects. These findings underline this article’s principal contention that web search data are a viable resource for scholars of political communication.

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