Empirical Analysis of the Presence of Power Elite in Media

Politicians, politically connected business persons, bureaucrats, celebrities, and highly placed government officials (collectively termed as the power elite in sociology literature) can influence national and regional policy for personal and organizational benefit, which may not always be in the best interests of the people. Media is a crucial tool to shape public opinion, and is used heavily by the power elite to bring legitimacy to their policy decisions. In this paper, we empirically analyze the coverage given to the power elite in mainstream media on Demonetization, a significant, recent policy event in India. We compare the extent of coverage given to the elite and non-elite, the policy slant expressed by them, and differences in coverage between seven of the largest news media organizations in India. We find that among the power elite, powerful politicians and political parties are given the maximum coverage in the media, with conspicuous negligence in coverage given to expert opinions. Sentiment analysis clearly reveals that opposing political factions express opposing views towards the policy, and there is variation across different news sources as well. We are applying our methods on other contentious policy events to be able to do a more systematic analysis of how media can aid the power elite to shape public opinion by giving them disproportionately large coverage and visibility.