Trending Now: Policies and New Measures of Issue Saliency

Abstract

While we are all familiar with the ubiquitous Google, the utilization of Google search data in looking at trends over time is something that is just catching on. This brings to light an interesting question particularly for policy scholars: how do measures of saliency stack up against one another? To this end, I develop a theoretical framework of saliency that examines questions of whom, what, and how much. Following this, I compare traditional measures of saliency including the Gallup Most Important Problem question, the New York Times, and Congressional Quarterly with newer measures such as Google Trends and Twitter. Finally, the paper examines how each measure stacks up against one another in a look at the most salient issues of the first half of 2013. I conclude that researchers must be able to theoretically justify the use of one measure compared to another but that newer measures such as Google Trends and Twitter offer new opportunities to examine saliency in the general public.

Keywords: Saliency, public policy