Public discourse surrounding redistribution are pivotal to spur material change to counteract inequality

Despite these advancements, we still face difficulties in making sense of the large extent of cross-national variation in welfare state attitudes which cannot be attributed to welfare state regimes as should be expected. I argue that cross-national variation in the characteristics of media systems plays an important role in affecting attitudes, independent of the impact of welfare state regimes. While welfare states should leave their imprint on individual-level attitudes because individuals experience the functions of the welfare state, e.g., when becoming old, sick, or unemployed (Soss & Schram, Citation2007), direct contact with the welfare state is not the only factor shaping attitudes. The way the media provides information can be considered as an important factor shaping support for redistribution and the welfare state (Larsen, Citation2013).

Numerous, largely experimental studies have shown that media coverage of social policy and redistributive issues leaves its imprint on individual-level attitudes (e.g., Barnes & Hicks, Citation2018; Hopmann et al., Citation2017; Kneafsey & Regan, Citation2020; Slothuus, Citation2007). When welfare state recipients are portrayed as undeserving, support for welfare state retrenchment increases (Hopmann et al., Citation2017; Slothuus, Citation2007). Barnes and Hicks (Citation2018) similarly show that how austerity was framed in the British media after the financial crisis had an impact on individual-level support for deficit reduction. However, while the strength of many of those experimental studies is their high internal validity, with regard to external validity we hardly know what drives actual variation in media coverage and how relevant it is in explaining variation in redistributive attitudes across countries.Footnote2

Real-world media coverage of social inequality and redistribution tends to deviate from what one could expect based on socio-economic developments or the material interest of ordinary citizens. The media may pay disproportional attention to economic news which are relevant for more affluent individuals to the detriment of issues relevant to those with low incomes (Jacobs et al., Citation2021). If the media reports about inequality, it sometimes frames individual economic hardship as a matter of personal responsibility, which tunes down the responsibility of the government in combating inequality (Epp & Jennings, Citation2021). In a detailed analysis of news coverage of social inequality in four European countries, Grisold and Preston (Citation2020) find media coverage of issues related to social inequality to be highly incomplete. Media reporting on social inequality tends to downplay existing power relations and conflicts of interest and frequently stays silent with respect to concrete political measures that could be implemented to counteract rising levels of social inequality. Despite these findings, however, empirical work trying to map and explain variation in media coverage on inequality and redistribution across countries is highly limited (cf. the discussion in Grisold & Preston, Citation2020).