Presidential Policy Initiatives: How the Public Learns about State of the Union Proposals from the Mass Media

Media coverage of State of the Union proposals increases public knowledge on presidential policy initiatives, especially among individuals who follow news coverage. These estimates are based on within‐survey/within‐subjects comparisons of answers to factual questions for respondents who are simultaneously unexposed and exposed to media coverage on the same issue. In this powerful but underused design, individuals serve as counterfactuals for themselves, holding constant all relevant observed and unobserved characteristics. The findings are based on statistical analyses of data from four national surveys conducted since the late 1990s covering a range of topics from health care to Social Security reform. Watching or listening to the address directly does not appreciably affect knowledge once control variables are added for whether individuals follow news coverage of the speech, the amount of news coverage, and the interaction of these two factors.