Volatility in the Issue Attention Economy

Recent election surprises and regime changes have left the impression that politics has become more fast-moving and unstable. While modern politics does seem more volatile, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by reporting data over the last seventy years using public opinion polls and traditional media data from the UK and Germany. These countries are good cases to study because both have experienced considerable changes in electoral behaviour and have new political parties during the time period studied. We measure volatility in public opinion and in media coverage using approaches from information theory, tracking the change in word-use patterns across over 700,000 articles. Our preliminary analysis suggests an increase in the number of opinion issues over time and a growth in lack of predictability of the media series from the 1970s.