A Specific Approach

Yeah I think Andrew has a good point. We need to elaborate on what we mean by ‘media coverage’. I think we should include all the media sources you discussed (i.e. TV/Print/Radio/Major News Sites/Blogs/Facebook/Twitter). Part of my hypothesis is that media coverage increases from 2001 to 2011 and this is partly due to the increase in popularity and number of new age social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. I also hope to see a positive relationship between the growth in media coverage and the effect this has on voter turnout over time. Could you please elaborate, however, on the partisan element you want to quantify.

I also like your questions Fatou, especially: "Do social media sites lead to an increase in political activism?" That would be really interesting to measure. How would you go about this project? What would be the causal mechanism that connects X to Y? And is there some confounding variable Z that makes the observed association between X and Y spurious? Sounds like an exciting endeavor, especially since it can shed light on the crisis taking place in Egypt.