Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Press And Citizen Participation: A Content Analysis, Lisa Pelstring, James Shanahan, Ben Perry

Wildlife Damage Management Conference

We conducted a content analysis of regional New York State newspapers to assess media coverage of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) deer management program. The goal of this analysis was to ascertain media depiction of DEC’s deer management program during the 1985-97 time period. Specifically, this research examines how deer management issues were portrayed both prior to and after implementation of a DEC public participation program (the Citizen Task Force [CTF] process) to determine if deer management issues received more favorable coverage after CTFs were implemented.