The 2015 UK General Election Coverage in Newspapers (machine-coded) (dataset)

Abstract

The dataset is produced as a part of the ‘Media in Context and the 2015 General Election: How Traditional and Social Media Shape Elections and Governing’ project. It is an 18 month project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The project collected data on traditional and social media coverage of the 2015 UK General Election in order to address the salient questions about the role of media in the context of the General Election and to provide media content data for others interested in media and media effects. The election articles dataset includes over 20,000 machine-coded newspaper stories where the 2015 General Election was identified as the primary theme published between February 1 and May 28, 2015. It contains the meta-data (e.g., outlet, date, length), as well as topics and actors mentioned (i.e. 7 parties and party leaders) and sentiment expressed in each story.