This project explores mass media as a source of public responsiveness to policy change. More precisely, it examines the role of mass media in the functioning of representative democratic government, focusing on the availability of accurate, readily-interpretable policy information in news coverage. It does so through a large-scale automated content-analysis of coverage across eight policy domains in the US, from 1980 to the present, alongside longitudinal data on government spending and public opinion. In so doing, the project produces the first exploration of the mechanisms driving responsive publics and, simultaneously, an investigation into the nature and accuracy of media content on policy. It provides, in sum, a unique, ?big? data-driven investigation into how (and when and why, indeed, whether) representative democracy works.