Dr. Julien Mercille:

Yes; that is a good question, because it is something we hear all the time. Again, it is a dominant view in media studies that media content reflects what its readers want to hear or want to read. That is a conservative interpretation of the media, and the reason is that there is a big discrepancy between the interests of elites and the interests of ordinary people. So, for example, one often hears that Irish people just wanted to buy houses in the housing bubble years. Well, maybe at a superficial level, because that has been heard about, but it is not true that what one sees in the media reflects the viewpoints of ordinary people. For example, people have an interest in having a good health care system or a good welfare state, and the media does not say that. People did not have an interest in building the whole economy on sand, based on a housing bubble, to make it very unsustainable.