From Transparency to Information: The Salience of ECtHR Rulings

Using a novel dataset of media coverage of ECtHR rulings as a proxy for public attention to these rulings, this chapter provides an in-depth study of media attention to international rulings. Drawing on this novel data, this chapter investigates two media agenda-setting-related research questions. First, it evaluates the extent to which the amount of media coverage depends on the type of human right violated, and it finds that while certain human rights seem to draw more media attention than others, there is no overall media bias toward a narrow set of human rights abuses. Second, it also explores the relationship between media salience and legal salience, or, how relevant a case is as a precedent for ECtHR jurisprudence. Using two different metrics of legal salience, this chapter finds some evidence of a correlation between media and legal salience, and that this might be driven the Court’s related public relations campaigns being correlated with the perceived legal importance of the cases.