News Media as Knowledge Brokers in Public Policymaking Processes

A knowledge brokering model of news media is proposed to explain the influence of news media on public policymaking processes. The model identifies five distinct knowledge brokering functions through which news media regulate the flow and exchange of policyrelevant knowledge among policy actors who occupy the same policy ecosystem. The model also explicates the causal mechanisms that explain the nature, scope, and timing of news media’s influence on policy actors and the public policymaking process. The contributions of this model to advancing theory and research on the media-policy link are discussed.