The great divide: how the gap between mainstream and farm media attention to agriculture has Widened – lessons from Irish newspapers

Purpose To understand how agriculture as a subject has been presented to agricultural and non-agricultural audiences via mainstream and farm media in Ireland across time to establish where reporting gaps, differences, and similarities exist in the interest of agricultural extension services.Design/methodology/approach Guided by media theories, quantitative and thematic analyses were conducted on 2,805 articles from Irish mainstream and farming newspapers between 1970 and 2019.Findings Mainstream newspapers lessened the frequency and broadened the scope of their agricultural reporting across time, while farming newspapers strongly and continuously prioritised more narrow coverage of the subject.Practical implications Awareness of trends in agricultural information flows to different audiences implies the need for extension agents to be more strategic in media communication planning to mitigate knowledge deficits between farmers, consumers, and stakeholders.Theoretical implications The detected diverse approaches in agricultural reporting practice imply that Irish mainstream and agricultural media audiences assign substantially different levels of importance and understanding to agriculture as a subject, which, if sustained, poses important implications for perception, decision-making, and policy direction on agricultural matters.Originality This paper adds value to agricultural extension research, as it provides a baseline on the temporal development of agricultural reporting between different media outlets within a major agricultural country in a way that future trends can be reasonably predicted.