Independent central banks under pressure: Analysing communicative responses to increased media salience

Independent central banks have become increasingly salient and contested in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. The increase in public interest and concern has been ascribed to the technocratic bodies’ contribution to the build-up of the crisis, the increased scope of their powers, and the distributive impact of their post-crisis measures. So far, we know little about how the organisations have responded to these reputational challenges. Yet, a growing literature on the strategic responses of technocratic bodies at the EU level suggests that staying quiet is not an option. In the proposed paper, we use text as data to analyse the communicative responses of the Bank of England to the changes in the media coverage of its activities (from 1997 to 2020). We expect to observe that the central bank – driven by reputational considerations – responds to increases in volume and negativity of media coverage by (a) focusing more on ordinary people and their personal economic situation, (b) broadening the scope of the content, and (c) lowering the complexity of the content. By analysing central bank media coverage and speeches, we seek to contribute to a better understanding of the strategic responses of technocratic bodies under pressure.