Investigating Causal Relationships Between Inflation News Among Other News Topics In Philippine News Media Using Granger Causality

Inflation, a major economic issue in the Philippines, refers to the decline in the purchasing power of the national currency, affecting employment, welfare, healthcare, and other sectors. This has resulted in widespread media coverage, with numerous news outlets publishing articles centered on inflation. Beyond economic concerns, inflation has also influenced the media narratives of other topics. This study aims to explore how inflation news impacts various aspects of Philippine society by developing a time series model using Granger Causality to analyze the causal relationships between inflation-related news articles and other news topics. The research involved several key steps: (a) identifying and collecting reliable news data from prominent Philippine outlets from January to April 2024; (b) preprocessing and categorizing the data; (c) selecting the appropriate lag length using the Vector Autoregression (VAR) model; (d) conducting the Granger Causality test; and (e) validating the results through the Johansen Cointegration test with the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). Findings indicate that inflation-related news from outlets such as Business Mirror and $A B S-C B N$ News significantly influenced other topics, including business, welfare, and technology. This suggests that inflation coverage extends its influence beyond its economic context, though the lack of long-term cointegration indicates these effects are likely short-term.