Once established, these data-collection procedures provide a ready-made conceptual framework for organizing perceptions of a given need or problem, especially when the procedures are widely publicized by the mass media (e.g., Best 2013; Morris 1985). The “official” poverty thresholds established by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, for example, play a major role in shaping public discussion of economic deprivation in American society, given that the poverty rates derived from these thresholds are highlighted by the media when they are released annually. As Nichols observes, “claimsmakers in the federal government…have easy access to mass media that ensures broad coverage of their definitions” (Nichols 2003, p. 110). The logic underlying the Census Bureau’s measurement approach, however, is just one of a number of reasonable models that might be employed, and these alternatives have the potential to generate perceptions of the “poverty problem” that are markedly different from those produced by the prevailing methodology (e.g., Acs 2014).