scholarly journals Experts in Election News Coverage

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Albæk ◽  
Christian Elmelund-Præstekær ◽  
David Nicolas Hopmann ◽  
Robert Klemmensen

Abstract Previous studies have shown that experts appearing in the media are increasingly speculating about trends and developments rather than presenting their own research. With respect to political journalism, this raises the question of whether increased use of expert sources has also led to an increased focus on process relative to substance in election news coverage. The study, conducted in 1998 and 2007, surveys what types of experts are referred to in the election coverage, what topics the experts comment on (in particular whether they focus on substance or process), and whether the number and types of experts as well as topics have changed over time. As expected, there is an increase in newspapers’ references to experts in their election campaign coverage. However, contrary to our expectations, in both 1998 and 2007, there is an equal number of articles referring to the election campaign’s political content (i.e., they mentioned the topics promoted by the political actors during the campaign) and to the political process. And extremely few articles included meta-discussions.

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492091635
Author(s):  
Lore Hayek ◽  
Uta Russmann

Politics in Austria is still a male business. Even though in 2017, women occupied 34 percent of the seats in Austria’s Nationalrat, female MPs are still underrepresented. Moreover, previous studies have shown that women receive substantially less media coverage than men do and this, for instance, disadvantages female politicians to male politicians in election campaigns. Our study seeks to contribute to this debate by adding a longitudinal perspective and substantially underpinning it with empirical data. We use quantitative content analysis to examine whether the election coverage of female politicians in Austrian news media has changed between 2008 and 2017. Our findings show low visibility of female politicians in Austrian campaign coverage that is even decreasing over time; furthermore, the political role a female politician occupies plays a crucial role for her media visibility.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 18-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Kaiser ◽  
Markus Rhomberg ◽  
Axel Maireder ◽  
Stephan Schlögl

This paper explores the integration of different social fields within the German Energy Transition (Energiewende) discourse in the election year 2013 by analysing the hyperlink structures online. Energiewende describes the fundamental transition from non-renewable energy to sustainable sources. This goal is both ambitious and controversial. Numerous stakeholders try to make their voices and interests heard and as such politics has to both disseminate and collect information in order to include all relevant groups from different social fields in the political process. This discourse is also visible online. By analysing the hyperlink structures we are able to see the attention distribution of different actor groups in the network. This study shows that most actors tend to link within their own social field and do not aim for a more integrated public sphere. Especially political actors appear to be lone warriors who neither look left or right and mostly link within their own party and ignore other actors. Whereas social field as the media or public administration are relevant within the network we find that scientific actors are ignored by all fields, except for their own.


1993 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weaver ◽  
Dan Drew

This study measures how much voters in one Midwestern city and state learned about the issue positions of two 1990 U.S. Senate candidates, and what images of these candidates they formed from campaign coverage and other information. Contrary to popular wisdom that describes 1990 off-year election news coverage as superficial, this study suggests that radio news, televised ads and regional newspapers were significant sources of information about the candidates' stands on issues for residents of Bloomington, Indiana. For Indiana residents in general, viewing TV ads and paying attention to newspaper coverage of the U.S. Senate campaign were significant predictors of knowing more about the candidates' issue positions. Media exposure and attention measures, however, generally were not significant predictors of candidate images.


Author(s):  
Peter Van Aelst

This chapter analyzes media malaise theories and their consequences for legitimacy. These theories argue that the increasing availability of information through new and old media and increasingly negative tone of media are to blame for declining legitimacy. The chapter examines these claims by providing a systematic review of empirical research on media and political support. It first investigates whether news coverage has become more negative over time, and then examines the micro process that might explain the link between media coverage and political support. Empirical evidence suggests that where coverage has become more negative, this occurred before the 1990s and has levelled off since, and is concentrated primarily in election news. Negative political news does have a modest impact on political support once controlled for level of education, but that effect can be positive and negative, depending on the medium, the receiver, and the indicator of political support.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey B. Arnold ◽  
Aaron Erlich ◽  
Danielle F. Jung ◽  
James D. Long

Scholars debate whether and how campaigns influence political behavior and electoral outcomes. No consistent theoretical framework, however, defines, measures, and analyzes election-related content from within the media's coverage, particularly in emerging democracies. We apply machine learning techniques on texts from nearly 100,000 news articles during South Africa's 2014 election, and use a theoretically-informed classification of election coverage to demonstrate how the conceptual scope of elections shapes voters' campaign information environment. Our results produce distinct representations of political actors and institutions during elections: a narrow classification provides heuristics cuing race, party, and incumbent performance; a broad definition reflects policy and service concerns parties debated. Topic models and word vectors show that campaign content clusters with parties and their associations with government performance and policies, but candidates vary in how much distinct coverage they obtain on valence issues. We provide methods and evidence to replicably study electoral news coverage across developing countries.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Kitzberger

The Citizens’ Revolution, the political process initiated in Ecuador with the presidential inauguration of Rafael Correa in 2007, initiated a radical transformation in the media comparable to other progressive governmental experiments in the region. The political process led by Correa has pursued a change in power relations and ownership, the introduction of regulation, the demystification of the established media discourse, and an abandonment of the market as a guiding principle in the media. From the perspective of the equitable redistribution of media power, however, it is still an open process whose outcome is uncertain. La Revolución Ciudadana, el proceso político iniciado en el Ecuador con la investidura presidencial de Rafael Correa en 2007, inició una transformación radical en los medios de comunicación comparables a otros experimentos gubernamentales progresistas de la región. El proceso político liderado por Correa ha buscado un cambio en las relaciones de poder y la propiedad, la introducción de la regulación, la desmistificación del discurso de los medios establecidos, y un abandono del mercado como principio rector en los medios de comunicación. Desde la perspectiva de la redistribución equitativa de poder de los medios, sin embargo, sigue siendo un proceso abierto cuyo resultado es incierto.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
D.G. SELTSER ◽  

The purpose of the article is to clarify the place and role of the decree in the general course of the political process and highlight its direct consequences for the fate of the CPSU and the USSR. The scientific literature on the topic is analyzed. It is concluded that scientists draw a direct connection between the final events of the history of the USSR – Yeltsin's decree about departisation, degradation of the CPSU, resistance to the Emergency Committee and the liquidation of the CPSU / USSR. The author describes the stages of the personnel actions of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In his opinion, the nomenclature system was expected: «construction» of the elite (1985–1987), elections in the party (1988–1990), elections in the state (1989–1990), decree about departisation (1991). The decree is seen as the final stage in the denationalization of the party. The CPSU, having lost power and property, ceased to be a state. The content of the decree, the behavior of political actors in connection with its adoption and the political consequences of the decree are considered. In conclusion, it is concluded that the decree was a domino effect, a provocation to the instant collapse of the USSR.


Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095950
Author(s):  
Jefferson Lyndon D Ragragio

Editorials are a political force used by news media to fulfil its watchdog function in fragile democracies like the Philippines. However, they also serve as a platform to invite a more positive reading of strongman administration. Against the backdrop of media populism, the article will problematize how the Fourth Estate articulates its political stance by examining the tensions and complexities in editorials. It will highlight the ways the media deals with subjects and stories surrounding Rodrigo Duterte. Through an analysis of editorials of four leading dominant news outlets (Bulletin, Inquirer, Rappler, and Star), three meta-thematic categories of media frames are uncovered. First, character degradation frames delineate how the media denounces the ties of Duterte with other political actors, particularly the Marcoses and China’s Xi. Second, pro-establishment frames echo the optimistic mantra of the government amid crisis. And third, non-editorial frames exhibit the failure of media to publish watchdog-inspired editorials. Each of these categories has underlying frames that are indicative of the democratic potential, or lack thereof, of news media.


2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Perla

AbstractThis article examines the determinants of public support for the use of military force. It puts forward a Framing Theory of Policy Objectives (FTPO), which contends that public support for military engagements depends on the public's perception of the policy's objective. However, it is difficult for the public to judge a policy's objective because they cannot directly observe a policy's true intention and influential political actors offer competing frames to define it. This framing contestation, carried out through the media, sets the public's decision-making reference point and determines whether the policy is perceived as seeking to avoid losses or to achieve gains. The FTPO predicts that support will increase when the public perceives policies as seeking to prevent losses and decrease when the public judges policies to be seeking gains. I operationalize and test the theory using content analysis of national news coverage and opinion polls of U.S. intervention in Central America during the 1980s. These framing effects are found to hold regardless of positive or negative valence of media coverage.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 1641-1656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uwe Volkmann

It is a long-established commonplace in any debate on immigration that immigrants should integrate into their receiving society. But integrate into what precisely? Into the labor market, into the legal order, into the political system, into a national culture whatever this might comprise? The Article tries to approach the question from the legal point of view and looks for hints or clues in the constitution which might help us with the answer. For this purpose, it explores the general theory of the constitution as it has been shaped by its professional interpreters as well as by political actors, the media and the public. The main intuition is that “constitution” is not only a written document, a text with a predefined, though maybe hidden meaning; instead, it is a social practice evolving over time and thereby reflecting the shared convictions of a political community of what is just and right. Talking about constitutional expectations toward immigrants then also tells us something about ourselves: about who we are and what kind of community we want to live in. As it turns out, we may not have a very clear idea of that.


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