The Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World

Jesper Strömbäck, Lynda Lee Kaid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135703448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Handbook of Election Coverage Around the World focuses on the news coverage of national elections in democracies around the globe. It brings together and compares election news coverage within a single framework, offering a systematic consideration of various factors. Considering the prominence and power of the press in the election process, this volume will offer unique breadth in its global consideration of the topic.

The volume will appeal to scholars in political communication, political science, mass media and society, and others studying elections and media coverage around the world.

1
A Framework for Comparing Election News Coverage Around the World

Jesper Strömbäck and Lynda Lee Kaid

The histories of election research and political communication research have been closely intertwined ever since the end of World War II. According to Blumler and McQuail (2001, pp. 216–218), six reasons for this state of affairs can be identified. First, elections are spurring ”continual innovation and development in the strategic organization and conduct of political communication” by political parties and candidates. Second, elections are convenient benchmarks for charting trends over time, not least with regards to how the media cover elections. Third, “elections provide opportunities to study the roles in political communication of major innovations in media formats,” such as political debates and political advertising. Fourth, election campaigns are very suitable with regards to cross-national and comparative political communication research. Fifth, new theories can and often have been pioneered in the context of election campaigns. Finally, empirical data collected during election campaigns contribute to the debate surrounding different notions of citizenship and the quality of democracy. This is not surprising when one considers how important elections are from both a practical and a normative point of view.

Underlying these reasons for the close intertwining of election research and political communication research is the fact that modern politics is mediated politics (Bennett & Entman, 2001). This might seem self-evident to most readers of this book. Still, even today, much research on democracy and democratic theory lacks a coherent discussion, or any discussion at all, of the importance of communication and the media. As noted by Thompson (1995, p. 3): “in the writings of social theorists, a concern with communication media is most noticable for its absence.”

However, there is not only a lack of discussion on the importance of communication media in much of the literature on democracy and democratic theory. Despite the fact that elections are very suitable for cross-national studies in political communication, there is also a noticeable lack of comparative research on how the news media in different countries cover national elections (De Vreese, 2003). There are some important exceptions (Gerstlé, Davis, & Duhamel, 1991; Lange & Ward, 2004; Semetko, Blumler, Gurevitch, & Weaver,1991), but the overall picture is clear: there is a decided deficit in comparative studies on national election news coverage in different countries.

Moreover, the literature in this area is dominated by research conducted in countries such as the United States and Britain. Thus, most research and theory on election news coverage (its antecedents, content, and effects) suffer from an Anglo-American bias. This does not, of course, mean that they are not valid or applicable in other countries. Gerstlé et al. (1991) found striking similarities in news coverage of candidates, issues, and themes when comparing news coverage of the 1988 French and U.S. presidential elections. Frank Esser and colleagues have made comparisons between the United States, Britain, and Germany in regard to ”tabloidization” of news and metacommunication trends (Esser, 2000; Esser & D’Angelo, 2003; Esser, Reinemann, & Fan, 2001). On the other hand, comparative research on the election news coverage in countries such as the United States, Sweden, Spain, and Britain indicates that there are significant variations across countries (Strömbäck & Dimitrova, 2006; Strömbäck & Luengo, 2006; Strömbäck & Shehata, 2007). What is more important, however, is that we can never know what trends or characteristics are cross-nationally valid in the absence of comparative research. Hence, it is easy to agree with Blumler and Gurevitch (1995, p. 75) when they state that “Comparative research is an essential antidote to naive universalism.”

These observations suggested a need for a Handbook of Election News Coverage around the World. In this chapter, we outline a framework for thinking about and comparing the election news coverage in different democracies around the world. The following chapters will present detailed analyses of the election news coverage within a number of countries. Revisiting this framework in the concluding chapter, we consider similarities as well as differences in order to deepen our understanding of the causes for the patterns observed.

MEDIATED AND MEDIATIZED POLITICS

On the most general level, the concept of mediated politics is often used to denote a situation in which the mass media constitute the main channel for political information for most people. In such a situation, not only do people depend upon the mass media for information; political parties and candidates, as well as all other actors with a need to reach out to people, also depend upon the mass media. Put differently, the mass media mediate between the electorate on the one hand and the institutions involved in government, electoral processes, or, more generally, opinion formation of any kind on the other. Politics could thus be described as mediated whenever the mass media are the main channels through which politics is communicated and when, as a consequence, the depictions of ”reality” that are conveyed through the mass media presumably have an impact on how people perceive “reality.”

From this perspective, it does not matter whether the media landscape is dominated by radio, newspapers, or television. Nor does it matter whether the mass media are independent from or controlled by government or political actors, such as parties or interest groups. What matters is whether the mass media constitute the most important channels for information exchange and communication between the people and political actors. Mediated politics is thus something fundamentally different from politics experienced through interpersonal communication or directly by the people.

From a descriptive point of view, the concept of mediated politics is obviously important, and it does capture a very important aspect of politics in advanced, postindustrial societies. However, it is also a rather static concept that largely fails to capture the dynamics of modern political communication processes and how they have evolved over the last decades. Thus, there is a need for a concept that is better suited for capturing changes over time and the dynamics of the relationship between citizens, the mass media, and politics. One such concept is the concept of mediatized politics. Sometimes, this process of mediatization is also referred to as the medialization or the mediazation of politics.

Broadly speaking, the concept of the mediatization of politics refers to a process through which the mass media have gained increased influence and independence from the political system. Four different phases of mediatization could, theoretically, be identified (Strömbäck, 2007; see also Asp & Esaiasson, 1996).

1. The first phase of mediatization is reached when the mass media constitute the most important communication channels between those who are governed and those who govern. This is also when politics can be described as mediated, as noted above.

2. The second phase of mediatization is reached when the mass media have become largely independent from governmental or other political bodies. This is not to say that the mass media are ever totally independent from outside political influence. From a social system perspective, the relationship between the mass media, politics, and other groups in society should be perceived as interactive, dynamic, and characterized by interdependence. Rather, the second phase of mediatization means that the mass media have become semi-independent and that they largely control their own content as well as the necessary resources that can be put to use in what Cook (2005) has termed ”the negotiation of newsworthiness” with those trying to influence the news. The political system or political actors might still have the upper hand, but they cannot control the media or unconditionally use them to further their own interests.

3. The third phase of mediatization is reached when the mass media have become so independent and important that political actors and others begin to adapt to the predominant notion of newsworthiness and the so-called media logic, in order to influence the news, gain visibility, and use the news to send “signals” to other political actors as part of the governing process (Cook, 2005). At this stage, not only is the social or political system affected by the media. The social system also adapts itself to the mass media, their news values, and the media logic; the media logic becomes the logic that sets out the boundaries for all parts of society which have a need to communicate through the mass media or at times risk finding themselves at the center of the mass media′s attention. This is what Altheide and Snow (1991, p. ix) refer to when they state that: “Today all social institutions are media institutions. As more experiences are influenced by media logic, our worlds are totally media.”

One need not, however, agree that all social institutions today are media institutions to see that the media in many countries operate according to their own logic, and that it has become more important than it used to be for political actors to adapt to the media logic. Media logic means “a form of communication, the process through which media present and transmit information. Elements of this form include the various media and the formats used by these media. Format consists, in part, of how material is organized, the style in which is presented, the focus or emphasis on particular characteristics of behavior, and the grammar of media communication” (Altheide & Snow, 1991, p. ix). On a less abstract level, this means adaption to the predominant news values and the storytelling techniques the media make use of in order to be competitive in the struggle to capture people′s attention. These storytelling techniques include simplification, polarization, personalization, stereotyping, and visualization (Asp, 1986; Gans, 1980; Hernes, 1978; Strömbäck, 2000). The more a potential news story can be told using these storytelling techniques, the more likely it is that it will be reported. And the more political actors can offer stories that can be reported using these storytelling techniques, the more likely it is that these political actors gain visibility in the news.

The adaption to media logic can be made more or less reluctantly, however. As political parties and candidates also operate and need to be successful within the political system, they also have to take what might be called a “political logic” into consideration (Meyer, 2002). Such a political logic operates differently in different countries, depending on a number of factors related to, for example, the electoral system, the number of parties, and the need to be successful while governing. Political decision making is a time-consuming, complex process, and political actors always have to consider that they might be held responsible for their actions or inactions. This arguably creates a very real tension between the media logic and the political logic, or the demands of the media system versus the demands of the political system.

4. The fourth phase of mediatization is reached when political or other social actors not only adapt to the media logic and the predominant news values, but also internalize these values and, more or less consciously, allow the media logic and the standards of newsworthiness to become a built-in part of the governing process. If political actors in the third phase adapt to the the media logic and the predominant news values, they adopt the same media logic and the standards of newsworthiness in the fourth phase. Thus, in the fourth phase, the media and their logic can be said to colonize politics (Meyer, 2002), with political or social actors perhaps not even recognizing the distinction between a political logic and a media logic. As noted by Cook (2005, p. 163): “Politicians may then win the daily battles with the news media, by getting into the news as they wish, but end up losing the war, as standards of newsworthiness begin to become prime criteria to evaluate issues, policies, and politics.”

This is not to say that the process of mediatization has reached phase 4. Which phase the process has reached is ultimately an empirical question, and the answer most likely differs among countries. Moreover, the process must not necessarily be linear. It is also likely that the degree of mediatization differs between periods when parties and politicians focus on campaigning and when they focus on governing—although permanent campaigning appears to have become more common (Ornstein & Mann, 2000).

However, it is safe to conclude that politics in modern postindustrial democracies is mediated and also, to varying degrees, mediatized. Thus, it is also safe to conclude that the election news coverage is very important in all modern postindustrial democracies.

The question then is: how can we understand the antecedents and the content of the election news coverage in different countries around the world? What factors shape the election news coverage, with particular emphasis on: (1) the amount of news space devoted to covering elections; (2) the usage of issue frames versus strategy or game frames; (3) descriptive versus interpretive journalism; (4) the publication of opinion polls and other aspects of horserace coverage; and (5) degree of political bias?

Election campaigns, including the election news coverage, are complicated subjects to study and understand, as they reflect a coming together of system characteristics, semistructural factors, contextual factors, and the dynamics of the relationship between political actors, news media actors, and people as voters and media consumers. The important factors can be located at a macro-, meso-, or microlevel. To structure this discussion, however, we will take as our starting point that political and media systems, as well as the patterns of relationship between these systems and their characteristics, ultimately is what matters most.

DIFFERENT MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS

On a very general level the political system in any country includes the constitution and the legal framework, all institutions with political relevance, and the configuration of politically relevant organizations and actors. The media system, while partly shaped by the political system, similarly includes all media institutions and the configuration of media organizations. At any point in time the political system and the media system should be perceived as shaped by history and a dynamic and culturally entrenched relationship between the citizenry, media actors, and political actors. In no country is the political system and the media system at a particular point the result of conscious and deliberative decision making only. Rather, it is the result of intended and unintended effects or countless more or less conscious and deliberate, formal as well as informal, decisions taken by politicians, media owners, editors and journalists, and ordinary people, to mention just some of the most important actors from a political communication perspective.

This seemingly chaotic process of system formation does not, however, mean that it is not possible to identify patterns in system characteristics which can be useful in comparative analyses. One of the first such attempts was presented in the classic book Four Theories of the Press by Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm (1956/1984). More relevant in this context, however, is the analysis by Blumler and Gurevitch (1995, pp. 60–67) in which they proposed four dimensions of particular importance along which the connections between political institutions and media institutions can vary: degree of state control over mass media organizations, degree of mass media partisanship, degree of media-political élite integration, and the nature of the legitimizing creed of media institutions. More recently, Hallin and Mancini (2004) identified three different models of media and politics among Western democracies: a Liberal Model, a Democratic Corporatist Model, and a Polarized Pluralism Model. With regards to media systems they emphasized four dimensions: (1) the development of media markets, with particular emphasis on the development of a mass circulation press; (2) political parallelism, which refers to the degree and nature of the links between the media on the one hand and political parties or major political and social divisions in society on the other; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism; and (4) the degree and nature of state interventio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Figures
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• 1 A Framework for Comparing Election News Coverage Around the World
• PART I: ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE IN COUNTRIES WITH MAJORITARIAN ELECTIONS
• PART II: ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE IN COUNTRIES WITH PROPORTIONAL ELECTIONS
• PART III: ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE IN COUNTRIES WITH COMBINED SYSTEMS
• PART IV: ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE