Concepts and Countries
Across Europe, there have been profound upheavals in politics, society, economics, and media in the past decade. The āpopulist zeitgeistā identified by Mudde in 2004 has further developed as traditional party systems are fragmenting and populist actors are entering mainstream politics in many countries. The Euro Crisis destabilized Europe and brought severe, and highly contested, programmes of austerity to the worst-affected countries: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Meanwhile, the transition to democracy and to European Union membership in countries such as Poland and Croatia has further highlighted issues of national sovereignty and immigration. At the same time, media systems have undergone rapid digital transition, which calls into question many previous assumptions about how media function in relation to political coverage in general and in relation to elections in particular.
The impact of media and election campaigns on voters has been subject of controversy for almost as long as citizens have been voting to elect their governments. Even though elections have been the focus of many studies over the last few decades, there is still much to investigate and learn about how exactly media effects work in election campaigns. One important aspect of this gap in knowledge concerns the manner in which news media outlets in different countries cover election campaigns.
Through existing research, we already know that media coverage is not neutral and that news selection and news framing does affect votersā perceptions and, potentially, their attitudes and beliefs. In addition, when covering politics and elections, the process of news media priming not only steers citizens towards criteria to consider in their evaluations of democratic governance but also frames the performance of politicians positively or negatively against these standards (Norris 2011). There are also several changes in politics that are believed to have been caused or amplified by news media coverage, such as increase in interpretive journalism and negativity towards politics (Patterson 1993, 1996), dramatization and an increased media focus on competition and the strategy of politics (Cappella and Jamieson 1997; Bennett 2007), and the growing personalization of politics (McAllister 2007). This research empirically investigated how these elements were manifest during elections in six European countries (see Table 1.1).
Table 1.1
Countries and national elections
Country | Election Day |
|---|---|
Croatia | 8 November 2015 |
Greece | 20 September 2015 |
Ireland | 26 February 2016 |
Poland | 25 October 2015 |
Portugal | 4 October 2015 |
Spain | 20 December 2015 |
The elections took place against a backdrop of rising scepticism about the European Union and rising populism across Europe. Populist actors have encroached on support for traditional parties of the centre-right and centre-left and thereby weakened traditional political party systems. Although the degree or intensity of populism varies from country to country (see e.g. the 24 country chapters in Aalberg et al. 2017), the rise of populism is broadly linked to the fallout from the Euro Crisis, concerns about mass immigration, and a perceived loss of national sovereignty. Surprisingly, however, the role that media play in the advancement of populism has been largely ignored or, at the very least, under-researched.
Within the scarce literature on media and populism, there is a general assumption that tabloid newspapers and commercial TV are closely tied to populist communication. However, in the absence of systematic research and amid profound changes in media systems, it is necessary to interrogate not only the relationship between media and politics in general but also the relationship between media and populism. To this end, Esser et al. (2017) identify three scenarios that may be usefully applied to the relationship between media and populism during elections: the media enable populist messaging, the media create populist content, and the users of participatory online media create populist content. In researching the role of news media outlets in elections across countries that were deeply impacted by the Euro Crisis, and thus susceptible to populism, this study represents an important step towards understanding how populism is manifest in election news media.
The idea for this study emerged from an interest in comparing Portugal with other European countries that were also directly affected by the Euro Crisis and that were holding national elections around the same time as Portugal (i.e. from September 2015 to February 2016). Among other objectives, the study aimed to identify whether the fallout from the economic crisis played a role in the positions and the arguments used by different political actors during the election campaigns. For example, the study assesses the prevalence of radicalization in the positions on issues due to the crisis and consequent austerity measures and, more generally, assesses the ways in which different types of news media covered the election campaigns.
This resulted in an initial research design that included Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Two other countries that were holding elections in the same time period were also added to the sample: Poland and Croatia. Their inclusion in the study was judged to be of interest because they represent relatively new democracies (Poland and Croatia became democratic republics in 1989 and 1991, respectively) that are rarely included in comparative research designs relating to these topics. Moreover, the studyās concerns with positions on a crisis involving the European Union and populism are also significant issues for both countries.
With the exception of Ireland, the media systems of the countries studied are all categorized by Hallin and Mancini (2004) as belonging to the Polarized Pluralist Model. However, there are many significant differences regarding, for example, the structure of their media systems and the actual content of their news coverage. Taking the examples of Portugal and Spain for instance, there are differences in how the printed press operates in each country: in Portugal, this is partly due to legislation, but mainly due to the small scale of Portugalās advertising market and audience. As a result, newspapers do not assume their political leaning as this risks alienating a large portion of the available audience and reducing the outletās market share. In Spain, however, the endorsement of political parties and candidates by newspapers is usually more explicit. As to the news content, attention to issues seems to be more prevalent overall in Portugal, while news coverage in Spain is often more focused on political strategy . In fact, Hallin and Mancini (2012) have drawn attention to some limitations of their original models and have attempted to clarify the conceptual framework that was proposed in 2004.
Within Hallin and Manciniās (2004) categorization, Ireland represents the North Atlantic or Liberal model. Consequently, in Hallin and Manciniās view, the links between media and politics in Ireland may be different when compared to the Polarized Pluralist Model. For example, journalistic autonomy is more likely to be limited by commercial pressures than by political instrumentalization and journalism tends to be more information-oriented and descriptive (2004: 74).
The selected six countries thus provide a varied sample within Europe to study the news coverage of elections. To facilitate comparison, the country chapters follow a similar structure and address a set of common analytical issues in election news coverage, such as negativity, interpretative journalism, news framing, and populism. The rationale for selecting these issues as common reference points is outlined below. Although the country chapters are broadly similar in their structure and subject, there are variances in the weight affo...