The people are powerless if they cannot choose between alternatives. Imagine that you—as an ordinary citizen and member of the public—are asked to participate in the decision-making process of, let us say, the asylum policy. What policy will you design? Unless you have expertise in the field, or have the time or motivation to become informed about this issue, you might feel that you are the wrong person to design such a policy. Schattschneider’s statement makes this point: “Above everything, the people are powerless if the political enterprise is not competitive. It is the competition of political organizations that provides the people with the opportunity to make a choice. Without this opportunity, popular sovereignty amounts to nothing […] Democracy is a competitive political system in which competing leaders and organizations define the alternatives of public policy in such a way that the public can participate in the decision making process” (Schattschneider 1988 [1960]: 137–138, emphasis in original).
He states that competing leaders define the alternatives, which allow the ordinary citizen to participate. I agree and understand the alternatives to mean both the options and their interpretations. Thus, imagine that the parliament (which consists of two chambers, the National Council similar to the US House of Representatives and the State Council similar to the US Senate) has prepared a new asylum law and you can decide whether or not you will accept it. As an ordinary citizen, it is easier to participate in this situation. In actual fact, in Switzerland, this happened and the people were able to vote on a new asylum law. This example from the real world serves to illustrate what I mean by options and interpretations. The options are either to accept or reject the new law, while interpretations we will look at below.
The new law contained these most important aspects: It stipulated that asylum requests from refugees who have already been given refugee status or some other form of protection by another state will not be dealt with. The new law also prohibited social assistance for refugees whose requests have been legally rejected. Moreover, it introduced more restrictive rules for considering the question of refugees without proper identification; it adopted a so-called airport procedure allowing for rapid decisions at the refugees’ point of entry, and it enabled the possibility of exchanging information with the refugees’ home countries. The new law also brought an improvement for asylum seekers with a provisional admission. They are allowed to work and to receive a residence permit for their families after three years. The interpretations of the leaders are part of the alternatives. Political leaders offered these interpretations (I shall call them frames, see below): Proponents of the new law argued that Switzerland needs instruments to fight the abuse of its asylum legislation (abuse), and that the new law provides a more efficient implementation of the asylum legislation (efficacy). Opponents claimed that the new asylum law is contrary to the humanitarian tradition of Switzerland (human. trad.), and that the provision of the new law undermines the rule of law (rule-of-law). Their interpretations make clear that the new law is more restrictive than the previous one. In the vote on the new asylum law, similarly to related previous votes in 1987 and 1999, the proposal for a new asylum law was accepted by two-thirds (67.7%) of the Swiss people (compared to 67.3% in 1987 and 70.6% in 1999). The first asylum law dates back to 1981 and was considered liberal. Previously, asylum matters were part of the law on foreigners. Over the years, the asylum law was gradually tightened. In this book, alternatives and their interpretations are of key importance and I will keep a constant eye on competing interpretations. I will raise the question: Under what conditions do we see competing interpretations (= dialogue)? As Schattschneider points out, the process of defining the alternatives is competitive. Political elites deploy arguments and attempt to steer thinking toward their point of view in order to gain an edge in partisan contests.
The alternatives need to be presented in the news media . Since, in our diverse society, the media play a vital role in conveying information from the political scene to the public, citizens get an important share of their information from the news media. In other words, democracy today is largely mediated democracy. People not only learn about the options and their interpretation directly from politicians (be it in person or impersonal contact like a speech on TV). They also learn about the alternatives indirectly through the media. They read about them in a newspaper report, or listen to a discussion about or summary of a political issue being presented in the news on the radio and TV. As a consequence, the alternatives (i.e., the yes or no choice and its interpretation) should also be found in the news media .
Thus, I investigate: Under what conditions do we see dialogue (= competing interpretations) in the news media? What are the driving mechanisms? To complete the picture, I will end with the question: What is the role of dialogue in the Public Opinion formation process?
Tools for the Study: Frames and Dialogue
This book investigates the origin of dialogue in the news media by using frames. A frame is defined as an interpretation of an issue, or a perspective on the topic. It is a central organizing idea that emphasizes certain aspects of a perceived reality (Entman 1993: 52) and “provide[s] coherence to a designated set of idea elements” (Ferree et al. 2002: 105). It is like a “spotlight” that attracts our attention to certain aspects of an issue and directs it away from other aspects (Gamson 2004: 245). By selectively emphasizing/evaluating certain facets of a perceived reality and by making them salient in a communicating text, frames also “promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman 1993: 52).1 The framing approach is well suited for modeling a process with different actors involved. It has the great strength of enabling the behavior of elites, decisions of journalists, and choices of citizens to be linked. Contending elites compete to establish the meaning and interpretation of issues in the news media or in the public. Journalists edit the information, add to it, and offer help for opinion formation, and citizens who engage with an issue must grapple with opposing frames and decide what their individual cognitive understanding is of a given situation. In this way, frames serve as the conceptual bridge (Scheufele 1999) between organizing ideas in presented news (for instance, the aspects of an issue emphasized in elite discourse) and comprehended news (for instance, the aspect of an issue a citizen thinks ...