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Government perpetrated attacks against independent media, ranging from journalists' imprisonment to verbal attacks against outlets, carry an adverse effect for freedoms in democracies. Verbal attacks specifically provide leaders with a low-cost, easy to execute tool to delegitimize critical media. In this paper we present a theoretical contribution on when leaders in unconsolidated democracies verbally attack the media. Furthermore, we propose a way to quantitatively measure such attacks. Focusing on unconsolidated democracies, we argue that verbal attacks against independent media will increase when leaders face non-institutional ouster attempts like major protests and coups due to two reasons: 1) the surprise nature of these events, and 2) their disconnect to fully democratic means of staying in power. Our analysis examines verbal attacks on independent media by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. We code 385 airings of Chávez's weekly program Aló Presidente, from May 1999 to January 2012, counting verbal attacks against independent media. Using a Box-Tiao intervention model, we find Chávez's verbal attacks against independent media significantly increased during non-institutional ouster efforts, such as major protests and the 2002 coup attempt. These findings show the degree to which elected leaders will go to discredit uncomfortable media outlets in unconsolidated democracies during uncertain political events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What effect, if any, does a change in type of government have on the degree of media personalisation? This article argues that the different incentives that single- and multi-party governments provide to individual politicians and parties affect the level of media personalisation. Where the parties are more involved (i.e. multi-party coalitions) there will be less media personalisation. In contrast, where a single individual can command the party, there will be more media personalisation. The article tests these assumptions with a novel dataset created from over 1 million newspaper articles covering a continuous 24-year period in the UK. It finds that the switch to a coalition government in 2010 indeed changed the dynamics of media personalisation. These findings not only provide key insights into the phenomenon of personalisation but also enable us to better understand some of the potential consequences of changes in government types for power dynamics and democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A country's budget is one of the most important public policy instruments, as it establishes the government's policy priorities and has the potential to determine winners and losers. The budget, however, is a mixture of different components and these get varying degrees of attention in the media. Drawing on sociology of news research, this paper seeks to explain this heterogeneous coverage of a budget's policy decisions. To do so, it uses a unique data set of over 5,000 articles of press coverage of six UK budgets (2008-2012). These articles are coded for the presence/absence of each of the budget's policy decision, via automated content analysis. On the basis of a multivariate negative binomial model, we find that the salience of a policy decision in the coverage is determined by its cost, whether it is negative (i.e., tax hikes and spending cuts) or positive, the income group that is the most affected by it, and the level of attention given to it by the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Why do political parties prioritise some policy issues over others? While the issue ownership theory suggests that parties emphasise policy issues on which they have an advantage in order to increase the salience of these issues among voters, the riding the wave theory argues instead that parties respond to voters by highlighting policy issues that are salient in the minds of citizens. This study sheds new light on the selective issue emphasis of political parties by analysing issue attention throughout the entire electoral cycle. On the basis of a quantitative text analysis of more than 40,000 press releases published by German parties from 2000 until 2010, this article provides empirical support for the riding the wave theory. It shows that political parties take their cues from voters by responding to the issue priorities of their electorate. The results have important implications for political representation and the role that parties play in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]