Search

Four journalistic schemata are prominent in the media logic debate: journalists' preference for personalised coverage, contest coverage, negative coverage, and limited issue diversity. This study tests whether these journalistic schemata are four indicators of a single media logic and whether this logic is shared by media outlets. The manifestation of these four journalistic schemata in television and newspaper coverage of five Dutch national election campaigns (1998 - 2010) was measured by a Semantic Network Analysis. Personalised coverage, contest coverage, negative coverage, and limited issue diversity indeed form four indicators of a single media logic. This logic is shared among newspapers and television broadcasters. What is more, the study surprisingly shows that the degree of personalised coverage and contest coverage has decreased, the tone of the news has become less negative, and the issue diversity has increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently Lance Bennett and Shanto Iyengar (2008) argued that the rise of a new media landscape with overwhelmingly partisan selective exposure to news media would preclude news effects to occur. The research question of the current paper is whether a new era of minimal-effects is dawning indeed as a result of selective exposure. The data come from a ten wave panel survey study that included questions about media consumption and political preferences, and a daily content analysis of the news during the 2010 election campaign in the Netherlands. Voters were divided into four categories, depending on whether voters opted for media that agreed with them on their political preferences at the start of the campaign. Voters who attended to media who agreed them were considered to be consumers of partisan media. Voters could also attend hostile media, a combination of hostile and partisan media, or only indifferent media. The research results show that news effects show up, irrespective of whether one uses partisan media, hostile media, indifferent media, or a mix of hostile and partisan media. Users of partisan media are influenced especially by issue news, whereas voters of hostile media or indifferent media are influenced more often by horse race news about successes and failures of parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses to what extent the Dutch electorate was given a pluralistic offer of viewpoints in the media coverage during the election campaign of 2006. Moreover, we looked at the extent to which voting behavior of newspaper readers was a reflection of this offer. The level of pluralism of five traditional newspapers with a partisan history, stemming from pillarization, and two free dailies was measured. Hereby we looked at three forms of bias: Coverage bias, referring to the amount of attention media pay to political actors; agenda bias, focusing on the issues covered in the different newspapers; and statement bias, dealing with media opinions about the political actors in the campaign arena. We combined these date with opinion data collected from a bi-weekly seven wave panel survey. Our study detected two interesting features of the relationship between media and politics. First, the traditional newspapers are, to a certain degree, still characterized by a bias towards the parties they used to be aligned with. Second, news coverage knows a 'power bias'; incumbent parties receive more attention than opposition parties, although the tone towards incumbent parties is more negative. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of contemporary journalism in the service of democracy has come to be increasingly criticized in the political sector. However, empirical evidence for the so-called media-logic—the media agenda has an ever growing effect on the political agenda—is not very solid. The research question in this paper is threefold: [1] How does attention for political parties during the Dutch 2006 national election campaign develops over time in press releases and news media? [2] To what degree does attention for frames in press releases corresponds with frames in news media? [3] To what degree does the tone of the frames in press releases corresponds to the tone of frames in news media? The study uses an agenda setting approach. The attention for the frames and the tone of the frames in news stories and press releases are measured via content analysis. All newspaper articles of six national newspapers and television items from two TV stations, that were published or broadcast between during the Dutch national election campaign 2006 (September 1, until November 22, 2006), are included within our database. Results show that the agenda set out by political parties via press releases significantly differs from the media agenda. Press releases of all political parties give more room for issue frames and less room for strategic frames, whereas the general tone of the frames is more positive in press releases than in news media. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated internet consultants, which give a personal advice starting from a comparison between personal viewpoints of internet users on the one hand and objective attributes and issue positions of suppliers - e.g. firms or political parties - on the other, have gained momentum during recent years. The research question of this paper is whether such advices exert influence. This question is answered on the basis of a study of the influence of two political internet consultants from the Netherlands, Stemwijzer and Kieskompas. A panel survey study was used to measure party preferences before and afther an eventual advice to vote for a specific party. The results show that internet advices exert a considerable influence indeed. The probability to vote for a non-preferred party increases from 4% to 19% in the case of a positive advice. The probability to vote for one's preferred party decreases from 73% to 52% in the case of a negative advice. The paper discusses in addition the reasons why advices from internet consultants may be invalid and unreliable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are political knowledge and exposure to the news exchangeable resources that render citizens immune to the political purport of the news? On the basis of a multi-wave panel survey and a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers and television news magazines during the 2002 Dutch parliamentary election campaign, this question is answered by comparing news effects on lowly- and highly-knowledgeable audiences, either with a sporadic or a frequent exposure to the news. Results show that knowledge and exposure are not interchangeable. Citizens with a poor political knowledge who pay frequent attention to the news are most strongly affected by the news, as mediated cognitively through their perceptions of party performance. Knowledgeable voters with a sporadic exposure to media rely most strongly on predispositions. Every audience is susceptible to the news, especially for attributions of successes and failures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the media in the creation of distrust is much debated in political communication. Will negative news, e.g. relentless attacks on political authorities, result in political cynicism (Cappella and Jamieson 1997; Patterson 1993) or in a stimulation effect (Lau and Pomper 2001; Newton 1999)? By and large the media may stimulate political participation, but it is less clear when negative news will excavate this effect. Negative news may not only have short term behavioral effects, but also effects on underlying attitudes such as trust in politicians, which may produce their ‘sleeper effect’ on political behavior only in the long run. This article addresses two related research questions. Will negative news discourage trust in political leaders? Will trust have a sleeper effect for future party choice and future turnout within the months to come? The 2002 Dutch election campaign, being an unprecedented negative campaign as compared to other Dutch campaigns, provides a good case to investigate these questions. On the basis of a bi-weekly seven wave panel survey study and a daily content analysis of television news and newspapers, negative news was found to have a significant effect on trust in party leaders, in addition to prior vote preference and education. The distrust in party leaders also had a significant ‘sleeper’ effect in the long run on turnout and on the actual vote in addition to previous intentions. In general, these findings support the malaise theory. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public information has not gained much attention in the literature on political communication, although its importance is beyond discussion. The research question of this paper asks how the news on government policies influences satisfaction with government policy. Apart from well known hypotheses such as agenda setting and priming, hypotheses are tested that deal with the question whether the government tries to increase policy satisfaction by communicating ambitions (itÂ’s a mess, but we will do something against it) or by communicating successes (everything under control, due to us). The data to test the hypotheses come from a fourfold survey study to tap aspects of satisfaction with, the government policy with regard to 55 policy issues in addition to a longitudinal content analysis of 24 newspapers to unravel the media coverage of these issues. The results show dissatisfaction everywhere. Most hypotheses stand the test. Increasing policy satisfaction by the communication of ambitions rather than of results appears to be the rule. The diffusion of negative perceptions of real world conditions may be a side-effect of the latter. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an instrument for describing identity of a newspaper and opens a discussion regarding the quality of a newspaper as a socius. Identity is articulated through uniqueness and the identical. Identity is operationalized through three kinds of properties: external properties, relational properties and action properties. This yields to an instrument that has been applied to four Dutch regional newspapers. The application of an instrument that measures identity, results in a description of a newspaper as a socius. The uniqueness of each of the four newspapers is expressed in external properties, in the status being given to regional news and in attention for specific information. But the identical aspects of identity exceed the uniqueness. We end this article by discussing the possibilities for regional newspapers to maintain and perform out of their own unique identity. The circumstances, in which regional newspapers have to operate, do not seem to be too promising in this respect. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pim Fortuyn became the party leader of a new party, Leefbaar Nederland, in November 2001. In February 2001 he was kicked out of the party because of his extreme opinions (?The Islam is a backwards culture?). He raised a new party, the LPF (Lijst Pim Fortuyn). In the opinion polls the new party rose fast. One and a half week before the elections of May 15th 2002 Fortuyn was murdered by an extreme vegetarian. Still the LPF gained 26 seats in the 150-seats Parliament, but the ChristianDemocrats did win even more. From a bare 30 seats in the polls they ended on 43 seats. This paper analyzes the news in the Netherlands in 5 newspapers and 3 television stations from the moment on Pim Fortuyn became the leader of Leefbaar Nederland. The news in each newspaper and in each television news program was assigned as a set of contextual variables to the readers of and the watchers of these particular media in an 8 wave panel survey. A network analysis of the news shows that the political position of the CDA was structural equivalent to the position of the LPF, albeit that the criticisms of the CDA on the government coalition were not as extreme. A LISREL-model of the effects of the news on party preferences on the respondents who read this specific news or watched this specific news shows that news on the ?own? issues of the various parties was important, as well as support from societal groups. The model shows also that the perceived performance of a party leader in the news was an important mediating variable to explain party preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study a comparative methods for assessing frames in the audio and visual modality of television news is presented. This method is tested on data from three Dutch news programs covering the 2006 Dutch National Election campaign. Interestingly, the redundancy differs per content characteristic and network. Redundancy for issues is really poor, redundancy for actors is better. Redundancy also differs per frame; frames about issues are weaker in redundancy than frames about actors. And redundancy strongly differs per network. A better understanding of the interplay between audio and visual modalities is important, because audio-visual redundancy in television news enhances comprehensibility and recall of news. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades election campaigns in Western European countries have become increasingly dynamic which is reflected in high levels of volatility, indecisiveness, and abstention. This paper assesses the effect of the amount and the tone of strategy news on these three pathologies of electoral behavior, while distinguishing between news about criticism and support and news about success and failure. The analyses were based on Semantic Network Analysis of newspaper and television news coverage and panel studies conducted during three Dutch national election campaigns. The two types of strategy news have opposing effects on electoral behavior. While strategy news about criticism and support causes an increase in intra electoral volatility and a decrease in indecisiveness and abstention, strategy news about success and failure sorts opposite effects. These results indicate that a distinction should be made between different forms of strategy news when analyzing its effects on electoral behavior. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]