Are you talking to me? Political dialogue in the media.

Studies of political dialogue have used either legislative or campaign discourse as units of analysis; however, the dynamics of daily political discourse in the media have received very little attention. This research aims to explain the dynamics of routine political dialogue and to explore how issue salience and issue ownership are claimed by political actors through regular media outlets. To this purpose, I use a very large original database of editorial and op-ed articles published by prominent political figures in the most important Venezuelan newspapers. Including more than 6,000 articles of more than 400 authors from 2004, this dataset provides a privileged view of political dialogue during Chavez's tenure as chief executive. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]