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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: CPC - Contemporary Political Communication
- Sprache: Englisch
How elections are reported has important implications for the health of democracy and informed citizenship. But, how informative are the news media during campaigns? What kind of logic do they follow? How well do they serve citizens?e
Based on original research as well as the most comprehensive assessment of election studies to date, Cushion and Thomas examine how campaigns are reported in many advanced Western democracies. In doing so, they engage with debates about the mediatization of politics, media systems, information environments, media ownership, regulation, political news, horserace journalism, objectivity, impartiality, agenda-setting, and the relationship between media and democracy more generally.
Focusing on the most recent US and UK election campaigns, they consider how the logic of election coverage could be rethought in ways that better serve the democratic needs of citizens. Above all, they argue that election reporting should be driven by a public logic, where the agenda of voters takes centre stage in the campaign and the policies of respective political parties receive more airtime and independent scrutiny.
The book is essential reading for scholars and students in political communication and journalism studies, political science, media and communication studies.
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Seitenzahl: 347
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction: Studying Elections
Why study media coverage of elections?
Electoral integrity, political information environments and different types of campaign
Mobilisation or malaise? Towards a more contentfocused understanding of election coverage
The scope of the book: reporting (and researching) elections
1 Setting the Campaign Agenda
Campaign agenda-setters: towards an understanding of media, political and public logics
Agenda-setting power in a fragmented environment: interpreting media vs. political logic
The professionalisation of political campaigning: interpreting party political logic
How do citizens make – or shape – election news agendas? Towards a public logic in campaign coverage
Interpreting editorial decision-making: towards an understanding of who sets the agenda
2 Reporting Election Campaigns
Policy versus process: which logic prevails in campaign coverage?
First-order elections: a longitudinal picture of campaign reporting
Media systems matter: comparing public and market-driven media
Electoral contests also matter: reporting second-order elections
What issues are addressed in election campaigns? Towards a more process-driven news agenda
Notes
3 Making Sense of Horserace Reporting
Understanding the logic and value of process-driven news
Does horserace reporting engage audiences?
Reporting polls: how do they inform the campaign?
Interpreting the logic(s) of campaign reporting during the 2015 UK general election
Horserace reporting: a media, political or citizen logic?
4 Regulating Balance and Impartiality
Policing the agenda: how fair and balanced is election coverage?
How fair and balanced is election reporting?
Interpreting impartiality: towards a looser regulatory environment?
Intermedia agenda-setting: the (continued) power of the UK national press
Why news values undermine impartial decision-making
Notes
5 The Trumpification of Election News
The rise of partisan media, post-truth politics and the commercialisation of news values
US exceptionalism: the commercialisation of American media and the polarisation of news audiences
‘It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS’: the Trumpification of news values
Trump, Brexit and ‘alternative facts’: reporting in a post-truth media environment
Towards a Trump logic in election reporting? News values, regulation and professional journalism
Notes
Conclusion: Rethinking Election Reporting
Understanding the logic of campaign coverage and the democratic needs of citizens
From process to policy coverage: towards more independent and informative election campaign news values
Resetting the election agenda: questioning the parties’ campaigns and pursuing a public logic
Policing the boundaries of election coverage: reinterpreting impartiality in the age of post-truth politics
Expanding the voices of campaign coverage and standing up to power at election time
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Tables
1.0 Sources of information about the 2016 presidential election campaign
2.0 Amount of network television news coverage of presidential primary campaigns between 1998 and 2008
2.1 TV news coverage of the US presidential primary campaigns, 1988–2012 (percentages)
2.2 TV news coverage of the US presidential elections, 1988–2008 (percentages)
2.3 News topics in the US presidential election coverage, 2016 (percentages)
2.4 Coverage of issues in US presidential elections, 1988-2016 (in minutes)
2.5 TV news coverage of the 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017 UK general elections (percentages)
2.6 The percentage of time spent reporting election, policy and campaign-process items in UK newscasts during the 2015 and 2017 UK general elections
2.7 The framing of politics in Swedish and US TV news (percentages)
2.8 Mixed TV and newspaper coverage of the 2014 New Zealand general election (percentages)
2.9 The level of policy information during the 2010 UK election campaign in television news (percentages)
2.10 Election news coverage of the 2015 and 2017 UK general elections (percentages)
2.11 International variance of issue and non-issue coverage, 2003–2011 (percentages)
2.12 TV news coverage of the 2008 US presidential election and 2006 Swedish parliamentary election (percentages)
2.13 Television news coverage of the 2006 and 2008 Swedish and Belgian elections in public service and commercial broadcasters (percentages)
2.14 Longitudinal split between private and public broadcasters in Sweden (percentages)
2.15 Visibility of EU news in television newscasts during the 2009 European parliamentary elections (by percentage time of all news)
2.16 Number of television items reporting the 2009 EU elections
2.17 Number of 2009 EU election campaign news items across European countries on public and commercial television nightly newscasts
2.18 The percentage of time spent on the most reported categories of news during the 2009 EU and local elections and the 2013 local elections on UK television newscasts (seconds in parentheses)
2.19 Percentage of airtime (as a proportion of all news) reporting different elections in 2009 and 2013 on UK television newscasts where the type of election is specified (seconds in parentheses)
2.20 The percentage of time spent on different types of election coverage during the 2009 EU and local elections and the 2013 local elections on UK television newscasts (seconds in parentheses)
2.21 The framing of the 2014 EU election news in UK television news
2.22 The focus of game-frame items in 2014 election coverage on UK television news
2.23 The amount of policy- and process-driven news in television news coverage of second-order elections (percentages)
2.24 The amount of policy- and process-driven news in television news coverage of second-order elections on public and commercial broadcasters (percentages)
3.0 Number of polls reported in public and commercial television news during the 1998, 2002 and 2006 Swedish election campaigns
3.1 Type of opinion polls reported in public and commercial television news during the 1998, 2002 and 2006 Swedish election campaigns (percentages)
3.2 Percentage of election items featuring a poll and the nature of such polls (N in parentheses)
3.3 Percentage of campaign news items making a connection between a Labour–SNP coalition and the clarity of these references (N in parentheses)
3.4 Percentage of election items featuring a reporter questioning politicians on the campaign trail and how far stage management of a party rally was exposed (N in parentheses)
4.0 Positive or negative coverage of presidential candidates during the 2012 campaign (percentages)
4.1 Positive or negative US network news coverage of presidential candidates during the 2012 campaign (percentages)
4.2 Percentage of stories in network television favouring Democrats or Republicans during presidential campaign coverage
4.3 The amount of quotation time and number of appearances on UK broadcast news coverage (percentages)
4.4 Share of party political coverage in TV and in the press in the 2015 and 2017 UK general election campaigns (by percentage time)
4.5 Number of news items dominated by one party in TV coverage of the 2009 and 2014 EU elections
4.6 The proportion of airtime for political parties in television news coverage of the 2015 general election (percentages; seconds in parentheses)
4.7 The proportion of news dominated by one political party in television news coverage of the 2015 UK general election (percentages; N in parentheses)
4.8 The proportion of policy-related news in television news coverage of the 2015 UK general election (percentages; N in parentheses)
4.9 The proportion of conventions used to report television news coverage of the 2015 UK general election (percentages; N in parentheses)
4.10 The proportion of items dominated by one political party by conventions in television news coverage of the 2015 UK general election (percentages; N in parentheses)
4.11 Percentage of television election-related policy stories reported by newspapers before being broadcast in UK national news
4.12 Percentage of election policy items in UK national television newscasts previously published in newspapers
5.0 Percentage of principal named source of election news during the 2016 presidential campaign
5.1 Network television airtime allotted to the main 2016 primary candidates
5.2 Interviews with presidential candidates on the five Sunday shows (1 January 2015 to 27 March 2016)
5.3 Type of interviews with Donald Trump on the five Sunday shows
5.4 Top twenty stories of 2016 on US network news (minutes of coverage)
5.5 The focus on presidential candidates between 1998 and 2016 (minutes across three networks)
5.6 Coverage of policy issues vs. Hillary Clinton’s emails on broadcast evening news, 1 January–21 October 2016 (percentages)
5.7 The veracity of public statements by the main Democrat and Republican primary candidates between 1 January 2015 and 30 January 2016
6.0 Percentage of people who say there is too much, too little or about the right amount of coverage about aspects of the 2016 US presidential campaign
Figure
4.0 The number of policy stories during the election campaign covered by UK national television newscasts that were previously published in newspapers (30 March–6 May 2015)
Guide
Cover
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Contemporary Political Communication
Geoffrey Craig, Performing Politics
Stephen Cushion & Richard Thomas, Reporting Elections
Robert M. Entman, Scandal and Silence
Max McCombs, R. Lance Holbert, Spiro Kiousis & Wayne Wanta, The News and Public Opinion
Craig Allen Smith, Presidential Campaign Communication (2nd edition)
James Stanyer, Intimate Politics
Katrin Voltmer, The Media in Transitional Democracies
Reporting Elections
Rethinking the Logic of Campaign Coverage
STEPHEN CUSHION & RICHARD THOMAS
polity
Copyright © Stephen Cushion and Richard Thomas 2018
The right of Stephen Cushion and Richard Thomas to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1754-1
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Introduction: Studying Elections
Why study media coverage of elections?
Election campaigns play a fundamental role in democratic systems. They represent, after all, a time when political parties showcase their vision for the future and citizens consider, if at all, how best to cast their votes. Since the news media act as the primary source of election information for most people during a campaign, they play a crucial role in communicating news to voters. But what kind of logic do the news media follow when reporting election campaigns? How well do they inform citizens about their democratic choices? The aim of this book is to answer these (and many more) questions by comprehensively examining how election campaigns are reported. In doing so, we reflect on the value of election reporting and consider how the logic of campaign coverage can better serve the democratic needs of citizens.
While scholars have increased their interest in how the news media report election campaigns over recent years (Strömbäck and Kaid 2008), many book-length studies deal with national issues and concerns (see, for example, Young 2011 or Oates 2008) rather than considering broader international trends and patterns. Moreover, most studies focus exclusively on ‘first-order’ elections, such as presidential or general elections, which are viewed as more important to voters than ‘second-order’ elections, such as European Union (EU), state or more localised contests (Reif and Schmitt 1980). The aim of this book is to assess election reporting in both first- and second-order elections. We do so by developing an evidence-based understanding of the media logic shaping election reporting and consider the democratic value of campaign coverage.
By ‘media logic’ we refer to the kind of organising principles behind the editorial selection and communication of news about election campaigns (Altheide 2016). In political communication studies, media logic is widely understood as reflecting ‘the institutional, technological, and sociological characteristics of the news media, including their format characteristics, production and dissemination routines, norms and needs’ (Strömbäck 2011: 373). It is the rules shaping election reporting that we aim to uncover. In understanding the influences behind the day-to-day reporting of election campaigns, many layers need to be stripped away and interpreted (Semetko et al.. 1991: 178–9). But the lead protagonists in agenda-setting, above all, tend to be political parties, journalists and voters (McCombs 2014; Strömbäck and Esser 2014). While there is clearly an interdependence between these actors, there is an independence from one another as different interests and needs shape the agenda-setting process during an election campaign (McCombs 2014; Semetko et al. 1991). We need, in other words, to consider the main agenda-setting factors that influence coverage during campaigns.
Writing about US media in the 1960s, Katz was one of the first scholars to question how election campaigns were reported. He cast considerable doubt on their democratic value and suggested that the coverage served primarily a political rather than a public logic. In his words, ‘one is led to the conclusion that election campaigns are better designed to serve the political parties, particularly the dominant ones, than to serve society or the voter’ (Katz 1971: 314). Two decades later, Semetko and her colleagues published a pioneering book-length study about US and UK election reporting and identified a strong media logic shaping campaign coverage. They observed that US journalists, in particular, exercised considerable ‘discretionary powers’ over the agenda-setting process (Semetko et al. 1991: 4). Nonetheless, their comparative focus led them to conclude that ‘the formation of the campaign agenda is a complex process that varies from one culture and one election to another’ (ibid.: 179). In the 2000s, Strömbäck and Kaid’s edited collection of nationally themed chapters was another major contribution to understanding media coverage of elections. Overall, they argued that media logic had become a pervasive force in many advanced democracies during election times. In their words, ‘almost all the countries discussed in this volume have developed media coverage systems where “horserace” coverage is prominent or even dominant’ (Strömbäck and Kaid 2008: 425). A more process-driven agenda in campaign coverage is consistent with broader debates about the increasing power of the media to influence political coverage. The concept of mediatisation, in this context, has been widely used to interpret media influence in different facets of society, such as religion, marketing, fashion and, most relevant to this book, politics. Put simply, the mediatisation of politics refers to how the media have increasingly set the political news agenda over recent years and influenced the behaviour of politicians (Strömbäck and Esser 2014).
This book will develop a comprehensive evidence-based assessment about the dominant logic shaping election campaign coverage almost two decades into the new millennium. From news about policy issues to the process of politics – including the rise of horserace reporting – we aim not only to establish empirically how elections are reported but to consider how the logic behind campaign coverage can be rethought. In doing so, we examine the evidence about how people engage with and interpret both coverage of issues and horserace news. Historically, however, the most researched aspect of election coverage is assessing how fair and balanced news media are during a campaign (D’Alessio 2012). We examine how the media agenda is policed during campaigns, considering the regulatory environment in which journalists operate between countries and different media systems, and how concepts such as objectivity and impartiality are understood and operationalised. While scholars have highlighted the partisan tendencies of particular media – whether US cable news channels or UK tabloid newspapers – we also consider their intermedia agenda-setting role. To explore the logic of campaign coverage in greater detail, we focus on election reporting in the UK and the US more closely, engaging with debates about remaining impartial, objective and balanced in a post-truth political environment. In particular, we consider Donald Trump’s electoral strategy during the 2016 presidential election and how the news media reported the campaign. By way of conclusion, we bring together the salient findings of the book to interpret how well the media inform and engage the electorate during an election campaign. Overall, we ask:
How are different types of electoral contests reported? What is the main logic shaping news agendas during election campaigns?
How well do the media serve citizens during an election campaign? How can the logic of campaign coverage be rethought to better inform and engage voters?
Before examining how election campaigns are reported, we begin by providing some context to how most people access political information. We explore the information environments of different countries and the wider political and cultural contexts in which journalism operates, and we consider the role this plays in how different types of election campaigns are routinely reported.
Electoral integrity, political information environments and different types of campaign
Since a key normative goal of the news media is to enhance informed citizenship (Blumler and Cushion 2014; Christians et al. 2009), an election campaign is one of the most important points in time to supply voters with information about the policies of competing parties and to engage them in the process of politics. It is, after all, fundamental to democratic theory that citizens understand politics and public affairs before casting their vote. As the introduction to a UNESCO handbook about election reporting put it:
For an election to go well, it must be free and fair. There must be free speech so all citizens and all political candidates can speak without fear. The media must be free to tell everyone what was said without pressure to twist the truth. That is the job of professional journalists – to fully inform citizens of the issues and their choices so they can decide for themselves for whom to vote. (Ross 2004: 1)
Of course, the normative aims of journalism do not always match the reality of election reporting in different countries or between competing media systems. By media systems, we mean different types of media that operate around the world. These are not always easy to distinguish or classify between nations, but generally they refer to whether media is funded by commercial means or by the state via general taxation or a licence fee. State media, such as Russia Today, are distinctive from public service broadcasters, such as the BBC, because the latter aims to be editorially independent from the government of the day. At the same time, some commercial media may have public service responsibilities in their licence agreements, reflecting a hybrid public–commercial media system (see Cushion 2012a). When making sense of election reporting throughout the book, our analysis explores the comparative differences between media systems.
Over recent years, scholars have increasingly sought to compare the information environments of different countries to help make sense of people’s understanding of politics and public affairs. While demographic factors such as age and education play a role in how people understand politics and engage with election campaigns, individual-level effects have their limits. Greater emphasis, instead, has been placed on the media to which people are increasingly exposed, but this information supply of political news can vary considerably between nations. This point was comprehensively made in the study by Esser et al. (2012a),which examined television schedules in thirteen European countries over a thirty-year period (1977–2007). Taken together, their findings show that the opportunity for viewers to learn about politics was greater in countries where public service media was stronger. This was because such countries tended to schedule more informative formats of news, from news in briefs and newscasts to interview or discussiontype programming, than their commercial counterparts. While the quality of news provision could not be evaluated, Esser et al.’s study highlighted the comparative volume of political information between countries with different media systems.
A smaller-scale schedule analysis study of the US, the UK and Norway similarly found that the largely market-driven media system in the US supplied less political information for viewers than the UK’s mix of public and commercial broadcasters and Norway’s more public service regulated television channels (Aalberg et al. 2010). In making sense of the differences, the study pointed towards the political culture of each country and the role it played in safeguarding the media environment from commercial forces or lighter regulation. So, for example, while Norway and UK broadcasters follow strict rules about scheduling newscasts in prime time, the US regulation of television news is far more ‘light touch’. Consequently, the US has both less news programming and fewer options for viewers to choose from than many European broadcasters because the three most popular networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – schedule their main evening newscast (6.30 pm) at the same time.
Viewed in this context, it is important to understand the political systems in different countries and the influence they might play in shaping the media landscape and the regulation of news reporting during an election campaign. As Norris’s (2014) electoral integrity project demonstrated, the conduct and standards of election campaigns differ markedly between countries. Her wide-ranging study drew on over 2,000 experts examining 180 election campaigns in 139 countries, evaluating issues such as voter registration, campaign finances and the performance of media. Norris’s study revealed that the Scandinavian countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – provided the fairest election coverage according to the project’s measures. Some of the most impoverished developing countries, such as Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Djibouti and Syria, where state interference and corruption is rife, ranked lowest.
But perhaps most striking in the global survey were the positions of the US and the UK, since both countries champion the virtues of their democratic systems. While the UK was ranked bottom within Europe, the electoral conduct of the US was considered the worst in the Western world. Moreover, both countries were ranked below nations not necessarily viewed as historically upholding democratic standards, such as Argentina and Rwanda. Norris’s (2014) study showed it should not be assumed that the integrity of elections is higher in the developed world. While the role of media was part of the electoral integrity project’s global survey, the measures to evaluate performance were relatively broad. The aim of this book is to paint a finer picture of standards in election reporting. In doing so, we examine the weight of evidence about election campaign coverage and consider how well the media engage voters in the political process and inform them about their democratic choices. Of course, making judgements about news standards or quality journalism is not empirically straightforward. There are competing ways in which people interpret the normative value of news and assess the democratic health of political information environments (Cushion 2012a). While we explain how we evaluate election coverage in each chapter, broadly speaking we agree with van Aelst et al. (2017: 8) that ‘media coverage should help people to make informed choices and hold politicians accountable, in essence providing people with the information they need to be free and self-governing.’ The next chapter develops more fully a framework for analysing the value of election news and how competing logics of campaign coverage will be interpreted.
However, as already pointed out, in making sense of election reporting, most studies tend to focus on what political scientists call ‘first-order’ elections, such as presidential or general election campaigns (Reif and Schmitt 1980). ‘Second-order’ elections, such as the EU, state or local electoral campaigns, by contrast, are seen as less important by voters. While much research focuses on the reporting of first-order elections, they may be different in volume and character compared to second-order elections. Indeed, according to Reif and Schmitt, second-order election campaigns have distinctive characteristics. So, for example, while the European Union parliamentary elections are, in theory, about EU policy-related matters, the campaigns may be national in focus and informed by domestic issues, such as voting against the government of the day. This is also because turnout is far lower in second-order elections compared to first-order contests, which often means smaller parties are electorally successful.
Nevertheless, since second-order campaigns tend to be low-key affairs, with ‘less being at stake’ (Reif and Schmitt 1980: 9–10) than in first-order campaigns, how far they are reported by different types of media systems – particularly by more market-driven outlets – has not been subject to a great deal of empirical attention. There have, for instance, been several cross-national comparative studies examining how different European media report the EU parliamentary elections, considering both the quantity and the quality of coverage from a range of perspectives (de Vreese 2003; de Vreese et al. 2006). But how far more localised electoral contests differ between countries and competing media systems is less clear. In chapters 2 and 3 we explore how far the order-type of elections influences both the amount and nature of campaign coverage. We also consider the national context of different electoral contests in order to understand better why elections are reported differently.
Overall, then, in making sense of election reporting around the world, it is important to acknowledge the integrity of a country’s political system and the information environment as well as the type of electoral contest under analysis. Over recent years, scholars have also placed greater emphasis on analysing election news in more empirical detail. As the next section now explores, studies have increasingly sought to isolate the influence of different sources of news and consider the effect on people’s political knowledge and understanding of politics.
Mobilisation or malaise? Towards a more contentfocused understanding of election coverage
The role played by news media during election campaigns has been the subject of fierce debate among political communication scholars over several decades. At its broadest, one branch of scholarship argues that news media mobilise citizens and encourage them to participate in the electoral process. Another puts forward a media malign effect, which discourages voter engagement and promotes cynicism in the political process (Newton 1999). Norris’s (2000) proposition that the media create a ‘virtuous circle’ was a particularly significant intervention at the turn of the century. In a study of twenty-nine countries, Norris found people regularly exposed to news media were more likely to participate in politics, know more about public affairs and invest greater trust in the political process than those who did not have such contact. Put more simply, regularly being exposed to political news had a mobilising effect on citizens in advanced democracies.
But debates about media effects – particularly during election campaigns – often focus more specifically on how the media frame politics, such as reporting game- or strategy-type coverage over issues of policy. According to Aalberg et al. (2012: 163): ‘the framing of politics as a strategic game is characterized by a focus on questions related to who is winning and losing, the performances of politicians and parties, and on campaign strategies and tactics. This framing is often contrasted with a focus on political substance and issues.’ In the US there has been a long-standing complaint that the news media have increasingly reported politics as a strategic game. More than two decades ago, Cappella and Jamieson (1997) put forward a media malaise theory that news reporting may be fuelling a ‘spiral of cynicism’. Drawing on field experiments with members of the public, they found that citizens were less cynical when news coverage was about political issues rather than the process of politics. Since then, this theory has been both contested and reinforced in various ways. On the one hand, factors such as political interest and knowledge have been used as explanatory factors that lead to cynicism about politicians and parties (de Vreese 2005; Valentino et al. 2001). On the other hand, portraying politics as a strategic game has been found to reduce interest in political affairs (Shehata 2014) and trust in news media (Hopmann et al. 2015). Other variables, including age and levels of education, have also been used by scholars to support or challenge theories about media mobilisation or malaise. Holt et al. (2013), for instance, established that the use among young people of social media during the 2010 Swedish elections enhanced their interest and participation in politics.
Although many scholars continue to interpret media effects by a mobilisation or malaise framework, when forming conclusions about the impact of political reporting this binary distinction often tars all news media with the same brush. As Curran et al. (2014: 828–9) have observed:
researchers are typically encouraged to choose between ‘media malaise’ and ‘virtuous circle’ interpretations; that is, to side either with the view that the media radiate democratic influence in a nimbus of virtue or the opposing view that the media turn people off politics by distorting its true nature. In essence, we are asked to choose between perceiving the media as being an exclusively positive or negative force.
The authors advocated a new approach that understands more flexibly the effects of political news and argued that the news media can both discourage people from politics and empower citizens in the public sphere. As comparative communication studies has grown and become more sophisticated in recent years (Esser and Hanitzsch 2012), the differences between media systems across different countries and the specific content of news produced have become more central to understanding effects. So, for example, Schuck et al. (2016), in their comparative study of twenty-one countries during the 2009 EU parliamentary elections, discovered that conflict news-framing mobilised people to vote. However, their combined content analysis and two-wave panel survey identified that mobilisation was stronger in countries with proportional political systems, in information environments where people are more exposed to public service broadcasting and broadsheets, and where the EU was more positively reported. In other words, understanding the political culture and media system shaping coverage, as well as the specific tone of EU reporting, was crucial to interpreting the degree to which conflict-framing had a mobilising effect.
This point was well made in the study by de Vreese and Boomgaarden (2006) of the ways in which European integration was portrayed in Dutch media. Their study examined the topics and institutional sources of stories across television and radio, along with whether an item featured political conflict. Consuming a high volume of news that included coverage of conflict, they suggested, enhanced people’s knowledge and likelihood to vote. In reaching this conclusion, they emphasised ‘the importance of taking content into account when investigating the relationship between media and political knowledge and engagement’ (de Vreese and Boomgaarden 2006: 333). Further still, they argued that ‘it is not sufficient to rely on exposure measures and to merely speculate about media content’ (ibid.).
In more recent years, interpreting the comparative differences in news content between competing media systems has taken greater prominence in exploring the possible influence of political reporting during election campaigns. Hansen and Pederson’s study during the 2011 Danish parliamentary elections, for example, discovered the type of newspapers consumed over the campaign was significant in a number of ways. In their words: ‘Broadsheet readers experienced a significant increase in both knowledge and internal efficacy. In contrast, tabloid readers became significantly less externally efficacious, suggesting that the tabloids may be partially to blame for cynicism and mistrust among the electorate. In other words, voters tend to be affected by what they are exposed to; you become what you read’ (2014: 319). Similarly, Strömbäck’s four-wave survey considered knowledge effects during both the Swedish 2014 general election and the EU parliamentary election and during a non-election period in the same year. It found conclusively that public service media – in all three contexts – enhanced people’s understanding of issues. Moreover, particular public service programmes had a stronger effect, further reinforcing the importance of investigating specific news content rather than just media ownership. Conversely, commercial television was identified as having a negative impact on people’s knowledge about the election. But Strömbäck’s findings went further. He concluded that ‘knowledge effects are stronger for one public service TV news show than for the other. This indicates that it is not ownership per se that is decisive. The format and the content also matter’ (Strömbäck 2016: 13; emphasis added).
Of course, both these studies were based in Scandinavian countries, which – as already acknowledged – have a comparatively high degree of conduct and standards policing the integrity of elections, including in the provision of news media (Norris 2014). Both Denmark and Sweden have well-funded and widely watched public service broadcasters and a broader journalism culture committed to fair and impartial election reporting. The information environments in other parts of the world are not as reliant on public service broadcasting, with election reporting being shaped more by market-driven or state-controlled media. As a consequence, regular exposure to news media in other countries might not necessarily enhance people’s knowledge about election issues.
As this section has explored, over recent years, debates about media effects have increasingly stressed the significance of understanding the comparative differences in news content, moving beyond broader claims about whether the media generally mobilise or malign voters. This is the central aim of the book – to examine, in detail, how similar or distinctive election reporting is between nations, different media systems and types of election campaigns. In doing so, we develop an evidence-based understanding of the logic shaping election reporting and consider its democratic value.
The scope of the book: reporting (and researching) elections
Although the ‘new’ online and social media platforms often dominate debates during election time (particularly as political parties increasingly rely on them for campaigning purposes), in most advanced Western democracies ‘old’ media continue to act as the primary source of information. As table 1.0 shows, a representative survey of 3,760 US adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in March 2016 found that television was more regularly used as a source of learning about the election than digital media, radio or newspapers (Gottfried et al. 2016).
Table 1.0 Sources of information about the 2016 presidential election campaign
Source: Adapted from Gottfried et al. 2016.
Percentage of news audiences
Television
78
Local TV news
57
Cable TV news
54
National nightly network TV news
49
Late-night comedy shows
25
Digital
65
New websites or apps
48
Social networking sites
44
Issue-based group websites, apps or emails
23
Candidate or campaign group websites, apps or emails
20
Radio
44
Print newspaper
36
Local daily newspapers
29
National newspapers
23
Likewise, in the UK, a representative poll found that 62 per cent of people considered television to be the most influential source of election news (Bold 2015). This was almost six times more than the 11 per cent who indicated social media. Above all, the televised leaders’ debates were viewed as the most influential programme on television during the election campaign, but second best were national newscasts. Even’s (2015) summary of voters’ main information sources during the 2015 UK general election campaign is worth quoting at length:
TV news still remained the way most voters experienced the general election and for many this was further underlined by another recent trend. For the 90% or so of non-marginal constituencies, there were no posters, billboards, hoardings, leaflets, canvassers, election meetings, walkabouts, photo-ops or politicians. If you were not living in a marginal seat, election activity might as well not exist unless it were on TV. These really were the forgotten voters. And this was even truer for parts of the electorate who were not frequent users of Facebook or Twitter. Or whose broadband still wasn’t up to scratch. Apart from local radio and newspapers, TV – especially TV news – would shape the campaign for them. For parties, even though there had been an increasing movement to the internet, television and news bulletins were still the primary battleground of the so-called air campaign and still (just about) the most important means of communicating with voters. These things were true of every campaign since the 1960s. They were still by and large true of 2015.
During the 2017 UK election campaign, a survey showed more people thought TV influenced their voting intention than sites such as Facebook, but the difference was just 1 per cent (Weber Shandwick 2017). Since 2016, the annual study of audiences published by Reuters has found that news consumption online is marginally greater than that on television, especially for younger age groups (Newman et al. 2017).
Indeed, television news viewing has fallen over the past few decades in most Western democracies (Nielsen and Sambrook 2016), with more people – notably in lower age groups – relying on online media and social media platforms (Newman et al. 2016). But, while it remains unclear how future generations will consume news, especially about politics, at present the evidence shows that television remains a dominant source of information about election campaigns (Bold 2015; Even 2015; Gottfried 2016; Weber Shandwick 2017). This is especially the case for older people, who, studies have repeatedly shown, are the age group most likely to vote. Put simply, television is the medium of news that informs most voters about election campaigns and, despite the many transformative developments in the age of online and social media consumption, should remain a critical site of inquiry for understanding how well informed and engaged citizens are in a democracy.
Given its continued centrality to most people’s information diet, television news reporting of election campaigns is the main focus of this book. The scope of our study, however, was designed to be wide-ranging, engaging with a number of timely debates in political communication and journalism studies but through the lens of election campaigns. We explore issues relevant to understanding media systems and information environments, media ownership and regulation, political news and horserace journalism, objectivity and impartiality, agenda-setting and intermedia agenda-setting, and the relationship between media and democracy more generally. However, the overarching focus is on debates about the mediatisation of politics (Strömbäck 2008; Strömbäck and Esser 2014). The concept of mediatisation has rightly been criticised for its narrow application, such as assessing the influence of media in cross-sectional data or within a national context (Cushion 2015; Deacon and Stanyer 2014). But we consider the mediatisation of politics to be a valuable comparative concept to apply when empirically assessing coverage longitudinally, cross-nationally or between media systems. As we explain, the book draws on a comprehensive range of news studies: each chapter engages with different debates but concludes with an assessment about the prevailing logic shaping campaign coverage. Exploring different aspects of coverage, we ask which logic best explains how election campaigns are reported.
