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This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter in a book edited by Claes de Vreese, Frank Esser and David Nicolas Hopmann published by Routledge as Comparing Political Journalism in 26, 2016. The book is available online at: https://www.routledge.com/Comparing-Political-Journalism/de-Vreese-Esser-Hopmann/p/book/9781138655867 . Locked until 15 January 2018 due to copyright restrictions

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter in a book edited by Claes de Vreese, Frank Esser and David Nicolas Hopmann published by Routledge as Comparing Political Journalism in 26, 2016. The book is available online at: https://www.routledge.com/Comparing-Political-Journalism/de-Vreese-Esser-Hopmann/p/book/9781138655867 . Locked until 15 January 2018 due to copyright restrictions

The analyses in this book are based on a dataset covering information on more than 7,500 news items and more than 28,000 sources that appear in the news items. How did we gather these news items? In the process of designing a comparative study, numerous decisions have to be made – many of which are not straightforward (Rössler 2012). These decisions relate to the sampling procedure, the construction of the codebook, inter-coder reliability testing, and the strategy of analysis. The goal of this chapter is to provide a technical overview of how we created the main data source for this book and to present the methods applied. In so doing, we intend to provide enough background information for the subsequent analyses that are needed to evaluate and contextualize the data and the results. This chapter does not aim to provide an in-depth discussion or analysis of the methods and strategies applied. Numerous books and articles with extended methodological discussions on cross-country media content analysis have been previously published (e.g., Hopmann and Skovsgaard 2014; Krippendorff 2004; Neuendorf 2002; Peter and Lauf 2002; Riffe, Lacy, and Fico 2005; Rössler 2012). This chapter, by contrast, describes the application of methods. The chapter proceeds as follows. In the first part, the period of sampling and its various steps are presented, involving countries, news outlets, and news articles. In the second part, we provide a short overview of the codebook. The third part presents our testing of inter-coder reliability, both across countries and within countries. We then briefly explain how our analyses in the subsequent chapters were conducted and why. The chapter’s concluding section reflects on some of the advantages and challenges of the data sources and the methods that we have chosen. LOCKED until 1.7.2018 due to copyright restrictions. This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in [Comparing Political Journalism], available online: https://www.routledge.com/Comparing-Political-Journalism/de-Vreese-Esser-Hopmann/p/book/9781138655867

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter in a book edited by Claes de Vreese, Frank Esser and David Nicolas Hopmann published by Routledge as Comparing Political Journalism in 26, 2016. The book is available online at: https://www.routledge.com/Comparing-Political-Journalism/de-Vreese-Esser-Hopmann/p/book/9781138655867 . Locked until 15 January 2018 due to copyright restrictions

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter edited by Toril Aalberg, Frank Esser,Carsten Reinemann, Jesper Strömbäck, and Claes H. de Vreese published by Routledge as Populist Political Communication in Europe on July 26, 2016. The book is available online: at: http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/book/10.4324/9781315623016 . Locked until 26 January 2018 due to copyright restrictions.

The studies in this volume conceptualize populism as a type of political communication and investigate it comparatively, focusing on (a) politicians’ and journalists’ perceptions, (b) media coverage, and (c) effects on citizens. This book presents findings from several large-scale internationally comparative empirical studies, funded by the European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST), focusing on communication and the media within the context of populism and populist political communication in Europe. The studies are based on comparative interview studies with journalists and politicians, a large-scale comparative content analysis, and a comparative cross-country experiment using nationally representative online-surveys over 15 countries. The book also includes advice for stakeholders like politicians, the media, and citizens about how to deal with the challenge of populist political communication. This enlightening volume is ‘populist’ in the best sense and will be an essential text for any scholar in political science, communication science, media studies, sociology and philosophy with an interest in populism and political communication. It does not assume specialist knowledge and will remain accessible and engaging to students, practitioners and policymakers

This chapter for the first time shows what populist and non-populist politicians think about the rise and the success of populism and how they respond and interpret this political reality. The chapter examines the reactions of mainstream politicians to the rise of populism and of populist politicians to established politics in 11 countries. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with some 50 politicians, the chapter explores popular definitions of populism; reasons for popularity; issues related to populism; consequences of populism; and perceptions of media support for populism. It finds that populism is seen by most mainstream politicians as a threat to the political and social order and something that needs to be challenged, while populists are keen to show how out of touch mainstream politics is. When asked for the reasons for populist success, politicians mainly point to the malfunctioning of established democratic institutions, including mainstream political parties, in addressing problems and producing convincing discourses and solutions. Politicians generally agree that the media are an important part of the equation in explaining populist success, although there is little consensus on this. Overall, there are no clear, discernible regional patterns. Instead, national contexts seem to play a major role for the workings of populism as viewed by the interviewed politicians.

This chapter for the first time shows how journalists react to populist politicians and movements and what they think about them. It examines the reactions of journalists in serious and popular media to the presence of populism in 13 countries. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with around 50 journalists, the chapter explores popular definitions of populism; reasons for popularity; issues related to populism; consequences of populism; and perceptions of media support for populism. The research shows that while journalists do not agree on a single definition of populism, they see the phenomenon as a negative force with detrimental consequences for European democracies. Journalists identify a number of reasons for the rise of populism; most often mentioned are immigration and economic issues, alongside the effective communication of populist politicians. There are no strong regional patterns of perceptions of populism nor systematic differences between journalists from different types of media outlets. Rather, there are commonalities in more general perceptions of populism that cross nations and differences in more specific questions that point to the relevance of specific national experiences, situations, and circumstances.

This chapter focuses on trends in reporting over time. It examines the presence of populist key messages in European newspapers coverage of immigration and commentaries on current political events, at two points in time, spring 2016 and spring 2017. The chapter explores the similarities and differences in the populist content of newspapers between the two periods and identifies a set of extra-media and intra-media explanatory factors contributing to the understanding of the emerging differences in a year-to-year comparison. The findings show that the presence of populism in news and commentaries in some countries is loosely related to actual migration dynamics (see Germany and Greece), whereas in other countries it seems to follow more intensive political debates, although actual immigration is less dramatic (Bulgaria, Poland). There are fewer indications than expected that the populist tendencies in news and commentaries are a reaction to the intensity with which the population views immigration as an important national issue or is dissatisfied with decisions by political elites. Finally, there are strong indications of the great importance of intra-media factors in explaining populism in news and commentary.

This chapter investigates factors contributing to the levels of populism in media output. The chapter finds that stylistic elements, such as emotionalization, negativity, polarization, and dramatization, increase the occurrence (or likelihood thereof) of populist elements in stories. In addition to the writing style, the thematic context is another influencing factor. If a story combines the themes of immigration and European integration, this makes populism more likely to occur. Contrary to the expectation of the authors, there is no evidence that mass-market newspapers are more prone to using populism than up-market newspapers. A strong influence comes, however, from characteristics of the media system. The more adversarial the journalistic culture in a given country, the more populist the content of news items and commentaries is. The chapter also finds that majoritarian democracies and weak press systems are characterized by higher levels of populism in the press.

This chapter provides information that makes it easier to understand the media's role in populist political communication. It identifies three cross-national patterns of how the news media cover populist parties across Europe: from limited to increased coverage spurred by rising poll figures; negative coverage that is not necessarily negative for populist actors; and critical coverage of populist actors out of concern for democracy. The term media populism lends itself to three distinct perspectives: populism by the media, populism through the media, and populist citizen journalism. In order to minimize dependency on journalism as a dissemination medium, the Front National in France has expanded its website and created a highly professional information hub for interested visitors. The right-populist Freedom Party of Austria has increasingly turned to new web-based media as its main channels of political communication. Swedish scholar Andersson has argued that such antagonism is mitigated if a neo-populist party itself becomes part of the establishment due to electoral success.

European media systems have gone through major changes in the last few decades, and these changes have included increased opportunity structures for the dissemination of populist messages. Chapter 12 (‘Switzerland’) rightly states that the disappearance of the traditional party press, increased media ownership concentration, dependence on advertising, and a stronger orientation toward news values have worked in favor of a growing populist discourse. The newly established online media are seen as having a high afnity to populism’s rhetorical persuasion because both aim for the “quick kick/click” with a broad audience. As was stated in Chapter 1 in this volume, the role that the media play in the dissemination of populism is largely under-explored. In the classical research literature dealing with populism (see, e.g., Canovan, 1981; Taggart, 2000), communication and media are not addressed at all. When political scientists make the media their subject, they see the media mostly only as a neutral platform for populist leaders’ appearances and messages. One exception is Mudde (2007), who dedicates at least a few pages to this topic in his book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (pp. 248-253). He elaborates in particular on the assumption that tabloids and commercial television share a close relationship with populist communication.

In the 2015 elections to the Folketing (Danish Parliament), the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party (DF) received roughly 21% of the vote, rendering it the second-largest parliamentary party after the Social Democrats and the largest party in the non-socialist political bloc, the so-called blue bloc.