Search

Whether political communication research is media-centric or politics-centric is an interesting question. In this article, I argue however that it is important is to clarify whether the answer depe...

The policy of free movement—one of the core principles of the European Union—has become increasingly politicized. This makes it more important to understand how attitudes toward free movement are shaped, and the role of the media. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how news frames affect attitudes toward free movement, and whether education moderates framing effects. The findings from a survey experiment conducted in seven European countries show that the effects are few and inconsistent across countries. This suggest that these attitudes are not easily shifted by exposure to a single news frame.

In a time when freedom of movement is being challenged by an increasing number of European Union member states, and where immigration has been dominating public debate for years, this study investi...

The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals in 17 European countries. Our aim is to (i) profile different types of news consumers and (ii) understand how each user profile is linked to political knowledge acquisition. Our results show that five user profiles – news minimalists, social media news users, traditionalists, online news seekers, and hyper news consumers – can be identified, although the prevalence of these profiles varies across countries. Findings further show that both traditional and online-based news diets are correlated with higher political knowledge. However, online-based news use is more widespread in Southern Europe, where it is associated with lower levels of political knowledge than in Northern Europe. By focusing on news audiences, this study provides a comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of how contemporary European political information environments perform and contribute to an informed citizenry.

The transformation from low- to high-choice media environments has triggered concerns of rising inequalities in news media use. This concern has been buttressed by research showing that motivational factors have become more important predictors of news media use. Less attention has been paid to how changes in media environments have altered the impact of socioeconomic status on news media use. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the changing impact of socioeconomic status on newspaper and television news consumption, empirically focussing on Sweden between 2000 and 2016. Among other things, results suggest that the impact of socioeconomic status on news media use has increased with respect to reading morning newspapers but decreased for reading tabloids and watching television news.

Although research shows that there is a correlation between political interest and news media use, whether there are reciprocal effects between political interest and news media use remain unsettled. To remedy this and go beyond previous research, this study seeks to investigate the reciprocal relationship between political interest and TV news use (a) across elections, (b) across election periods and a nonelection period, and (c) comparing public service and commercial TV news. Using four representative panel surveys, findings show that there is a reciprocal relationship between political interest and watching public service but not commercial TV news.

One of the key democratic functions of the media is to provide people with the kind of information they need to be free and self-governing. This is equally important when it comes to the coverage of opinion polls. Thus far, there is however only limited research on the quality of the media’s coverage of opinion polls, including factors that might help to explain variation in the quality of opinion poll coverage. Against this background, the purpose of this study is (1) to investigate the extent to which news media take statistical uncertainties into account when covering opinion polls and making causal interpretations based on opinion polls, and (2) to explore some factors that might help to explain variation in the quality of opinion poll coverage. Among other things, the results show that journalists very often fail to take statistical uncertainties into account and that they, in about half of the cases, provide explanations for changes that are within the margin of error. The results also show that the...

Political public relations as practice dates back to ancient times, but today, public relations strategies and tactics are probably more ubiquitous in political communication processes than ever. Still, there is only limited theory and research that focuses on political public relations which manages to bridge the gap between political communication, public relations, and political science theory and research. Against this background, this chapter reviews theory and research from different disciplines that are relevant to understand political public relations, maps the field of political public relations research, and offers a definition of political public relations. More specifically, political public relations is defined as the management process by which an actor for political purposes, through communication and action, seeks to influence and to establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with key publics and stakeholders to help support its mission and achieve its goals. The chapter ends by outlining the chapters in the book.

As shown throughout the chapters in this volume, the topic of political public relations is a vibrant one meriting additional theoretical development and empirical scrutiny. Based on the conceptualizations presented throughout the previous chapters, political public relations is clearly an interdisciplinary subject lying at the crossroads of public relations, political communication, political science, and adjacent fields. While much work in this area has been isolated and independent in the past, we continue to advocate for the integration and convergence of theories, concepts, and principles in contemporary and future research. This is largely based on the notion that political public relations has a rich scholarly history that has developed in isolation in multiple fields.

In recent years, a number of studies have suggested a positive linkage between public service broadcasting and public knowledge about current affairs. Most studies are, however, based on aggregate, cross-sectional data. On the individual level they fall short of establishing any causal linkage between TV news exposure and public knowledge. In addition, studies which investigate whether the intensity of the political information environment matters for learning effects from watching TV news, are missing. Against this background, this study compares knowledge effects from watching public service and commercial TV news in three contexts that vary in the intensity of the political information environment: a national election campaign, a European parliamentary election campaign and a non-election period. Among other things, the results show stronger knowledge effects from watching public service than commercial TV news.

Politics, Policy, Populism and Online Media: Investigating Possible (Dis)Connections and Actors in Modern Democracies. (reference IF/01451/2014/CP1239/CT0004)

The United Kingdom has traditionally not witnessed examples of successful populist parties in the way that they have been observed in many continental European countries. The recent success of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at a number of elections, however, has led some to claim that there is a growing populist influence in politics. This chapter reviews the literature on populist political communication, identifying the main actors and what has been said about them. Populists constitute small opposition parties with limited chance of governing in the current electoral system, and radical right populism in ethnocentric or Euroskeptic forms dominates. There is a gap in the literature on populist actors approach to the media. Most scholars focus on subtypes of populism, such as right-wing extremism and Euroskepticism. Most empirical investigations examine the British National Party's (BNP) media strategy and its attempt to both shed its former neo-Nazi image and to openly adopt a more populist rhetoric.

Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper draws on a unique, extensive, and comparative experiment in sixteen European countries (N = 15,412) to test the effects of populist communication on political engagement. The findings show that anti-elitist populism has the strongest mobilizing effects, and anti-immigrant messages have the strongest demobilizing effects. Moreover, national conditions such as the level of unemployment and the electoral success of the populist Left and Right condition the impact of populist communication. These findings provide important insights into the persuasiveness of populist messages spread throughout the European continent. © The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

The growth of partisan news sources has raised concerns that people will increasingly select attitude-consistent information, which lead to increasing political polarization. Thus far, there is limited research on the long-term mutual influences between selective exposure and political attitudes. This study therefore investigates the reciprocal influences between selective exposure and political attitudes over several years, using a three-wave panel survey conducted in Sweden 2014–2016. More specifically, we analyse how ideological selective exposure to both traditional and online news media influences citizens’ ideological leaning. Findings suggest that (1) people seek-out ideologically consistent print news and online news, and (2) such attitude-consistent news exposure reinforces citizens’ ideological leaning over time. In practice, however, such reinforcement effects are hampered by (3) relatively low overall ideological selective exposure and a (4) significant degree of cross-cutting news exposure online. These findings are discussed in light of selective exposure theory and reinforcing spirals model. PLEASE NOTE: The final version of this paper was published as: – Dahlgren, Peter M., Shehata, Adam & Strömbäck, Jesper (2019). Reinforcing Spirals at Work? Mutual Influences between Selective News Exposure and Ideological Leaning. European Journal of Communication, online early.

In highly mediatized democracies, political parties and other political actors have to manage the news and adapt to the fact that news media have become largely independent and highly influential. In this chapter, the authors bridge theory and research on strategic party behavior, mediatization, and political public relations to analyze why and how political parties seek to manage the news to further their strategic goals. Based on a review of the literature, the authors suggest a typology of strategies and tactics that political parties can use to manage the news. One conclusion is that adaption to news media need to follow from the strategic goals of the party. Otherwise adapting to news media is not strategic but rather surrendering to news media and news media logic.

During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, (4) increasing fragmentation and polarization, (5) increasing relativism and (6) increasing inequality in political knowledge. © Taylor & Francis 2017

The transition from low-choice to high-choice media environments has raised new concerns about selective exposure. In this context, two types of selective media exposure are relevant. One is selectivity based on political ideological preferences, the other selectivity based on political interest. Evidence for both has been found primarily in an American context, while there is less research on European countries. This is problematic, as the opportunity structures for different forms of selectivity vary across media environments. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to investigate the two types of selective exposure in a country—Sweden—where the opportunity structures for selective exposure differ from the American context. This study investigates both types of selective exposure in relation to televised party-leader interviews. Based on panel survey data, the findings show that selective exposure based on political interest is substantially more important than selective exposure based on ideological preferences in explaining exposure to party-leader interviews. To substantiate this finding, the results are replicated with partisan learning as the dependent variable.

During election campaigns, the three most important sets of actors are voters, political parties and candidates, and the media. The purpose of this chapter is thus to describe and analyze Swedish election campaigns with a focus on four interrelated aspects: how voters learn about politics and the issues at stake during election campaigns; how the news media cover election campaigns; how the parties plan and run their election campaigns; and the importance of election campaigns in terms of campaign effects. Among other things, the analysis shows that the mass media are highly important for an understanding of Swedish election campaigns that the parties’ campaigning can be considered semi-professionalized, and that election campaigns have become more important as electoral volatility has increased. Overall, the analysis also suggests that Swedish election campaigns work quite well in terms of mobilizing voters politically.

In research on political campaign communication, it is often assumed that campaign strategies and tactics are highly important for explaining election outcomes. In contrast, most research in politi ...

This longitudinal study investigates whether the impact of political interest—a key motivational factor behind news consumption—on various forms of news consumption has increased over time. The ana ...

This study compares election news coverage in two different countries – Sweden and the United States, focusing on the use of the strategic game frame and the conflict frame and the association between these two frames and different types of news sources. The content analysis includes early evening newscasts from CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News in the USA and Rapport, Aktuellt and TV4 Nyheterna in Sweden. The findings show that the strategic game frame is used more frequently in the US coverage and is correlated with the use of media analysts and campaign operatives in both countries. Ordinary citizens as sources contribute to issue framing while domestic political actors tend to be associated with conflict framing. Differences in media framing between public and private media are also identified and discussed in the context of national political and media systems.

Over the last decades, media environments have become radically transformed. Among the most significant changes is the rise of interactive media technologies, which raise new questions about how influence over media content has changed. At the same time, changes in media technologies and how they may change the influence over the news should not be understood in isolation from other changes in media environments. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how much influence journalists ascribe to different sets of actors; how they perceive changes over time; and whether journalists working with online publishing differ in these respects from other journalists. Among other things, the study shows that the most influential group is perceived to be journalists, followed by the audience and media owners. The group that is perceived to have increased their influence the most is media owners. All investigated groups—except journalists—are perceived to have increased their influence at ...

While the majority of previous research suggests there are positive relationships between digital media use and political participation and knowledge, most studies have relied on cross-sectional surveys and have thus not been able to firmly establish the chain of causality. Also, there is little research investigating use of different forms of digital media and their relative effects on political participation and knowledge. This study examines (a) the effects of digital media use on political participation and knowledge and (b) whether different forms of digital media use affect people differently. Drawing on two representative panel surveys, the study demonstrates that there are only weak effects of digital media use on political learning, but that the use of some digital media forms has appreciable effects on political participation.

Research has shown that individual-level characteristics such as socioeconomic status and political interest are becoming more important as predictors of news consumption in a rapidly changing medi ...

Although mediatization as a term is commonly used in the academic literature, it is rarely defined well and there are almost no studies that explicitly seek to investigate the mediatization of politics. Drawing on the literature on mediatization, media interventionism, political news journalism and related areas, the purpose of this article is to develop indicators of the degree to which news content is mediatized, and test these in a comparative content analysis of how Swedish and US television news covered the 2006 Swedish and 2008 US election campaigns. The results show that election news on US television is more mediatized than that on Swedish television, as expected. However, few differences were found across commercial and public service television news within Sweden. The study also suggests that the mediatization of news content may be moderated by national journalism cultures, political news cultures and political communication cultures.

In the literature on changes in political journalism, it is often claimed that journalists and media pundits have become more prominent in the media's political news coverage. At the same time, politicians allegedly receive less attention and are more often depicted either positively or negatively instead of neutrally. It has also been claimed that those commenting on politicians' actions in the news are predominantly conservative. Based on data from a content analysis of thousands of news stories from all five Danish national elections since 1994, this study investigates whether the assumed changes have indeed taken place. Among other things, the results show that journalists and media pundits today appear more often on camera and that media pundits more often than not are right-rather than left-wing. However, these and other trends are not unidirectional, suggesting more complex patterns than is often assumed.

The purpose of this study was to compare the predictive power of overall political news consumption and media-specific news consumption, on perceived issue salience across different media channels and media types in the context of the 2006 Swedish parliamentary election. Findings suggest that overall consumption of political news is significantly more important than consumption of specific media outlets in predicting changes in issue salience. Although the study demonstrates that the Swedish news media collectively can exert considerable agenda-setting influence over their audiences, it could, however, not find any consistent evidence of differences related to media channels or media types. The reasons for and implications of the results are discussed.

This study investigates the linkages between presidential public relations activities—speeches and press conferences—and public opinion towards the presidency from 1961 to 1997. The results show that there is a positive linkage between presidential news conferences and foreign policy job approval, and between presidential speeches and general as well as foreign policy job approval. Overall, the findings reveal stronger linkages between presidential news conferences and job approval than between presidential speeches and job approval, but also that the topic of the information subsidies and the specific type of job approval matters.

Being politically interested is one of the most important norms from a democratic perspective, as it is a crucial antecedent for voting, political knowledge, civic and political participation, and attentiveness to political information. However, only limited research has focused on the relationship between media use and political interest, despite the notion that modern politics is mediated politics. Even more important is the fact that the causal relationship between media use and political interest still has not been firmly established. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between news media use and political interest.The results show that there are indeed causal and reciprocal relationships between political interest and attention to political news, and between political interest and exposure to some, but not all, news media. Overall these results lend stronger support to the perspective of media mobilisation theories than media malaise theories.

Despite the major importance of the news media’s election news coverage, there are still only a few cross-national studies on how the media cover elections. There are even fewer that include both newspapers and TV news and that probe possible antecedents of how the media frame politics in their election news. Against this background, this article compares the media framing of election news in two countries—Belgium and Sweden— that constitute highly similar cases and both belong to the democratic corporatist model of media and politics. The study focuses on the importance of media channels, media types, and commercialism as antecedents of the media’s framing of election news.

During the last few decades, political campaigns appear to have become increasingly professionalised. However, at present most of the evidence for the professionalisation of political campaigning comes from countries such as the United States and Britain, and there is less evidence with regard to countries with party-centred systems, proportional elections and multiple parties. Moreover, there is a noticeable lack of systematic and comparative research on the extent to which political campaigns have become professionalised. At present, the only theory of professionalised campaigning that has been operationalised to allow systematic comparisons is the party-centred theory of professionalised campaigning. However, so far it has only been applied once. Thus the usefulness and validity of the theory remains largely unclear. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to elaborate on the party-centred theory of professionalised campaigning, and to test this theory in the context of the 2006 Swedish election.

Even though we live in a global world cross-cultural comparisons of journalism practice remain rare. This study analyzed the use of sources in newspaper coverage in Sweden and the United States. Rather than focusing on one single event, the comparison utilizes data from a number of different events: the 2003 Iraq War, the 2002 national election in Sweden and the 2004 presidential election in the United States, and the 2005/2006 international controversy stemming from the publication of the Mohammad Cartoons. Some interesting patterns across the three events emerged for the use of government officials, academic experts and citizens as sources. The findings are discussed in the context of news reporting and journalism within a distinct national political and media system.

The objective of this article is to analyze the brand new political party Junilistan in the Swedish European Parliamentary election in 2004. The article discusses whether Junilistan can be characterized as a market-oriented party, to what extent the party implemented political marketing techniques, and how the electoral success of Junilistan can be explained. The results indicate that Junilistan can be described as a “quasi–market-oriented” party, in the sense that it was inspired by perceptions of unfulfilled voter needs. However, its electoral success should mainly be explained by other factors, such as the second-ranking nature of European Parliamentary elections and growing distrust of established parties in Sweden.

While the histories of opinion polling and the news media have been closely intertwined ever since the invention of polling, the question as to whether the media's reporting on opinion polls should be considered as detrimental or beneficial from a democratic perspective is still open and contested. The purpose of this paper is thus to investigate the publication of opinion polls in the Swedish media during the last three election campaigns, with a focus on how the media used opinion polls and whether or not the media, at the end of the day, mainly used opinion polls to give voice to the people - or to the media and the journalists themselves. Among other things, the results suggest that more often than not, polls serve as vox media rather than vox populi. Zgodovini mnenjskih poizvedb in medijev se tesno prepletata vse od začetkov poizvedb, vendar na vprašanje, ali je medijsko poročanje o poizvedbah koristno ali škodljivo za demokracijo, še ni jasnega odgovora. Članek obravnava objavo mnenjskih poizvedb v švedskih medijih v času zadnjih treh volilnih kampanj s poudarkom na načinu uporabe poizvedb in na vprašanju, ali so mediji uporabljali mnenjske poizvedbe predvsem za to, da so dali glas ljudstvu ali samim sebi. Rezultati analize med drugim kažejo, da so mnenjske poizvedbe pogosteje vox media kot vox populi.

Even though the news coverage of election campaigns is important and has been at the centre of political communication research for a long time, there is still a lack of comparative studies in this area. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the election news coverage in Spain and Sweden. Theoretically, the study draws primarily on the concept and theory of framing and structural bias. The empirical method used is quantitative content analysis of the election news coverage in three newspapers in each country. The time period includes the three weeks prior to the Swedish national election in 2002 and the Spanish national election in 2004.

This study investigated the framing of the Iraq War in the elite newspapers in Sweden and the USA during the official war period, 20 March—1 May 2003. The content analysis revealed significant cross-cultural differences in the framing of the war in terms of tone, frames and use of sources. The differences in framing were consistent with the characteristics of the national political environment and foreign policy stances in each country.

The study of political communication and election research has been closely intertwined ever since the end of the Second World War. However, there is still a troubling lack of comparative research with regard to election news coverage in different countries. Thus, the purpose of this article is to compare election news coverage in Sweden and Norway. More specifically, this study focuses on the use of different frames, such as game versus issue framing, episodic versus thematic framing, the journalistic style and the origins of the news stories in the two countries. As Sweden and Norway are very similar, and both belong to the democratic corporatist model of media and politics, this study follows the most similar systems design. Thus, the main hypothesis is that similar political and media systems will produce similar news coverage. The results, however, show that although the election news coverage was rather similar in Swedish and Norwegian newspapers, some significant differences were found. The article discusses these results using the concepts of structural and contextual biases.

Although there is plenty of research investigating the linkages between news media use and political distrust, virtually all of these studies focus on the impact of media use on political distrust at a particular point in time. At the same time, the transition from low-choice to high-choice media environments suggests that the relationship might not be stable across time. Whatever the linkages between news media use and political distrust were in the 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s, it cannot a priori be assumed that those linkages are the same or of equal strength today. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing relationship between news media use and political trust across time. Among other things, the results show that there is a positive linkage between news media use and political trust but also that for some media, this relationship weakens across time.

During the last decade a number of scholars have argued that political campaigning has become professionalized, and that political marketing has become the new dominant campaign paradigm. However, the conceptual relationship between political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning is unclear. Furthermore, the distinction between political marketing, market orientation, and marketing techniques is often blurred. At the same time, most of the literature is dominated by either an American or British perspective. This makes it unclear as to whether these concepts should be viewed as general concepts, or as concepts relevant primarily for countries that share some specific set of political institutions. In this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to analyze (1) the conceptual relationship between political marketing, market orientation, marketing techniques, and professionalization of political campaigning, and (2) whether contemporary concepts of political marketing and t...

In the theory and practice of democratic politics, elections are essential. Not only is voting the one activity that binds the individual to the political system, elections are also expected to mobilize people politically. Thus, the purpose of this article is to study the mobilizing effects of national elections, using Sweden as a case study. More specifically, this article investigates political interest, party identification, trust in political and media institutions, media consumption and satisfaction with the way democracy works through the electoral cycles between 1986 and 2004. The results indicate that elections do mobilize people politically, but not with regard to the media variables.

During the last 20 years, political marketing has become a widespread phenomenon around the world. However, most of the research concerning political marketing has been carried out in countries such as the United States and Britain. Thus, in order to understand the antecedents of political marketing, as well as its effectiveness as an electoral strategy, there is a need for comparative research including countries that differ significantly from the U.S. and Britain. One such country is Sweden. Thus, the purpose of this article is to compare and analyze Sweden and Britain with regard to two analytical research questions: (1) What differences are there between Britain and Sweden that might be relevant in understanding why parties choose to be sales- or market-oriented? (2) What are the implications with regards to differences between countries and between parties within countries that might help to explain why some parties in some countries are more likely than others to be market-oriented?

This study compares the news coverage of election campaigns in three Swedish newspapers at the time of the 2002 national election and three U.S. newspapers at the time of the 2004 presidential election. The results from the content analysis show that the metaframe of politics as a strategic game was more common in the U.S. newspapers, while the metaframe of politics as issues was more common in the Swedish newspapers. U.S. articles were also more likely to use the horse-race and political strategy frames. While U.S. coverage was predominantly descriptive in focus, an interpretive journalistic style was more often dominant in the Swedish articles. The results also show that the U.S. news stories were triggered by the words and actions of the campaigns more often than the Swedish news stories.

Mismanagement, mistrust and missed opportunities: a study of the 2004 tsunami and Swedish political communication : Editorial

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare how leading Swedish news media in television and the press covered and described the terrorist attacks in the USA on September 11 in 2001, the US attacks on Afghanistan later in 2001 and the war in Iraq in 2003. The article examines factors influencing news decisions and media ability to maintain fair news reporting. The study looks specifically at the sources that are used, the occurrence of speculations and whether the coverage was anti-American or anti-Muslim. The central questions are: what were the most frequently used sources?, how frequent were different types of speculation?, and how frequent were anti-American and anti-Muslim rhetorical figures respectively?