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Partisan identities do not only shape people’s political attitudes, but also their perceptions of real-world developments. This is evident from the partisan economic perception gap: Government supporters have more positive economic perceptions than opposition supporters, especially when the economic situation is ambiguous. Recent research has shown that the size of this partisan gap varies across different contexts and that the state of the economy and working of political institutions are important moderators. Still, little is known about the influence of another important contextual variable: the degree of partisanship in the media system. Based on a theoretical discussion of partisan-motivated rationalization and the information environment, the paper tests the hypothesis that, due to selective exposure and exposure to more partisan content, people in partisan media systems have more polarized economic perceptions. A multilevel analysis of representative surveys in twenty-six European countries in 2014 shows that the partisan perception gap is, indeed, larger in countries with more polarized media systems, after controlling for other relevant country characteristics. People with the highest level of media consumption are most affected by media-party parallelism. The findings are relevant for worldwide discussions about posttruth politics, as they show that the media environment influences gaps in people’s perceptions of real-world developments.

The democratic functions of the media are at the center of discussions about the societal role of journalists (e.g., McNair 2009; Stromback 2005). These democratic functions, like the information, watchdog, and expression function are laid down in legal texts (Graber 2003) and ethical codes (Sonnenberg 1997) and are part of the core values of the occupational ideology of journalists (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2001).

Although data journalism is practiced globally, data journalism research has traditionally focused on a limited set of countries, primarily within the liberal and democratic corporatist media systems. Many recently published studies illustrate a growing scholarly interest in data journalism in other parts of the world, but these studies are still limited in number. This special issue brings together five new empirical studies of data journalism around the world, as well as two commentaries and two book reviews on the topic with the aim of broadening the theoretical, empirical, and geographic perspectives on data journalism. The core of the special issue consists of five national and comparative case studies studying data journalism in Africa, the Arab world, Italy, the UK, and Argentina. Combined, these articles and the other publications in this special issue point to three important contextual factors that shape data journalism worldwide: journalistic cultures, media markets, and the political environment. After a discussion of each of these three factors, areas for future research are proposed.

Given the importance of issue competition in a West European context and the growing use of Facebook in elections, this paper studies how politicians use Facebook to shape the campaign agenda. We analyze the issues addressed in 6,388 Facebook posts by candidates in the Danish 2011 parliamentary election. A limited share of Facebook updates is dedicated to issues. The Facebook agenda did not respond to standings in the polls, nor to the media agenda or public agenda. Comparing issue engagement of new candidates and rerunning candidates we find that the Facebook campaign agenda is not simply politics as usual.

Television interviews with political candidates are pivotal moments in election campaigns. Previous studies in Anglo-American contexts have shown that adversarialism in television interviews can be predicted by the power of the politician and by the status of the interviewer. However, worldwide the structural conditions of the liberal media system are unique. This article studies how the Anglo-American watchdog model of interviews should be adapted to polarized television markets such as Italy, where broadcast organizations are politically, financially, and historically linked to different political blocks. A content analysis of the level of toughness in questions posed to politicians from different parties during the 2006 and 2008 Italian general elections showed that, in line with the watchdog model, journalists are more adversarial toward politicians who are likely to win the elections. Apart from this, interviews in polarized television markets follow a different model: Interviewers with high status are less adversarial, politicians from minor parties face more threatening questions, and partisan bias is more important than role bias. The generalizability of this model is discussed in the light of the polarization of television markets, partisan segregation, and the potential consequences for vote choice and election outcomes.

Studies in different countries have shown that the media can influence the attention politicians devote to different issues. However, knowledge about the cross-national contingencies of the political agenda-setting power of the media is limited. This study compares the perceptions of journalists of the political agenda-setting power of the mass media in eight parliamentary democracies with varying media and political systems: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Building on a power balance perspective, the article looks at the autonomy of the media system (audience reach and political control) and the concentration of power in the political system (number of political parties, concentration of executive power) to contextualise the role of the media in political agenda-setting. Journalists perceive most media influence in Norway and Sweden and least in Spain. The results indicate that the power balance between the media and political actors to a large extent reflects the institutional structure of the political system, but that media characteristics such as the autonomous position of television should also be taken into account.

A well-functioning democracy needs the news media to provide information to its citizens. It is therefore essential to understand what kinds of news contents contribute to gains in citizens' political knowledge and for whom this takes place. Extant research is divergent on this matter, especially with respect to ‘softer’ news coverage. This cross-national study investigates the effects of exposure to human interest and conflict frames in the news on political knowledge. Drawing on panel surveys and media content analyses in three countries, the study shows how these two frames contribute positively to political knowledge gain. This relationship is moderated by political interest so that those who are least interested learn the most from this type of easily accessible news coverage. The results are discussed in the light of research on news media and knowledge acquisition.

The battle for media attention is an integral part of political conflicts. Because of structural bias in the news, government generally dominates this battle for media attention. This article argues, first, that the attention for government and parliament in the news reflects the power balance in the political system and, second, that this relation is moderated by cross-national differences in journalistic cultures, in particular the importance of conflict framing. Content analysis of newspaper and television coverage in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain ( N = 1,306 stories) shows that because of the universal news value of political power, attention for government and parliament reinforces differences of political power of these institutions, both within countries and cross-nationally. However, in pragmatic journalistic cultures, the dominance of government is weakened by journalists’ search for conflict. In countries where the news value of conflict is more important (Denmark and the United Kingdom), stories about government more often include oppositional voices than in countries where conflict is a less important news value (Spain).

Critics claim that journalists spread a cynical view of politics, as their relation with politicians is characterized by mistrust and hyper-adversarialism. To gain an insight into how cynical journalists themselves are about politics and how this can be explained, this article investigates the role relationship between politicians and journalists in four European countries with different political communication systems. The empirical basis for the study is a survey of over 400 political reporters from the UK, Denmark, Germany and Spain. Compared to their colleagues in Northern Europe, Spanish journalists have the most cynical view of politicians, which can partly be explained by feelings of political pressure. Journalists are cynical when they have a negative view of the role of spin doctors and believe that politicians use the media as a podium where they can be in the spotlight. The possible influence of journalists’ political attitudes on news content is discussed.

Power relations between politicians and journalists are often depicted as an ongoing tango with one actor leading the other. This study analyzes interactions between politicians and journalists not ...

The power of the media has long been at the centre of communication studies, mostly focusing on the effects they have on the public. Power over politics is far less studied, however many politicians complain about such media power after a lost election or when observing political cynicism among the public. In this paper, the results of a survey on politicians and journalists in Belgium and the Netherlands are presented, showing the perceptions of power they have about each other. The general picture is that in both countries, members of parliament have a negative image of political journalists, especially those who work on television: they have too much power, can make or break politicians and (too) often set the political agenda. Sometimes journalists share this view, but they accompany it with a rather negative view of politicians: they do anything to get attention from the media. Although often referred to as the Low countries, Belgium and the Netherlands do not reveal the same picture, with Belgian politicians generally more negative about journalists' power than their Dutch colleagues

In the wake of the financial crisis, journalists were criticized for failing in their coverage of the economy: The claim was that they had failed in their duty as watchdogs. The aim of this article is to examine to what extent journalists fulfill their role as watchdogs when covering business news, in light of this criticism. Given the prevalence of the watchdog ideal in journalism and the lessons learned during the financial crisis, we expect journalists to act equally critically toward business and political news. Based on a systematic content analysis of business and political news in the five largest Danish newspapers, we find that politicians and business actors are covered with a similar tone. We conclude that journalists do fulfill their watchdog role when it comes to both business and politics. The differences in coverage and the implications of this adherence to the watchdog ideal are also discussed.

A large body of research in journalism studies has analyzed which social and political roles news professionals consider they must fulfill in society. These studies are based on the assumption that role conception influences news content. However, the gap between ideals and practice is inevitable, since the constraint to which journalists are exposed limits the possibility of living up to their normative standards. While recent studies have addressed the relationship between ideals and practice by studying whether journalists with different roles report differently, we know less about the gap between the two. By comparing the role conception of journalists with the news stories they produce, we address the (dis)connection between roles and content as a gap, analyzing which roles render a larger distance and also which journalists are more likely to put their ideals into practice. The findings show a significant gap between role conception and performance, particularly for the service, civic and watchdog roles. Greater perceived autonomy leads to a smaller gap, while economic and political influences as well as belonging to a beat increase the gap. Likewise, the gap varies significantly between journalists working at the quality and the popular press.

The Effects of Privatization versus Personalization in the News In the previous chapter we examined the effects of human-interest and conflict frames on political knowledge, and showed how especially those with lower levels of political interest may benefit from exposure to such political news. Along the same lines we will now examine the effects of infotainment coverage on citizens with various levels of political interest. Our key question is whether political journalism that draws on entertainment features in the news leads to political cynicism. Journalists are often criticized for blurring the line between news and entertainment. This phenomenon, also known as “infotainment,” is subject to continuous debate among political communication scholars regarding its causes, meaning, and most importantly its effects on citizens and democracy (see Brants, 1998). While differentiation between information and entertainment is much contested, it is important to note that news is never likely to be 100 percent entertainment. Traditionally, however, the expectation has been that news should be informative. In Chapter 1 we outlined the information-entertainment continuum as one of the core concepts of this book. We investigated the importance of this dimension for journalists’ self-perceptions (Chapter 3) and the content they produce (Chapter 5). In this chapter we turn to the effects of exposure to infotainment.

The increasing commercialization of media markets in Denmark and abroad have led to concerns about journalism's role in democracy. In discussions about the influence of budget cuts and increased competition on the way journalists work, the difference between political journalists and other journalists is often disregarded. This paper argues that commercialization has a polarizing effect. It strengthens the political beat at the expense of other beats, as political news is cost-effective and a way for outlets to brand themselves. Representative surveys among parliamentary reporters and other Danish journalists confirm that commercial pressures affect political journalists less than other journalists, even those working in other prestigious beats. This has negative implications from the viewpoint of participatory democracy; while other journalists emphasize a role as promoters of a citizen perspective, parliamentary journalists see it as their main role to demand accountability rather than responsiveness of politicians.

The relation between journalistic role conceptions and news content is central for the understanding of differences in journalistic cultures. Previous research has shown that the professional roles of individual journalists can influence their behaviour and that occupational socialization leads to similar role conceptions within countries. This article therefore studies the relation between cross-national differences in role conceptions and news content. A survey among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain ( N = 425), combined with a content analysis of political coverage in these countries ( N = 1,035 newspaper articles) shows that role conceptions vary more across countries than within countries. Spanish political journalists see their role as more sacerdotal and partisan than their colleagues in northern Europe, while British journalists are most entertainment oriented. These differences in role conceptions are reflected in the reporting style of political news.

Political journalism plays a central role in all democratic societies. But the way political journalists fulfil this role varies from country to country. To better understand the role of political journalists in different democracies, this article explores which features of political journalism are universal and which characteristics vary cross-nationally. Comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain ( N = 425) show that political journalists are more often male and higher educated than the general population of journalists. Their political conviction is however less towards the left. Despite structural homogenization, the role conceptions and feelings of autonomy of political journalists vary between countries with different historical relations between media and political systems and different traditions of journalistic professionalization.

Although media researchers, journalists and politicians across media systems agree that the mass media have the power to make or break politicians, types of scandals that are covered vary widely across countries. This article analyses the particularities of Danish mediated scandals by comparing them to scandal coverage in the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany. Based on a survey among political journalists in the four countries, the article presents differences in journalistic culture between the four countries by describing the dominant role conceptions. We argue that different role conceptions (watchdog, entertainment and political partisan) can all lead to scandal coverage, but that types of scandals vary across journalistic cultures along the dimensions breach of rules vs. breach of norms and public life vs. private life. Danish scandals coverage is most similar to German scandal coverage, with an emphasis on the watchdog role, little openly partisan scandal coverage (as in Spain), disapproval of the use ethically questionable reporting methods like wiretapping or opening garbage and reluctance to cover politicians’ sex life (as in the United Kingdom). The private life of Danish politicians is not completely off limits, but when the private life of politicians is broadly covered by Danish media, this is normally because politicians did not live up to the norms they set in public.