Search

This paper focuses on the framing strategies lobbyists apply to influence public policy in a case on nuclear emission data in Switzerland. Framing analysis is at the heart of communication science and has been applied in lobbying settings, but framing theory has not yet been fine‐tuned to the specificities of public affairs research. This qualitative case study gives insights into the dominant frames seven actors ranging from corporations to nongovernmental organizations to public institutions employ to defend a legal court case in the nuclear power industry. The results of the document analysis and the interviews show that frames travel among diverse actors and only some are picked up by the courts, at times stating a position opposite to the one initially intended by the frame sponsor. A public affairs‐specific integrated process model of framing is presented that views the media in the role of a moderator in the framing process and pronounces the lobbying organizations' strategic goals, the different stakeholders as target audiences, and the outcomes of the public affairs process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging in comparative lobbying research is a challenging task, because public affairs is complex and highly context‐dependent. Thus, qualitative case studies have been researchers' primary choice. However, the case method has been subject to much debate surrounding its rigor, in terms of reliability, internal validity, and generalizability, and particularly its potential for theory building. To propose a framework for researchers conducting lobbying case studies as well as for reviewers receiving such work, we apply a positivistic approach on case study rigor from management studies and expand the framework to tackle the specific challenges of comparative qualitative lobbying research. Thus, we expand the research framework by a set of variables specific to public affairs: We add enrichment for internal validity, contextuality, and comparability for external validity, interdisciplinarity for construct validity, and hypertext‐searchable databases for reliability. Thereby, we aim to transfer the lessons learned from management studies in terms of rigorous qualitative case studies to public affairs to help build novel and explanatory theory in the field and to provide guidance to researchers how to design a rigorous case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]