Commercialization and the Media Coverage of Swedish National Elections in 1998 and 2002.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether commercialization can explain the extent to which Swedish news media at the 1998 and 2002 national elections framed politics as a game rather than as issues, followed an interpretive rather than a descriptive journalistic style, and, finally, how many sentences politicians were allowed to speak for themselves. Using quantitative content analysis, the study includes the two leading national broadsheet papers, the two leading national tabloids, and the three main broadcast news shows during the three weeks prior to each election. Contrary to expectations, the results show that even though the Swedish media system has become more commercialized during the last 15-20 years, commercialization is not the decisive factor in explaining the extent to which leading Swedish media in their election coverage frame politics as a strategic game, follow an interpretive journalistic style or let politicians speak for themselves. Even though commercialization of the media is a global force, affecting news media in democracies around the world, most news media are still rooted in their country- and cultural-specific contexts, where they have to operate within the limits set by political regulations, audience expectations, journalistic norms and values, and current events as they play out during different election campaigns. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]