Of Horses Races and Hard News: How Media and Political Systems Shape the News We Use

Susan Banducci & Chris Hanretty

Information Environment

•  Information alters –  Collective outcomes

•  Information moderates –  Opinion change

•  Information mediates –  Competition à

[information] à turnout

•  Information environment influences individual levels of knowledge and awareness

•  What influences the supply of politically relevant information in the environment?

•  Information Environments. –  Information environment

varies across electoral contexts (time/unit variant)

–  Electorally relevant information driven by party competition, political communication systems?

–  This last question is largely unexamined.

Citizens in Information Environments

Electoral System

Information Environment

Citizen Media System

Party System

Approaches:

•  Media Regulator Framework •  Political Supply

•  Media Regulator Framework –  Concentration of ownership, public broadcasting

•  Political Supply –  Competition, polarisarion ß electoral system, party system

–  News = media system factors (including the market) + political factors

Expectations

•  Motivated by consideration of the costs of producing news, capturing audiences (i.e. what is of interest)

•  Competition in Market –  Is news like a car? More competition, better product?

•  Media System (hallin and mancini) –  Capture and news values

•  Political system –  Competitive & Polarisation

•  Audience demand –  more educated/more interested

Expectations

News Content Data - European Election Study 1999, 2004 and 2009

•  1999, 2004 and 2009 European Elections Media Content Analysis & Voter Surveys

•  3 Newspapers (frontpage), 3 weeks prior to election

•  Information (salience, actors, tone) indicators aggregated by country

•  67 second order elections

Data Linkages/measurement

•  News –  Soft news (topics) –  Horse race news (polls,

winners, losers)

•  Unit of Analysis –  Story or broadcast/newspaper? –  Story or outlet?

•  The total N (5375) represents outletdays; the total number of stories analysed is of course much greater.

•  Story level •  Outlet level •  Media System*

–  e.g. MPP – measured with voter survey

•  Political System –  Electoral/party system

Summary Results

Soft News Horse race News

PSB *(-) *(+)

Broadsheet/Tabloid Newspapers * (+) Tabloid*(-)

Professionalism

Parallelism

Market Size *(+)

Market Competition/HHI *(-)

Closeness *(+)

ENP/Polarisation ENEP*(-) Pol*(+)

Audience Interest*(-)/Ed*(+) Interest*(-)

Conclusions

•  Political Supply or Media Markets? –  Political factors

important –  Market competition

imo –  Type of news matters: –  Horse race – political

supply –  Soft news – also

political factors

•  Not much impact of media systems.

•  Limited impact of media markets.

Schuck et al 2010. Party contestation and Europe on the news agenda: The 2009 European Parliamentary Elections Electoral Studies

Party Contestation and Europe in the News

Attributing responsibility for policy performance:

Economic stories – % mentioning either positive or negative effect of government on performance

010

2030

40

mea

n of

eco

ngov

_pne

ff_fu

ll

0 1 2 3

High Clarity

Low Clarity