Regional Newspaper Coverage of Norwegian Local Elections: Election Coverage in the Agderposten and Fedrelandsvennen Newspapers

In: World political science, Band 5, Heft 1

Abstract

How the media cover local election campaigns in Norway has long been a topic of discussion. Is election coverage genuinely local, or do local campaigns tend to be "hijacked" by national politicians? While it is inevitable that national media take a national angle on political journalism, it is interesting to scrutinize how regional and local media cover local election campaigns. If coverage has a national perspective, the electorate may be badly informed about important local political cleavages. This article reports the findings of a content analysis of political articles in two regional newspapers four weeks prior to the 2007 local elections. The main findings are that local politics dominate clearly in frequency and in scope of coverage, although national politics and politicians are clearly present, and local dominance increases as election day approaches. Implications for local democracy are discussed.