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This paper investigates the multidirectional causal relationships between negative economic coverage in two national newspapers and parliamentary questions addressing the economic crisis in Spain and the Netherlands, while controlling for the "real" economy as portrayed by stock market indices. Weekly level vector autoregression (VAR) analyses demonstrate for both countries that newspaper coverage is affected by stock market ratings and parliamentary questions. In Spain, newspaper coverage also affects parliament. A more detailed analysis shows that in Spain, the newspaper that is close to the government is ignored by the opposition as a source for parliamentary questions, while this newspaper also ignores the attention the opposition pays to negative economic developments in its parliamentary questions. In the Netherlands, we do not find any differences across newspapers. These findings reflect the differences in political and media systems and specifically the differences in the levels of consensus-orientation and political parallelism between the two countries.

Debate about the quantity of political information often tends to evaluate television negatively since it became a widely used mass medium. Systematic data on the supply and proportion of political information on television, however, are scarce. This research fills this gap by presenting a longitudinal analysis of broadcast time for political information. The authors examine specifically how time spent on the broad categories of information, infotainment and entertainment on television in the Netherlands has evolved from 1957 to 2006. Results show that over time both public and commercial broadcasters have dedicated more time to information programming, but these programmes have moved out of prime time, especially on commercial channels. Overall, time spent on entertainment has gone down, contrary to expectations, while time for infotainment programmes has gone up, in concordance with existing beliefs.

This article critically reviews current frame and framing research in media and communication studies. It is first argued that most authors fail to distinguish between 'frame' and 'framing' and therewith produce a conceptual confusion and imprecision that is not conducive to the field. Second, it is argued that current frame and framing research ignore sociological research about news production and news audiences that reached its zenith in the 1980s and is still conceptually and methodologically relevant to much current frame and framing research. As a result, a notion of power is absent from most current frame and framing research. By discussing — on the basis of key literature — what a news 'frame' is, how it comes about and how it is of consequence successively, these claims are substantiated and research directions for improving the field are indicated.

In this article, the authors address the question of to what extent negative political campaigning differs when looking at different communication channels. They compare paid publicity, election debates, and newspaper coverage for the 2006 Dutch parliamentary elections and conduct an elaborate content analysis. Results show that the level of negative campaigning does not differ greatly across these channels, although election debates clearly show the highest amount of this type of campaigning. Notably, negative campaigning takes a different form in newspaper coverage, where appeals are more personal, focusing on character traits as opposed to being directed to political parties and dealing with political issues. The authors explain those results by pointing to the different levels of control politicians exert over communication channels. They also make a plea to other researchers investigating negative campaigning, asking them to fully consider that their results might be seriously biased by the communication channel they investigate.

This is a response to Pauwels' critique of our 2007 Electoral Studies article about the relationship between media content and anti-immigrant party support. We argue here, that Pauwels' criticism falls short in three respects: (1) it is based on a selective presentation of our and others' arguments; (2) it fails to distinguish between cross-sectional and longitudinal explanations of anti-immigrant party support; and (3) it presents an overly simplified re-analysis which fails to take into account the dynamic properties of the time-series. Certainly, Pauwels' article contains some interesting suggestions for future research, but his assessment offers no strong evidence for a different interpretation of the relationship between media and anti-immigrant party support than the one given in our original article. Pauwels presents selective arguments. The critique fails to distinguish cross-sectional and time-series analysis.The article presents an overly simple re-analysis. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

AbstractImmigration is an increasingly important political issue in Western democracies and a crucial question relates to the antecedents of public attitudes towards immigrants. It is generally acknowledged that information relayed through the mass media plays a role in the formation of anti‐immigration attitudes. This study considers whether news coverage of immigrants and immigration issues relates to macro‐level dynamics of anti‐immigration attitudes. It further explores whether this relationship depends on variation in relevant real world contexts. The models simultaneously control for the effects of established contextual explanatory variables. Drawing on German monthly time‐series data and on ARIMA time‐series modeling techniques, it is shown that both the frequency and the tone of coverage of immigrant actors in the news significantly influence dynamics in anti‐immigration attitudes. The strength of the effect of the news, however, depends on contextual variation in immigration levels and the number of asylum seekers. Implications of these findings are discussed in the light of the increasing success of extreme right parties and growing opposition to further European integration.

Anti-immigrant populism is on the rise throughout western Europe. Traditionally, economic and immigration-related factors are used to explain support for anti-immigrant parties at the aggregate level. Until recently, the role of news media has received only limited attention. The present study assesses the power of news content as an explanatory contextual factor, simultaneously controlling for the unemployment rate, the level of immigration, and leadership in the Netherlands for the period from 1990 to 2002. The results show that the prominence of immigration issues in national newspapers has a significant and positive impact: The more news media reported about immigration-related topics, the higher the aggregate share of vote intention for anti-immigrant parties, even when controlling for real-world developments. Future research explaining anti-immigrant party success needs to take into account the role of news media content. [Copyright 2006 Elsevier Ltd.]

A B S T R A C T ■ An intriguing question in communication science deals with factors determining the intensity of news reporting about certain issues. The study investigates whether the prominence of immigration and the integration of minorities in news coverage reflects real-world developments or whether it is dependent on (political) key events. The authors compare the direct effects of real-world developments and key events in Dutch newspapers for the period 1991—2002 on the prominence of issue coverage. Results indicate that events have a more direct impact on the attention given to immigration and the integration of minorities in the news. The authors furthermore find that international events have a direct, but temporary effect, while most institutional national events influence media attention permanently. ■