The struggle for the agenda: Party agenda, media agenda and voters' agenda in the 1979 swedish election campaign
In: Massenmedien und Wahlen, S. 301-320
"The aim of this article is to study the relations between the party agenda, the media agenda and the voter's agenda in an election campaign. The paper starts with a try to measure the intentions or the issue priorities of the parties in the 1979 Swedish election campaignthe Party Agenda. After that follows a comparison between the agendas of the five swedish parties with the media agendas in their own party press and in television. The media agendas and the agendas of the parties are also related to the voter's agenda. Which one are the most powerful agenda setter: the parties or the media? The study demonstrates that newspaper agendas are more closely allied to the agenda of the electorate than to that of political parties, even though newspapers profess loyalty to a given party. Independent television treats all parties equally negative: in its programming it often deals with just those issues which politicians attempt to avoid in their campaign speeches. All in all one can say that political parties in general greatly influence political newsreporting, but that this is not true in regards to specific party issues. A comparison between electoral and media agendas reveals an astounding correlation between newspapers and their readership. Increased television usage, however, fails to demonstrate a similar higher correlation between media and recipient agendas. Newspapers thus proved to be a stronger effects factor in Sweden." (author's abstract)