Journalistic behaviour in election broadcasts
In: Massenmedien und Wahlen, S. 201-212
"The author presents a model of factors influencing the content of mass media-transmitted political communication. The basic idea behind the model is that the content of political communication is generally influenced by the political and the economic system, as well as by the actual situation in which the interaction between the mass media and political actors takes place. A set of hypotheses about journalistic behaviour is derived from the model. Content analysis data from three Danish general elections, as well as from the first direct elections for the European Parliament are confronted with these hypotheses. The empirical results show a recognizable pattern of interaction between politicians and journalists. For instance, journalists are more interested in what can be labelled as 'the here and now'. Also, conflicts as a news criterion are found more often in journalistic behaviour, than in the speeches of party representatives. But at the same time we can see a clear tendency among party representatives to take over some of these criteria of news value for their own presentation. The author argues that the mass media constitute a serious threat against a free and participatory democracy if they are specifically used for conflict presentation or for personalisation." (author's abstract)