Suchergebnisse

The notion that election campaigns mobilize people politically is often treated as conventional wisdom. There is, however, a scarcity of research on the mobilizing effects of election campaigns in the current high-choice media environment. The same holds true for research on the role of the media—and more specifically on how the mobilizing effects differ between news seekers and news avoiders—and on how mobilizing effects might differ between first- and second-order national election campaigns. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to investigate the mobilizing effects of elections in a high-choice media environment and how they differ between first- and second-order national election campaigns and between news seekers and news avoiders. Empirically, the study draws on a four-wave panel study conducted in Sweden during the 2014 elections to the European Parliament and the national parliament.

Although there is plenty of research investigating the linkages between news media use and political distrust, virtually all of these studies focus on the impact of media use on political distrust at a particular point in time. At the same time, the transition from low-choice to high-choice media environments suggests that the relationship might not be stable across time. Whatever the linkages between news media use and political distrust were in the 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s, it cannot a priori be assumed that those linkages are the same or of equal strength today. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing relationship between news media use and political trust across time. Among other things, the results show that there is a positive linkage between news media use and political trust but also that for some media, this relationship weakens across time.

During the last few decades, political campaigns appear to have become increasingly professionalised. However, at present most of the evidence for the professionalisation of political campaigning comes from countries such as the United States and Britain, and there is less evidence with regard to countries with party-centred systems, proportional elections and multiple parties. Moreover, there is a noticeable lack of systematic and comparative research on the extent to which political campaigns have become professionalised. At present, the only theory of professionalised campaigning that has been operationalised to allow systematic comparisons is the party-centred theory of professionalised campaigning. However, so far it has only been applied once. Thus the usefulness and validity of the theory remains largely unclear. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to elaborate on the party-centred theory of professionalised campaigning, and to test this theory in the context of the 2006 Swedish election.

While the histories of opinion polling and the newsmedia have been closely intertwined ever since the inventionof polling, the question as to whether the media'sreporting on opinion polls should be considered as detrimental or beneficial from a democratic perspective is still open and contested. The purpose of this paper is thus to investigate the publication of opinion polls in the Swedish media during the last three election campaigns, with a focus on how the media used opinion polls and whether or not the media, at the end of the day, mainly used opinion polls to give voice to the people – or to the media and the journalists themselves. Among other things, the results suggest that more often than not, polls serve as vox media rather than vox populi.

Two concepts that have been used to describe the changes with regards to media and politics during the last fifty years are the concepts of mediation and mediatization . However, both these concepts are used more often than they are properly defined. Moreover, there is a lack of analysis of the process of mediatization, although the concept as such denotes a process.Thus the purpose of this article is to analyze the concepts of mediated and mediatized politics from a process-oriented perspective. The article argues that mediatization is a multidimensional and inherently process-oriented concept and that it is possible to make a distinction between four phases of mediatization. Each of these phases is analyzed.The conclusion is that as politics becomes increasingly mediatized, the important question no longer is related to the independence of the media from politics and society. The important question becomes the independence of politics and society from the media.

Mediatization and Power: An Analysis of the Media's Political Influence. During the last few decades it has become increasingly common to characterize modern politics as mediated and mediatized. Problematic, though, is that both concepts are referred to more often than they are properly defined, and that there is a deficit in systematic empirical studies on the degree to which politics has become mediatized. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to analyze the concepts of "mediated" and "mediatized" politics, and to empirically investigate how Swedish members of parliament and political journalists perceive the media's political influence. The theoretical analysis suggests that the mediatization of politics should be understood as a multidimensional concept, whereas the empirical results show that both members of parliament and political journalists believe that the media do have extensive influence over politics as well as the general public.

Abstract
During the last 20 years, political marketing has become a widespread phenomenon around the world. However, most of the research concerning political marketing has been carried out in countries such as the United States and Britain. Thus, in order to understand the antecedents of political marketing, as well as its effectiveness as an electoral strategy, there is a need for comparative research including countries that differ significantly from the U.S. and Britain.
One such country is Sweden. Thus, the purpose of this article is to compare and analyze Sweden and Britain with regard to two analytical research questions: (1) What differences are there between Britain and Sweden that might be relevant in understanding why parties choose to be sales‐ or market‐oriented? (2) What are the implications with regards to differences between countries and between parties within countries that might help to explain why some parties in some countries are more likely than others to be market‐oriented?

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.