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In the first 25 years of its existence Dutch public television news was limited by many restrictions when it endeavoured to cover national politics. It was only expected to inform the public about the facts. Interviews interpretation and explanation were the prerogative of the current affairs programmes that were broadcast by the different broadcasting organisations these being remnants of pillarization. For a long time public television news more or less ignored the election campaigns. In 1986 this came to an end. Following in the footsteps of the BBC News the editors set up a news block which included daily reports of the election campaigns. Over the last ten years the media landscape has changed from being a supply market to becoming a highly competitive demand market. Campaign reporting by NOS-Journaal and its commercial competitor RTL-Nieuws has changed into a Dutch variant of interpretative journalism. Journalists no longer just describe politics they now play active and dominant roles by giving daily explanations for and making judgements on the behaviour of parties and politicians. Nevertheless public television news has remained predominantly substantive in the way it reports.

There is growing research on voting behavior in referendums. However, the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referendums, referendums initiated by the electorate to approve or reject decisions made by representative bodies, has not yet been studied. This is especially unfortunate as voting decisions in popular referendums differ from those in other referendums in interesting ways. Opinion formation can be a very dynamic process in popular referendums, making the referendum campaign crucial. This paper studies the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referendums & relates them to particular characteristics of the campaigns & the issues at hand. Based on the literature, we considered the effects of the intensity of the yes & no campaigns, familiarity with the issue, & partisan cues. Our study uses content analysis data & data from public opinion surveys dealing with various popular referendums held in the Netherlands. The study revealed several factors that contributed to the volatility of opinions in the referendum campaigns: the issue (new & did not fit traditional political schemes), lack of support from societal & community organizations for the position of the local authorities, & low profile campaigns on the part of local authorities. While some of these factors are general & may play a role in referendums everywhere, some can considered 'typically Dutch', related to the characteristics of popular referendums in the Netherlands & the country's political system. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.