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"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)

"Much election communication scholarship could be described as anomic: short on standards but long on criticism. On the one hand, classical notions of democracy, and of the place of the interested/informed/ rational elector in it, have mostly been abandoned (without replacement by principal alternatives). On the other hand, the media are often condemned for numerous research-documented inadequacies of campaign reporting and election role. Meanwhile, television, a crucial vehicle of political communication generally and election communication specifically, has been exposed to an increasingly hostile barrage of criticism by standard-bearers of a wide range of causes and interests for its alleged failure to present their concerns authentically. In such an atmosphere, the time may be ripe for reappraisals and fresh statements of the standards of political journalism. Five priority guidelines for the enhancement of political journalism are proposed for discussion: (1) In media coverage of campaigns (and politics more widely) there should be more invitations to choose than to kibbitz'. (2) More credible and valid formats of political advocacy should be devised and tried. (3) The norm of impartiality should be re-interpreted to mean that all major opinion and interest groupings should be able 'at least to recognise in the coverage of their affairs the essential elements of what they believe'. (4) In addition to the more adversarial qualities of challenge, vigilance and exposure, a rounded political coverage would also occasionally acknowledge the problems involved in shouldering political responsibility and trying to implement policies. This is not a matter of looking up deferentially to office-holders but of avoiding an overly simplistic projection of the political vocation. (5) Ways should be explored of occasionally expressing explicitly those normative guidelines that predominantly shape political stories implicitly at present." (author's abstract)

"Presidental elections in the U.S. have changed substantially in the past two decades and in ways that have greatly enhanced the influcence of the news media. In the context of these changes, recent research on television and newspaper election coverage in the United States, concentrating specifically on the 1972 and 1976 elections is presented and analyzed. This research indicates that journalistic values have a substantial effect on election reporting. Because of news values, coverage tends to emphasize the strategic game played by the candidates, thereby de-emphasizing questions of national policy and leadership. Journalists also tend to overplay certain candidates and processes. Finally, reporters tend to emphasize issues other than the ones being stressed by the candidates. 'Candidates' issues' generally do not meet the media's criteria for newsworthiness. The voters' perceptions of the campaign are clearly influenced by the nature of election news. From news exposure, voters become more alert to the candidates' successes and failures than to their politics; become much better informed about press-emphasized candidates and relationships than about others; develop images of the candidates that are dominated by impressions of personality and not impressions of abilities; and acquire fragmented information of the candidates' platforms and proposals. The news media's present influence on U.S. presidential elections is unwarranted by institutional considerations. If the media are neither so trivial nor so self-interested as critics suggest, they also are much less adequate as a linking mechanism than is commonly assumed." (author's abstract)

"The author argues that after a decade of empirical studies on media agenda-setting, debate is centered not so much on whether there is media influence on public agendas (there seems to be considerable support for such an influence, at least at the group level), but rather on the contingent conditions that make for more or less of this influence. The evidence from several recent studies is reviewed in light of three emerging positions on agenda-setting: (1) The media are both necessary and sufficient in setting public agendas. (2) The media are necesaary, but not sufficient, in setting public agendas. (3) The media are neither necessary nor sufficient in setting public agendas. It is argued that there is much support from the recent research for the position that the media are often both necessary and sufficient for increasing the salience of just-emerging, largely unobtrusive issues for certain groups of the general public; some support for the position that the media are necessary, if not sufficient, in generating new issues; and least support for the position that the media are neither necessary nor sufficient in setting public agendas." (author's abstract)

"The major early studies by Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in the 1940s were based upon a number of assumptions that are not very appropriate today. Subsequent research has largely consisted of variations on those early studies, rather than a full reconceptualization of the problem posed by the burgeoning role of mass media in politics. Using a panel design, Lazarsfeld and his colleagues found relatively few people switching from one candidate to another, and switching was particularly rare among those who followed politics closely in the media. This lack of evidence, coupled with the prevalent image of social science as searching for 'theories of middle range', yielded a conclusion that mass media have only 'limited effects' in politics. Election research shifted in the 1950s and 1960s to national surveys conducted at the University of Michigan. Synchronous correlational designs replaced panels as the dominant model, and the role of mass media was severly downgraded to a few items asking whether the person had read or heard about the election campaign on TV or radio, or in a newspaper or magazine. The 1970s brought a flowering of new conceptual topics, although the basic marketing model continued to structure most studies. Cognitive dependent variables, based on the assumption that the media are responsible for enlightenment of the electorate, began to overshadow attitudinal measures and the simple act of voting. But the basis model for election studies has never been abandoned. The research field today remains very much the product of its historical roots." (author's abstract)

"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)

"Brief sketch of research on mass media portrayal of recent election campaigns in the United States. Most of this research involves media coverage of the 1980 presidential election campaign. The focus is on the substance of information conveyed by mass media stories and on the research methods used to assess the substance of coverage. The general discussion is followed by an analysis of the substance of coverage of the 1980 presidential election by the New York Times. In the paper, 1980 findings are compared to findings from prior elections, particularly the 1976 election. All findings about mass media coverage of presidential campaigns are based on the author"s previous research and involve use of the same type of detailed coding methods. The validity of such content analysis findings, based on well-established research techniques and routines used by most other researchers, is then questioned. Do the usual content-analysis techniques yield adequate information about media content? Do they give a wholly accurate, partially accurate, or totally inaccurate picture? To answer these questions, the paper reports findings from a content analysis of New York Times stories of the 1980 election done through the technique of 'assertion' coding. The results of traditional content analysis and assertion content analysis are then compared. The findings clearly demonstrate the shortcomings of current content analysis methods. They also suggest the direction in which current research findings need to be modified to present a more accurate picture of mass media protrayal of election campaigns." (author's abstract)