Frank Esser

Dimensions of Political News Cultures: Sound Bite and Image Bite News in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States

This study offers the first systematic analysis of sound bites and image bites across countries and across time. It goes beyond traditional sound bite research by extending the scope of analysis also to visuals and by analyzing both sound and image bites not only with regard to their length but also with regard to their content and editorial packaging. Based on these findings, contours of three different political news cultures emerge: a strongly interventionist U.S. American approach, a moderately interventionist Anglo-German approach, and a noninterventionist French approach. Adopting an explicitly cross-national comparative perspective, the study introduces a theoretical model that explains sound bite news in divergent media systems and links it to the concept of media culture. It derives seven hypotheses from the model and tests them on three levels of analysis—organizational, national, and transnational. Despite a growing transnational convergence, multivariate data analysis shows evidence of the enduring importance that national parameters continue to exert. Conclusions for comparative political communication research are drawn.

Spin Doctors in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany: Metacommunication about Media Manipulation

This study develops a new concept in political communication theory called metacommunication. It argues that metacommunication (1) describes a new, third stage in election coverage after issue and strategy coverage; (2) reflects the mass medias new role as a political institution in the third age of political communication; and (3) can be seen as the news medias response to a new, third force in news making: professional political PR. Metacommunication is defined as the news medias self-referential reflections on the nature of the interplay between political public relations and political journalism. While metacoverage can take two forms, self-referential news and process news, the present study puts the main emphasis on the latter. It argues that the coverage of campaign strategists and spin doctors can be seen as a prime example of metadiscursive process news. A cross-country content analysis of “spin doctors in the press” reveals different profiles of metacoverage in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany that can be explained by the different media cultures and political PR cultures. While metacoverage is discussed as a new style of reporting to be welcomed in the view of professionalized political PR, journalism is inherently limited in analyzing PR adequately.

Mediatization as a Challenge: Media Logic Versus Political Logic

Political communication is a precondition of democracy, and democracy depends heavily on the infrastructure of the media system (see chapters 1 and 2). The media and mediated communication are of central relevance for contemporary societies due to their decisive influence on, and consequences for, political institutions, political actors, and individual citizens. Political actors have learnt to accept that their behavior to a significant extent is influenced by the rules of the game set by the mass media. This transformation has been described as a shift to audience democracy (Manin 1995) or media democracy (Jarren 2008a). The idea of media democracy is an extension of the model of representative democracy (see Chapter 3). It refers to a development that at its beginning aimed to make politics more inclusive and transparent. In the process policy-makers have become accountable to an ever growing volume of interests and demands from the public — not only in the context of elections but in many phases of the policy process. The pressure on policy-makers to be responsive to public opinion in general and special interests in particular has increased the role of the mass media in many ways. Politicians have grown to rely on the mass media for gauging public opinion (using media coverage as a proxy for public sentiments), and for generating attention, acceptance, and legitimation of their actions (using media channels for public presentation of politics).

Negativity in political news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

The concept of negativity in political news has not reached the status of a homogenous, overarching theoretical concept. This article proposes conceptual understandings, categorizations and practical operationalizations of negativity in the news that reflect the consensus of existing work paying special attention to recent European research. This work aims to systematize existing concepts and categories in order to increase comparability and cumulativity of empirical evidence. To structure and standardize dimensions of negativity in the news we differentiate firstly between negativity and confrontation, secondly between frame-related negativity and individual actor-related negativity, and thirdly between non-directional and directional dimensions of negativity. This article provides a common set of indicators and matrice-based classifications of negativity (and its antithesis) in the news to measure and categorize its intensity and multi-dimensionality.

Mediatization of Politics

When we want to learn about the world around us, there are basically three perceptual sources of information: personal experiences, interpersonal communication and the media (Asp, 1986). We can learn things firsthand, by communicating with other people, or by taking part of different media.

Political Information Opportunities in Europe: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study of Thirteen Television Systems

This study examines the supply of political information programming across thirteen European broadcast systems over three decades. The cross-national and cross-temporal design traces the composition and development of political information environments with regard to the amount and placement of news and current affairs programs on the largest public and private television channels. It finds that the televisual information environments of Israel and Norway offer the most advantageous opportunity structure for informed citizenship because of their high levels of airtime and a diverse scheduling strategy. The study contributes to political communication research by establishing “political information environments” as a theoretically and empirically grounded concept that informs and supplements the comparison of “media systems.” If developed further, it could provide an information-rich, easy-to-measure macro-unit for future comparative research.

Comparing young voters’ political engagement in the United States and Europe.

The growing reluctance among youth to participate in politics and exercise their right to vote rings alarm bells across the globe. This study adopts a comparative perspective to identify factors that might help reengage youth in the political process by documenting the scope and pervasiveness of the problem in the United States and the EU. This cross-national study shows that the antecedents of youth turnout are highly similar in the United States and in the EU member states. The authors also find a strong and consistently positive effect of news media use and interactive communication (online and interpersonal) on youth turnout.

Framing the Press and Publicity Process in U.S., British, and German General Election Campaigns A Comparative Study of Metacoverage

This study compares metacoverage—news about the press and publicity processes—in broadcast coverage of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the 2001 British general election, and the 2002 German general election. The authors observed metacoverage topics separately from press and publicity frames. The authors theorized that the presence of metacoverage topics in campaign news reflects the influence of system-level factors on campaign communication and, furthermore, that the use of press and publicity frames by journalists is influenced by a country’s political communication culture. Press and publicity topics are particularly more frequent in U.S. news than in British news, corroborating systemic differences between the countries. However, press and publicity topics co-occur with, and press and publicity frames contextualize, the same rank order of campaign topics in all three countries, demonstrating convergence among political communication cultures in these three democracies

Mediatization of Politics: Towards a Theoretical Framework

During the last few decades, the world has witnessed a dual democratic transformation. On the one hand and beginning with the fall of communism, the number of electoral democracies worldwide almost doubled between 1989 and 2011 (Freedom House, 2012). The victory of democracy and capitalism may not have marked the “end of history” (Fukuyama, 1992), but today there is no alternative political system that enjoys the same worldwide support and legitimacy as democracy (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Inglehart, 2003). On the other hand, many established democracies have witnessed a transformation towards increasing complexity, less deferential and increasingly critical and dissatisfied citizens (Norris, 2011), lower electoral turnout and trust in politicians and political institutions (Franklin, 2004; Norris, 1999), and increasingly autonomous, market-driven and critical media (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; Hamilton, 2004; Patterson, 1993). National political institutions and actors thus find themselves under increasing pressure from both citizens and the media, while the need to find solutions to major challenges such as global warming, rising inequalities, weak growth and increasing deficits appears both more urgent and more difficult to tackle.

Populism and social media: how politicians spread a fragmented ideology

ABSTRACT Populism is a relevant but contested concept in political communication research. It has been well-researched in political manifestos and the mass media. The present study focuses on another part of the hybrid media system and explores how politicians in four countries (AT, CH, IT, UK) use Facebook and Twitter for populist purposes. Five key elements of populism are derived from the literature: emphasizing the sovereignty of the people, advocating for the people, attacking the elite, ostracizing others, and invoking the ‘heartland’. A qualitative text analysis reveals that populism manifests itself in a fragmented form on social media. Populist statements can be found across countries, parties, and politicians’ status levels. While a broad range of politicians advocate for the people, attacks on the economic elite are preferred by left-wing populists. Attacks on the media elite and ostracism of others, however, are predominantly conducted by right-wing speakers. Overall, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of populism on social media. It shows that social media give the populist actors the freedom to articulate their ideology and spread their messages. The paper also contributes to a refined conceptualization and measurement of populism in future studies.