Guido Legnante

Hard and soft news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

Over 30 years, a large body of research on what is often called ‘hard’ and ‘soft news’ has accumulated in communication studies. However, there is no consensus about what hard and soft news exactly is, or how it should be defined or measured. Moreover, the concept has not been clearly differentiated from or systematically related to concepts addressing very similar phenomena – tabloidization and ‘infotainment’. Consequently, the results of various studies are hard to compare and different scientific discourses on related issues remain unconnected. Against this backdrop, this article offers a conceptual analysis of the concept based on studies in English and other languages. We identify key dimensions of the concept and make suggestions for a standardized definition and multi-dimensional measurement of harder and softer news. In doing so, we propose to distinguish thematic, focus and style features as basic dimensions that – in their combination – make up harder and softer types of news.

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.

Political balance in the news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

Balance is a notoriously difficult concept to operationalize. It has typically been investigated by examining the issues raised in elections, as well as the volume and favorability of coverage of political actors. However, even after collecting these measures, it is difficult to determine precisely what would constitute ‘balanced’ coverage. Based on a comprehensive overview of previous research in western democracies, we argue that political balance can be defined according to a political system perspective (where coverage reflects politically defined norms or regulation) or a media routine perspective (where coverage results from journalistic norms). Unless forced to follow norms, western broadcasting seems to comply with a media routine perspective. Empirically, newspaper coverage is sometimes imbalanced according to both perspectives. Finally, we discuss why only a systematic analysis of explanations across time and space makes it possible to determine whether politically ‘imbalanced’ news is the result of partisan bias or not.

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

ABSTRACT During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, (4) increasing fragmentation and polarization, (5) increasing relativism and (6) increasing inequality in political knowledge.

Intermittent abstentionism and multi-level mobilisation in Italy

This article is focused on one of the most relevant novelties in the Italian electoral market of the past decade: the emerging phenomenon of intermittent abstentionism. Rather than an increase in overall abstentionism rates, aggregate and survey data show a clear increase in the number of floating voters who swing between voting and non-voting. After a description of the characteristics of intermittent abstensionists, the article discusses the relationship between different electoral systems at different levels of government and territorial differentiation as far as voting participation is concerned. It then discusses the impact of intermittent abstentionism on the results of the 2006 general election where the parties’ electoral campaigns appear to have been aimed at mobilising intermittent abstensionists. The article concludes with some considerations of the Italian electoral cycle, particularly in relation to the changes generated by the run-up to the 2008 elections.

Conclusion: assessing news performance

Insights gained depend on the questions asked. This chapter describes the why and the how of our study’s approach. After outlining some principal research interests of comparative news analyses, we introduce a theoretical hierarchy of infl uences that needs to be observed in order to understand the construction of media content. In fi tting this model to the specifi c requirements of our study, we emphasize, in particular, the importance of integrating event-centered and mediacentered considerations, of incorporating an explicit comparative perspective, and of applying appropriate strategies of data analysis. The main part of the chapter introduces the explanatory factors that are used in this study to elucidate crossnational and cross-organizational differences in journalists’ use of the six core concepts of political news. The explanatory factors are systematized according to their level of analysis, and we provide a great many examples to illustrate their use in this study, together with concrete operationalizations. We conclude by situating our own approach in the recent development of explanation-oriented comparative news research.

Parties and Electoral Behaviour in Italy: From Stability to Competition

This chapter illustrates the evolution of the Italian party system from 1946 to 2013. Firstly, it depicts the peculiarity of Italy’s ‘First Republic’ (1946–1992) and it explains why solid voting stability had characterized that period despite of the transformations of Italian social and economic structures throughout the post war decades. The chapter furthermore describes the circumstances that led to the Italian political crisis of early 1990s and later to the birth of the ‘Second Republic’—characterized by a new political landscape, increased voting volatility and the polarising figure of Silvio Berlusconi. Finally, this chapter addresses the topic of the 2013 Italian electoral earthquake marked by the success of the Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. In particular, the final part of this chapter investigates the reasons of the repeated success of anti-party and populist parties in Italy and it reflects upon the possible electoral characteristics of a ‘Third Republic’.

The Italian local elections of 2003: A national campaign (and consequences), a local vote

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the dynamics of the Italian local elections 2003. It begins by shortly discussing the role of by-elections in Italy, the incentives provided by electoral systems and the way parties and coalitions chose their candidates. It then presents the results, with particular focus on the reasons for the unexpected success of the centre-left in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, the results of the main parties in provincial elections and the centre-right defeat in municipal elections. The article concludes that this defeat was mainly due to an unwise strategy of attempting to give a national meaning to a local vote.

Vorrei ma non posso: la comunicazione politica vista dai parlamentari italiani

Questo articolo presenta parte dei risultati di una survey condotta sui parlamentari italiani della XIII legislatura e relativa a come i politici percepiscono il mercato elettorale. Dopo avere argomentato l’utilita di questa prospettiva di analisi, vengono presentati i dati relativi ad alcune questioni connesse con la comunicazione politica: le attivita e gli strumenti utilizzati dai politici per conoscere le caratteristiche dell’elettorato, le modalita di influenza dei diversi mezzi di comunicazione sui cittadini, la relazione fra la comunicazione politica e i tipi di voto, la questione della personalizzazione che riguarda i leader nazionali e i singoli parlamentari. A giudizio dei parlamentari la comunicazione, e in particolare la televisione, giocano un ruolo molto rilevante nel fare si che il mercato elettorale sia caratterizzato da aspettative troppo elevate verso i politici, dal particolarismo e dall’irrazionalita degli elettori, dal mancato sviluppo di forme virtuose di rappresentanza a livello di collegio, da una politica eccessivamente centrata sui leader nazionali: un mix, insomma, di superficialita, leaderizzazione, irresponsabilita