Heinz Brandenburg

Who follows whom?: The impact of parties on media agenda formation in the 1997 British general election campaign

This study provides a first step toward filling a gap in our understanding of the sources of issue salience and of the ability of political actors to manipulate the dimensions of social choice. It investigates how daily issue agendas of political parties and the news media (press and television) affected each other during the 1997 U.K. general election campaign. Using a time-series cross-section design (including data on nine different policy dimensions), ordinary least squares regressions with panel-corrected standard errors show that TV news broadcasts responded systematically to preceding issue selection by both the Labour party and the Conservatives. While the press seemed to respond predominantly to stimuli by the Conservatives, none of the parties were influenced in their agenda choices by any of the media outlets.

Political Bias in the Irish Media: A Quantitative Study of Campaign Coverage during the 2002 General Election

Abstract The aim of this study is to give some systematic insights into how Irish media tend to report an election campaign. The main focus will be on their attitudes toward and treatment of the competing parties and candidates. Content analysis data from television newscasts and campaign stories in four of the largest newspapers is used to investigate three different forms of media bias: coverage bias, agenda bias, and statement bias. We find that Irish media tend to grant disproportionate amounts of coverage to the government parties, Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats; the more prominent the coverage, the less proportionate it becomes. The extent to which media take the freedom to ‘distort’ party agendas in their reporting appears to depend on party size, campaign strategy and the acquired status and acceptance of a party amongst the political and media establishment. Most notable, however, is the predominantly negative attitude of all Irish print media towards political actors. Instead of a polarised partisan press, as for example in the UK, in Ireland we seem to be faced with a rather homogenous anti‐politics bias.

Party Strategy and Media Bias: A Quantitative Analysis of the 2005 UK Election Campaign

Abstract This article investigates the current state of press partisanship in the UK. Utilizing content analysis data from the 2005 General Election campaign, recent hypotheses about press dealignment are tested with quantitative methods. Partisan tendencies in reporting are measured in terms of coverage bias, statement bias, and agenda bias. As the governing party, Labour benefits from coverage bias in all papers, while the Liberal Democrats remain marginalized. It can be shown that increasingly ambiguous endorsements in broadsheet and tabloid press alike translate into a general absence of open support for political parties. At best, endorsed parties receive neutral treatment, with their opponents being harshly criticized. Partisan tendencies do, however, manifest themselves in other patterns of campaign coverage. Even weakly partisan papers engage in strategic behaviour, most notably by reinforcing the issue agendas of endorsed parties. With both the Independent and the Guardian lending strategic support to the Liberal Democrats, and the Murdoch press being largely non‐committal, the analysis hints at an erosion of support for New Labour.

The Declining Representativeness of the British Party System, and Why It Matters

In a recent article, Michael Laver has explained ‘Why Vote-Seeking Parties May Make Voters Miserable’. His model shows that, while ideological convergence may boost congruence between governments and the median voter, it can reduce congruence between the party system and the electorate as a whole. Specifically, convergence can increase the mean distance between voters and their nearest party. In this article we show that this captures the reality of todays British party system. Policy scale placements in British Election Studies from 1987 to 2010 confirm that the pronounced convergence during the past decade has left the Conservatives and Labour closer together than would be optimal in terms of minimising the policy distance between the average voter and the nearest major party. We go on to demonstrate that this comes at a cost. Respondents who perceive themselves as further away from one of the major parties in the system tend to score lower on satisfaction with democracy. In short, vote-seeking parties have left the British party system less representative of the ideological diversity in the electorate, and thus made at least some British voters miserable.

Pressed into Party Support? Media Influence on Partisan Attitudes during the 2005 UK General Election Campaign

This study reassesses the ability of the mass media to influence voter opinions directly. Combining data on media content with individuals’ assessments of British political parties during the 2005 general election campaign allows a test of newspapers’ persuasive influence in a way previously considered a ‘virtual impossibility’. Utilizing repeated measures from the 2005 BES campaign panel, multilevel regression analysis reveals significant impact of partisan slant not just on the evaluation of the party mentioned but also on evaluations of its competitor(s). The strongest evidence of direct media persuasion is provided by the finding that variation in slant over the campaign drives how undecided voters evaluate the incumbent government party, even when controlling for a newspapers average partisan slant.

Giving voters what they want? Party orientation perceptions and preferences in the British electorate

Some of the most important propositions in the political marketing literature hinge on assumptions about the electorate. In particular, voters are presumed to react in different ways to different orientations or postures. Yet there are theoretical reasons for questioning some of these assumptions, and certainly they have seldom been empirically tested. Here, we focus on one prominent example of political marketing research: Lees-Marshment’s orientations’ model. We investigate how the public reacts to product and market orientation, whether they see a trade-off between the two (a point in dispute among political marketing scholars), and whether partisans differ from non-partisan voters by being more inclined to value product over market orientation. Evidence from two mass sample surveys of the British public (both conducted online by YouGov) demonstrates important heterogeneity within the electorate, casts doubt on the core assumptions underlying some political marketing arguments and raises broader questions about what voters are looking for in a party.

Explaining Media Framing of Election Coverage: Bringing in the Political Context

Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly focused on the horse-race and the campaign as a game rather than a policy debate. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also reflect the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of politics varies. The global economic crisis might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us to test the impact of the crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from Ireland’s last three elections, with a research design that holds other pertinent variables constant. We find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace versus substantive policy issues.

“SECURITY AT THE SOURCE”: Embedding journalists as a superior strategy to military censorship

The aim of this article is to evaluate the merits and pitfalls of the Pentagons embed programme during the Iraq war. An in-depth analysis of the structure, purpose and practice of embedding allows an assessment of the changes in media treatment that embedding produces in comparison with previous military campaigns. While embedding journalists increases access and reduces censorship, their integration as individuals into military units makes them adapt, internalize military logic, and empathize with troops. Embedding can benefit both sides, military and media, and help to improve their historically troublesome relationship. The danger of embedding lies in its ingenuity: by satisfying their professional and economic needs and demands, journalists and media organizations can effectively be co-opted. Ultimately, the paper questions the notion that decreases in censorship and increases in access necessarily and invariably guarantee freedom of the press.

The impact of the economic crisis on media framing: evidence from three elections in Ireland

Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly focused on the campaign as a game rather than a policy debate. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also reflect the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of politics varies. The global economic crisis might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us to test the impact of the crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from the three most recent national elections in Ireland, with a research design that holds other pertinent variables constant. We find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace versus substantive policy issues.

What kind of party is UKIP? The future of the extreme right in Britain or just another Tory party?

This article aims to further our understanding of the nature of the UK Independence Party. Our approach differs from much of the existing literature on party families, by analysing public attitudes towards the UK Independence Party in comparison with other parties. Multidimensional unfolding is utilised to map UK Independence Party’s place in the British party system, Tobit regressions are employed to compare UK Independence Party’s support base with that of the British National Party and the Conservatives and, finally, latent class analysis is used to assess the heterogeneity in UK Independence Party’s support base. The conclusion is that, with increasing success, the UK Independence Party has established itself as the only viable electoral option for British extreme right voters while also making serious inroads into more traditional conservative circles, who are Eurosceptic but not extreme. This bridging position between the mainstream and the extreme makes the UK Independence Party distinctive from other British parties and has parallels with the positions of anti-establishment, European Union sceptical and immigration-critical parties elsewhere in Europe.