Julie Sevenans

Political elites’ media responsiveness and their individual political goals: A study of national politicians in Belgium

This paper addresses the micro level variation in media responsiveness by political elites. It hypothesizes that individual political goals, in addition to party position, affect the extent to which MPs’ parliamentary initiatives are inspired by media cues. Regression analysis on data from a survey with Belgian national parliamentarians confirms this assumption. Opposition MPs react more to the media than coalition MPs. Within parties, MPs who are focused on party political goals display higher levels of media responsiveness than MPs who are not. The findings are explained by the differential usefulness of news coverage for various political actors.

Political Agenda-Setting in Belgium and the Netherlands: The Moderating Role of Conflict Framing

This article investigates the role of conflict framing as a moderator of the political agenda-setting effect. Conflict is at the heart of politics: Political debate arises from political actors taking opposing positions. We hypothesize that conflict framing in media coverage enhances the relevance of the news for politicians, who in turn react more to this news in parliament. We test our expectations by looking at media coverage and parliamentary questions in Belgium (1999-2008) and the Netherlands (1995-2011). Pooled time-series analyses demonstrate that conflict framing indeed matters as it strengthens the “basic” political agenda-setting effect from the media on parliamentary questions.

How Political Elites Process Information From the News: The Cognitive Mechanisms Behind Behavioral Political Agenda-Setting Effects

Political agenda-setting studies have shown that political agendas are influenced by the media agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament’s (MP) individual, cognitive attention for specific news stories. Drawing upon a survey of Belgian MPs administered shortly after exposure to news stories, the study shows that MPs are highly selective in exploiting media cues. They pay more attention to both prominent and useful news stories, but a story’s usefulness is more important for cognitive processes that are closely linked to MPs’ real behavior in parliament. In other words, aggregate political agenda-setting effects are a consequence of the way in which individual MPs process media information that matches their task-related needs.

Are newspapers' news stories becoming more alike? Media content diversity in Belgium, 1983-2013

In recent years, communication scholars have expressed concerns about the diversity of news media content. While we live in an era of ‘news abundance’ – the number of outlets and channels has increased enormously – the available news is argued to have become more of the same, but has it? As empirical evidence is lacking, this article verifies whether newspapers in Flanders (Belgium), over time, have indeed become less diverse in terms of the news stories they cover. Based on data from a longitudinal content analysis of nine Flemish newspapers at four points in time (1983, 1993, 2003, and 2013), it shows that (1) newspapers, in general, have not become more alike in terms of news stories; (2) newspapers with a similar profile (elite/popular) are less diverse than newspapers with dissimilar profiles; and (3) newspapers owned by the same media group (concentration of media ownership) are more alike than independently owned newspapers.

How mass media attract political elites’ attention

Political agenda-setting research has shown that policy makers are responsive vis-a-vis media priorities. However, the mechanisms behind this effect have remained understudied so far. In particular, agenda-setting scholars have difficulties determining to what extent politicians react to media coverage purely because of the information it contains (information effect), and to what extent the effect is driven not by what the media say but by the fact that certain information is in the media (media channel effect), which is valued for its own sake – for instance, because media coverage is considered to be a reflection of public opinion. By means of a survey-embedded experiment with Belgian, Canadian and Israeli political elites (N = 410), this study tests whether the mere fact that an issue is covered by the news media causes politicians to pay attention to this issue. It shows that a piece of information gets more attention from politicians when it comes via the media rather than an identical piece of information coming via a personal e-mail. This effect occurs largely across the board: it is not dependent on individual politician characteristics.

Issue reframing by parties

Issue reframing occurs when parties, while addressing an issue, shift the frame toward other policy domains. The literature has found that party issue framing affects how voters think about issues, yet scholars remain largely in the dark as to when and how parties frame issues. The study at hand theorizes and investigates when and how parties reframe issues in their external communication. Drawing on novel Belgian data about parties’ official stances regarding a large number of policy issues combined with their verbal argumentation of why they took this exact position, we test a new theory about the drivers and mechanisms of issue reframing. We find that parties reframe issues in terms of policy domains that are both salient to the general public and that are salient to the party itself—meaning that it has a history of devoting attention to the policy domain and “owns” it.

The Media Independency of Political Elites

We employ a novel design to explore to what extent the media are significant information suppliers for politicians. In three countries—Belgium, Canada, and Israel—we surveyed national political elites and asked them about the main, actual media stories published in the weeks preceding the interview. Elites were asked whether they knew about the underlying news fact before it appeared in the news media and what share of all they knew about the underlying facts originated from news media coverage. Their answers seem to suggest that their media dependency is quite strong. Most importantly, story features and characteristics of individual politicians interactively determine to what extent a politician is dependent on the media for information about current affairs.

What Politicians Learn from the Mass Media and Why They React to It: Evidence from Elite Interviews

This chapter explores the informational function of the mass media in politicians’ work. More precisely, it focuses on instances where political elites actively use media coverage in their political work—called “political agenda-setting processes”. It tries to understand what role the media precisely play in these instances. The central claim is that the interpretation of media effects on political agendas is dependent on two factors: (1) what politicians learn from the media when they react to it and (2) which motivations underlie politicians’ reactions to media information. The author develops a theoretical model that integrates the various possible learning and motivational mechanisms. By means of in-depth interviews, she tests whether political elites themselves confirm the existence of these mechanisms.