Rens Vliegenthart

Power to the frame: Bringing sociology back to frame analysis

This article critically reviews current frame and framing research in media and communication studies. It is first argued that most authors fail to distinguish between ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ and therewith produce a conceptual confusion and imprecision that is not conducive to the field. Second, it is argued that current frame and framing research ignore sociological research about news production and news audiences that reached its zenith in the 1980s and is still conceptually and methodologically relevant to much current frame and framing research. As a result, a notion of power is absent from most current frame and framing research. By discussing — on the basis of key literature — what a news ‘frame’ is, how it comes about and how it is of consequence successively, these claims are substantiated and research directions for improving the field are indicated.

The contingency of intermedia agenda setting: a longitudinal study in Belgium

This large-scale study investigates how intermedia agenda-setting effects are moderated by five factors: (1) lag length; (2) medium type; (3) language/institutional barriers; (4) issue type; and (5) election or non-election context. Longitudinal analyses of daily attention to twenty-five issues in nine Belgian media across eight years demonstrate that (1) intermedia agenda setting is mainly a short-term process; (2) newspapers have stronger influence on television than vice versa; (3) language/institutional barriers suppress influence; (4) size of influence differs across types of issues; and (5) intermedia agenda setting is largely absent during election times.

Framing Immigration and Integration Relationships between Press and Parliament in the Netherlands

This article examines how the salience and framing of political issues in the press and in parliament influence each other and how this salience and framing is influenced by key events outside the media and parliamentary realms. The case focused on is the debate on immigration and integration in the Netherlands between 1995 and 2004. The empirical analyses are based on a computer-assisted content analysis of both parliamentary documents and newspaper articles. Results show bidirectional causal relationships between media and parliament. In the case of salience only long-term influence relationships are found, while framing influences follow an interesting pattern: an increase in the use of a frame in one arena leads to an increase in the other arena only if this frame has already been used regularly in the latter arena. External events have more considerable and consistent impact on issue salience and framing in both arenas.

Divergent framing: The public debate on migration in the Dutch parliament and media, 1995-2004.

In this article we reconstruct how the issues of migration and integration have been framed in the Dutch public debate over the last decade. We examine the patterns in both the parliamentary arena and the media and look at similarities and differences between them. On the basis of two contradictory theories, we formulate hypotheses about overlap and differences between the two arenas and diversity within them. Our results reveal incongruence in framing between them. After 9/11, however, the framing in which Islam is perceived as a threat to Western society becomes dominant in both arenas. Furthermore, we do not find any proof of the idea that the media act as a civic forum, with a high diversity of framing. Framing in parliament, instead, is far more diverse. In contrast to the hegemonic framing in the media, the Islam-as-threat frame is actively contested in the political realm.

Party media agenda-setting: how parties influence election news coverage

Political parties have substantial influence on which issues the news media cover during election campaigns, while the media have limited influence on party agendas. However, we know little about why some parties are more successful than others in passing the media’s gates and being covered on sponsored issues. On the basis of content analyses of election news coverage (812 news stories) and press releases published by political parties (N = 334) during the 2007 national election campaign in Denmark, we analyse which parties were successful in appearing in the news on issues on which they published press releases. Using Sartori’s notion of relevant parties, we conclude that the more relevant parties have more success, that there is a positive spillover effect from other parties’ press releases, but also a negative interaction effect between a party’s own and other parties’ press releases. The results are discussed with respect to their generalizability and arising challenges for future research.

Getting closer: the effects of personalized and interactive online political communication

Political parties and politicians increasingly use the possibilities of the Internet to communicate interactively with citizens and vice versa. The Internet also offers opportunities for individual politicians to profile themselves. These developments are often said to bring politics closer to citizens, increasing their political engagement in politics. Empirical evidence for such claims is, however, scarce. In a scenario experiment and a laboratory experiment using real-world websites, the authors examine whether more personalized online communication (a focus on individual politicians) and the use of interactive features increase political involvement among citizens. The results from both studies demonstrate that both highly interactive and personalized online communication do increase citizens’ political involvement. Moreover, it was also found that political personalization positively moderates the effect of interactivity on political involvement, meaning that the effects of interactivity are even stronger in a personalized setting.

When media matter for politics: partisan moderators of mass media’s agenda-setting influence on parliament in Belgium

In this study, we investigate which factors moderate the agenda-setting influence of the mass media on the Belgian parliament during the period 1993—2000. Based on elaborate codings of the media, parliamentary questions and interpellations, party manifestos, government agreements and ministerial meetings, we employ a multi-level time-series model. The results indicate that especially party characteristics (party size, incumbent or opposition party, issue ownership) and the government agenda influence the dependency of parliament on media coverage. Furthermore, we find an increase in the extent of media influence through time, suggesting an increasing presence of ‘media logic’ in the behaviour of Belgian MPs. Irrespective of all those contingent factors, the mass media determine the Belgian parliamentary agenda to a considerable degree.

Content matters: the dynamics of parliamentary questioning in Belgium and Denmark

Why do MPs devote attention to some issues while ignoring others? The question of the issue content of parliamentary activities has been neglected in previous research. The authors use longitudinal data on parliamentary questioning in Belgium and Denmark, two similar European democracies. The analyses show that the questioning behavior of MPs is structured according to clear patterns. Opposition parties ask more questions in general. MPs tend to focus on the issues the government parties have put forward as being important. Furthermore, MPs ask more questions about issues the media have paid attention to and about issues their party cares about and identifies with. In their questioning, opposition MPs are more strongly influenced by issue ownership and media coverage. The Belgian and Danish MPs follow largely the same pattern.

Changes in political news coverage: personalization, conflict and negativity in British and Dutch newspapers

Political news coverage has – allegedly – undergone profound changes in the past decades. A professionalization of both politics and journalism, increasing market pressures and technological developments (Negrine & Lilleker, 2002) have led to a new quality in the link between political actors and institutions and the mass media, but are also claimed to have greatly affected the way politics is covered in the media. Such changes include overall decreasing amounts of political news coverage, an increasing focus on political strategy and the horse-race in politics, increasing negativity towards political actors and politics in general, conflict as a central theme of the news and an increasing focus on political leaders and personalities (Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995).

Real-World Indicators and the Coverage of Immigration and the Integration of Minorities in Dutch Newspapers:

A B S T R A C T ■ An intriguing question in communication science deals with factors determining the intensity of news reporting about certain issues. The study investigates whether the prominence of immigration and the integration of minorities in news coverage reflects real-world developments or whether it is dependent on (political) key events. The authors compare the direct effects of real-world developments and key events in Dutch newspapers for the period 1991—2002 on the prominence of issue coverage. Results indicate that events have a more direct impact on the attention given to immigration and the integration of minorities in the news. The authors furthermore find that international events have a direct, but temporary effect, while most institutional national events influence media attention permanently. ■