Tom Moring

Modes of Professional Campaigning A Four-Country Comparison in the European Parliamentary Elections, 2009

In recent years, political parties have reacted to far-reaching transformations in their media and sociocultural environments. These changes and adaptations, often assembled under the catchword “professionalization,” become most apparent during electoral campaigns. However, the campaign professionalism of political parties has not yet been systematically “measured,” having been examined mostly in single case studies. Against this background, we present an empirical test of the party-centered theory of professionalization. Ours is a four-country comparison of the campaign structures and strategies of political parties during the most recent European parliamentary elections. Our analyses demonstrate a wide variety in professional electoral campaigning. There are differences in campaign structures that not only point to country specifics but also to the impact of the size of the parties. We also ask whether there are differences between parties owing to their position on a right–left scale. Our findings point to some general trends in electoral campaigning that seem to be typical of societies with democratic corporatist media systems. Those similarities and country-specifics should be taken into account in future empirical analyses, which might benefit from our methodological approach.

The contribution of Swedish-language media in Finland to linguistic vitality

Abstract The Swedish-language media landscape in Finland is exceptionally rich. It forms one of the institutions that underpin the cultural position of the Swedish-speaking Finns and the use of Swedish in Finland. This example has yet, however, been given only little attention in sociolinguistic research. Based on secondary data of mass-media audience research, this article analyzes the situation of Swedish media in Finland with regard to production and reception in relation to ethnolinguistic vitality and offers conceptual tools for linking the analysis of media consumption to sociolinguistic concepts. The nine daily newspapers, two radio stations, and Swedish-language television channel put at the service of this relatively small population provides an ideal test case for how extensive media supply interacts with linguistic vitality. The role of minority media has been rapidly and significantly changing over the past decades due to the fragmentation of media spaces and diversification of media reception. With the complexity of hybrid identities, factors such as age, gender, class, and regional and language identities are taking on increasing importance. In this new media environment, the viability and relevance of Swedish-language media will be determined by the degree to which the presence of Swedish language is a criterial attribute of the identity of the Swedish-speaking Finns.

National or Professional? Types of Political Communication Culture across Europe

Which professional and political orientations of journalists and political actors shape the milieu of political communication in Western European democracy? Which are the typical features and clusters of the subjective basis of the media-politics relationship within and across nations? Do certain structures of the media and political system resonate with the attitudinal underpinnings of political communication? These questions are at the core of this chapter, which seeks to bring together all aspects of the empirical study of the political communication culture that we have introduced thus far. Now we determine and compare the attitudes and role perceptions of politicians, political spokespersons and journalists aiming to map out particular national cultures of political communication. We further develop a heuristic of the grouping of these milieus in the nine countries of our study and establish whether we can distinguish the milieu of political communication in Southern Europe from the approaches that are taken in the Northern part of the continent or in the German-speaking countries.

Media use and Ethnolinguistic Vitality in bilingual communities

Abstract This article addresses the relationships between media, media use and language retention. In pursuing this aim, we explore the utility of ethnolinguistic vitality (EV) as a fruitful conceptual tool. The extant research on the relationship between the media and language retention and development provides an encouragement to pursue in more detail the role of media in this process: in other words to address more explicitly the features of media operation, and their relationship to audiences, which interface with the dynamics of EV. Based on four case studies of bilingual communities, the article concludes that media can be an important vehicle in maintaining and supporting EV. The extent to which this can be reached depends mostly on objective factors, such as the institutional completeness of the media landscape.

Contexts of the Media-Politics Relationship: Country Selection and Grouping

The comparative study of political communication culture rests on the assumption that national milieus of the media-politics relationship are in one way or another related to the structure of media and political systems. In our comparative study we do not expect possible differences in the attitudinal patterns across countries to occur because the actors are, for example, Danish, Spanish or German nationals. More specifically, individuals have been socialized by their historically conditioned political and media institutions and therefore act and interact under different systemic constraints. Therefore, national contexts consisting of media and political system features are related to the orientations of actors of political communication. Moreover, we can also assume that the broader political culture of a country—that is, the way people relate to politics and democracy—influences the conduct of public communication and therefore may constrain political communication culture. For instance, less support for political institutions may strengthen the polarization of mediated political communication because of sharper political conflicts and ideological confrontation.

European Political Communication Cultures and Democracy

The changes in political communication during the last half-century have been intense. The emergence of television offered direct access to the living room, giving rise to new opportunities for politicians and journalists to perform and to criticize. New techniques for campaigning were developed, occasionally placing spin-doctors in the driver’s seat and offering new platforms for spokespersons and pundits. Living-room politics (Morley, 1986) became a battleground for not only politicians but also the media. Among the responses by printing houses to the new competition from electronic media were the tabloidization of the press, followed by efforts toward media convergence to reconquer parts of the expanding mediascape. These measures dramatically influenced the conditions for production and content of political messages. The speed of the dissemination increased immensely, as did the reach of news and political information, while at the same time the new media landscape offered lacunas for diversification. Against this background the authors of this volume outlined a broad comparative study of political communication culture, covering nine European countries. We asked 2,500 key actors about their attitudes underlying political communication today.

Trilingual Internet Use, Identity, and Acculturation among Young Minority Language Speakers: Some Data from Transylvania and Finland

Abstract The purpose of the present paper is to explore the dynamics of trilingual Internet use and its relation to minority language identity and acculturation among young Swedish speakers in Finland (N = 201) and Hungarian speakers in Transylvania (N = 388). Typically, a feature of linguistic minorities, trilingualism, provides speakers with the competence to move outside their original cultural realm, a feature that is rewarding at an individual level but may form a threat to the minority language culture. The results indicate in both contexts an extensive use of English alongside the minority language and a restricted amount of use of the majority language on the Internet. Majority language and English-language Internet use are strongly related to acculturation towards majority language speakers and English speakers in both contexts. Majority-language Internet use is significantly and negatively associated with minority language identity among participants in Transylvania but not among participants in Finland. Most interestingly, however, English-language Internet use is significantly and negatively related to minority language identity in both contexts. The findings and their theoretical implications are discussed.

A Hedge between Keeps Friendship Green — Concurrence and Conflict between Politicians and Journalists in Nine European Democracies

Current analysis of political communication is hugely engaged in the study of the linkage between media and politics as ingrained in the structure of media systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004, 2012). This work has not only enhanced comparative research, it also triggered a lively debate about the categories and the nature of typologies of political communication systems. However, what has been neglected in this research is the subjective dimen- sion of political communication; this concerns the idea that the interaction between two groups of interdependent actors — politicians and journalists - is governed by mutual perceptions and professional norms. These orien- tations are referred to as ‘political communication culture’ (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Pfetsch, 2004, 2014a). One specific, yet crucial, aspect of political communication culture relates to the attitudes that under gird concurrence or conflict in the relationship between politicians and journal- ists. In our study we analyze perceived conflict and cooperation between journalists and politicians and link the orientations to interpretations of the actors’ roles. We take a systematic comparative approach through inves- tigating how orientations towards conflict and concurrence vary across nine European democracies: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Our research contributes to the debate on the power relations between politicians and the media, which for a long time has drawn on normative arguments about who leads the dance on the floor of political communication.

Discourse and struggle in minority language policy formation: Corsican language policy in the EU context of governance

phenomenon: it is also ‘deeply bound to culture’ (82). I find it curious, therefore, that he later writes that ‘tools are of course important to the human story but there is little evidence that they were decisive in creating the human mind’ (206). Given that tools are part of culture, and given that culture played an important part in creating language which arose as a result of human thought, it would seem to follow that tools do play a role in the creation of the human mind. Although I do not agree entirely with all of Corballis’ positions, I do subscribe to most of them. More importantly I admire the way in which he formulates issues worth thinking about, which alone makes his contribution very valuable. I am happy to recommend this book to both lay readers and experts in the field.

Ten Years of EU Support for Regional or Minority Languages: A Financial Assessment

The aims of this paper is to provide an information base that at the service of scholars, language planners, and other users as part of broader, yet systematic assessments of the extent of EU support for small languages. This paper provides a general overview of EU interventions in favour of RMLs, an overview on support measures and figures for the 1994-2000 period, and support measures for the period after 2000 -- namely, after the suspension of the specific budget line for RMLs.