The dependence of election coverage on political institutions: political competition and policy framing in Germany and the United Kingdom
McMenamin, IainORCID: 0000-0002-1704-390X, Courtney, Michael, Breen, MichaelORCID: 0000-0002-5857-9938 and McNulty, GemmaORCID: 0000-0002-6909-6958
(2021)
The dependence of election coverage on political institutions: political competition and policy framing in Germany and the United Kingdom.
Journalism, 24
(6).
ISSN 1464-8849
Election coverage is often assumed to be different to everyday political coverage. We argue that this depends on political institutions. In majoritarian countries, where elections choose governments, election coverage should decisively move towards political competition and away from policy. In consensual countries, where coalitions are based on policy negotiations, there should be a less pronounced shift towards political competition and away from policy. To test this argument, we use an automatic coding system to study 0.9 billion words in Die Welt for 12 years and in the Financial Times for 30 years. The results support our institutional hypothesis.
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Elections; newspapers; political journalism; Germany; United Kingdom; automatic text analysis