Is the news on the Internet different? Leaders, frontbenchers and other candidates in the 2007 Australian election

Abstract

This article provides the first comparison of campaign coverage of candidates in an Australian federal election in the press, on radio and television, and on the Internet. It does so through analysis of a database that records the 50 most frequently cited candidates in news stories across all these media during the 2007 campaign. The analysis suggests: that although the news on the Internet placed less emphasis than television or radio on the idea of the election as a presidential contest, the Internet's emphasis on the Prime Minister compared with the Leader of the Opposition was greater; that, compared with the news provided by the older media, the Internet was more heavily skewed towards Government over Opposition candidates; and that the coverage afforded minor party and Independent candidates across all media was slight, with the Internet falling well below the coverage warranted on the basis of the candidates' share of the vote – a media, focusing more heavily on government candidates and less heavily on Labor candidates than warranted by this criterion. Far from re-ordering old hierarchies, the Internet news may have made the election a less even contest.

Notes

¹The ratio of women to men, 6 : 50 (12%) in the Top 50, drawn from the Cabinet, shadow ministry, and the (shadow) parliamentary secretaries, was little more than half the ratio of women to men (i.e. 17 : 81, 21%) in the Cabinet, shadow ministry, and the (shadow) parliamentary secretaries. However, if we add the women in the Top 50 who were leaders of a minor party, were backbenchers or were non-sitting candidates, the ratio rises to 11 : 50 (22%).

²The data for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are available only in aggregate. It is not clear, therefore, whether there were more mentions of Rudd than of Howard on one, two, or all three of these days.

³Includes the one member of the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Murray Goot

Murray Goot is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. For access to the data, without which this paper would not have been possible, he is grateful to Patrick Baume of Media Monitors Australia. For research assistance he thanks Catie Gilchrist. He also acknowledges the help and encouragement of Rachel Gibson, the co-editor of this special issue of the Journal, and of Sarah Blatchford, the Journal's publisher. The work was supported through an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0559334.