Does the Political System Determine Media Visibility of Politicians? A Comparative Analysis of Political Functions in the News in Sixteen Countries

Abstract

News coverage of politicians is very unequally distributed: a few powerful politicians receive the bulk of media attention, while the large majority hardly gets into the news. However, case studies show that news outlets in some countries give more attention to ordinary politicians compared to other democracies. This study examines and explains the variation in media visibility of politicians with different institutional functions across Western democracies. We employ a large-scale content analysis of television news, newspapers and online news in sixteen countries to analyze whether a political system logic determines the distribution of political functions appearing in the news. This logic suggests that journalists follow the political hierarchy of the country when covering politicians. We also check for an additional media logic that would push journalists to focus on a limited number of high-standing politicians. The results confirm that both logics matter, but that mainly the structural characteristics of the political system have an impact on the distribution of news coverage of politicians. In countries where political power is more equally distributed across politicians, a broader range of (elite) politicians makes it into the news. Our results suggest that the media logic is nested in the broader political context and in some cases even strengthens the logic of the political system.

Keywords:

• Political news
• media visibility
• comparative politics
• content analysis

Notes

^1. For Belgium, only Flemish parties and news outlets are included in the analyses. Similarly, for Switzerland only German-language media outlets are included.

^2. The content analyses of the U.S. data was conducted by native English speakers residing in the United Kingdom.

^3. Belgium is a strongly federalized state with large competencies at the regional level such as education, environment, and foreign trade. The regions manage more than half of the total government’s budget and the Flemish parliament deals with more than half of the Belgian population (Deschouwer, 2009; Swenden, Brans, & De Winter, 2006). Flemish cabinet members are thus very relevant actors who also appear frequently in Flemish news media that are analyzed in this study.

^4. In several countries this applied to only one or two party leaders (Austria, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands), while in the Nordic countries and Israel three or four party leaders were also simultaneously cabinet members. In the Netherlands, the leader of the parliamentary party group was coded as the leader of the party as (s)he is considered as the executive leader of the party rather than the administrative chair of the party.

^5. Electoral systems have an impact on the number of parties in parliament (r = 0.36, p < 0.00), which in turn might have an influence on which political actors appear in the news. However, we use the electoral system as independent variable as it reflects Lijphart’s notion of consensus democracies. Countries with proportional representation are thought to have a political culture of power sharing and consensus across many actors, which can be reflected in a greater dispersion of actors in the media as well. To be sure, we included the number of parties in the analysis instead of electoral system and the majority of the effects remain similar. The effect of number of parties differs slightly from that of electoral system but our main conclusions remain.

^6. Because Germany is situated between a proportional and a majoritarian election system, we checked whether the results would be robust if we include Germany in the category of proportional systems and this appears to be the case.

^7. Note that in Germany Angela Merkel is also party leader of the CDU, but that she was always coded in her higher function of prime minister.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Debby Vos

Debby Vos is a postdoctoral researcher and a member of the research group Media, Movements and Politics (M²P) at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Peter Van Aelst

Peter Van Aelst is a full professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp.