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Abstract
This study investigates the agenda-building process as it involves multiple information sources. Next to traditional news media like television newscasts and newspapers, the study considers online news sites and news agencies in the agenda-building process. Furthermore, the policy agenda is differentiated into the agenda of governing and opposition parties. The scope is to give a compressive overview of the agenda-building process during election campaigns as it involves several information sources and occurs within the 24-hour news cycle. Additionally, this study aims to conceptualize the agenda-building potential of various information sources by discussing their features, i.e. channel characteristics. Therefore, we focus on the impact of two specific characteristics, namely stability and flexibility in the agenda-building process. To test the theoretical assumptions, a semi-automatic content analysis of 15 policy issues in 14 online news sites, 18 newspapers, nine newscasts, wire copy and press releases of six parties was conducted during the last six weeks of the Austrian national election campaign 2013. Findings indicate that during the 24-hour news cycle, agenda building is a multi-directional process shaped by the channel characteristics stability and flexibility. Additionally, newswires and online news sites of traditional media outlets are important agenda builders during election times.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The broadsheet newspapers in the sample are Der Standard, Die Presse, and Salzburger Nachrichten; the three tabloid newspapers are Kronen Zeitung, Österreich, and Heute; the 11 midrange or regional papers are Kurier, Kleine Zeitung, Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, Tiroler Tageszeitung, Vorarlberger Nachrichten, Wiener Zeitung, Kärntner Tageszeitung, Neue Vorarlberger Tageszeitung, Neues Volksblatt, Salzburger Volkszeitung, and TT Kompakt; and the special interest paper is WirtschaftsBlatt. The three television newscasts of private broadcasters are ATV-Aktuell, PULS-News on Pro7, and Sat.1, the five newscasts in the sample of public broadcasting television are Zeit im Bild, ZiB2, ZiB20, ZiB24, and ZiB-Magazin, and the radio newscast is Ö1-Mittagsjournal. The online news sites are of traditional media outlets (e.g., newspapers, magazines, and public broadcasting), namely orf.at, derstandard.at, diepresse.com, salzburg.com, krone.at, oe24.at, heute.at, kurier.at, kleinezeitung.at, nachrichten.at, vol.at, vienna.at, news.at, and noen.at. The online news sites of traditional news outlets were chosen for analysis because they have the greatest circulation rate among all outlets.
2. The APA-Online Manager is a database that collects each news article published in a newspaper in Austria. Each article mentioning an Austrian political party or politician who stood for election built the population (for the whole search string used, see Vonbun, Königslöw, and Schoenbach Citation2016). Those articles were collected into a news database which was uploaded into AmCat. Online news sites have been scraped, and television newscasts were transcribed (see Haselmayer et al. Citation2016).
3. The press releases were retrieved through the OTS-Manger, a database for all press releases published in Austria. Each press release of the parties running for election was collected and scanned into AmCat.
4. Those policy areas are: (1) fighting political misconduct and corruption (two issues: uncovering corruption scandals; fighting against illegal party financing); (2) individual rights and societal values (issue: privacy protection); (3) government reform (two issues: teachers’ public service law; federal reform); (4) economy (two issues: bank nationalization and bad banks; economic policy); (5) crime, law, and order (issue: crime, law, and order); (6) education (issue: school reform); (7) infrastructure (issue: meeting zone); (8) labour/employment (two issues: transition to flexible working hours; unemployment); (9) immigration (issue: asylum policy); (10) social welfare and family affairs (issue: pensions and old-age income); (11) environment (issue: environmental protection). Thus, not considered are the following policy fields: health care, budget and taxes, agriculture, European integration, and foreign affairs and defence.
5. The average precision on all 15 issues is 0.94. Variables (issues) above the average precision value are privacy protection, teachers’ public service law, bank nationalization and bad banks, meeting zone (Vienna), transition to flexible working hours, pensions, and environmental protection. The average recall value is 0.89. Above this value are the variables bank nationalization and bad banks, crime (law and order), unemployment, federal reform, illegal party financing, and environmental protection. The average F-score was 0.91; above this value are the variables teachers’ public service law, bank nationalization and bad banks, school reform, federal reform, and environmental protection.
6. yt stands for online news sites’ agenda at time t; at is newswires’ agenda at time t; at−1 is newswires’ agenda at time t − 1; bt is television newscasts’ agenda at time t; bt−1 is television newscasts’ agenda at time t – 1; ct is newspapers’ agenda at time t; ct−1 is newspapers’ agenda at time t − 1; dt is governing parties’ agenda at time t; dt−1 is governing parties’ agenda at t − 1; et is opposition parties’ agenda at time t; et−1 is opposition parties’ agenda at t − 1; y−1 is online news sites’ agenda at t − 1; µ is the constant term; ϵ is the error term.