This article focuses on the experts chosen as sources in radio news coverage at the start of Ireland's financial crisis in 2008. The study examines which source categories were afforded opportunities to discuss this major international news story at the start of the European financial crisis. Access to these news programmes allows guests to shape public discourse, while the range of voices influences the character of wider policy debate. We find an elite-orientated coverage with official sources having strongest access in the 3-month period after the announcement of the controversial bank guarantee. While there was a marked business elite focus in sources selected, we also find strong evidence of 'interpretative journalism' in the presence of reporters as programme guests. There was a very clear gender bias. The results raise important issues about the nature of democratic debate in a mediated political environment as the selection of a narrow range of voices limits alternative perspectives in public debate.
This article examines the relationship between different ownership types in broadcast news to determine the portrayal of election coverage as a strategic game against a focus on policy issues. Using a content analysis of six television and radio programmes during the 2011 Irish general election, we test hypotheses about differences in coverage provided by public service programming with equivalent private sector coverage. Our findings improve upon two key aspects of earlier research on game-policy frames. First, we show that commercial outlets can produce content that has democratic value, and suggest that before reaching definitive judgements not only it is necessary to distinguish between radio and television programmes but it is also advisable to study individual programming on each medium. Second, in a key market segment, we show that there is a clear distinction between editorial choices on policy content between public and private radio. These findings suggest that policy-orientated private programming may react to factors such as a culture of public service broadcasting as well as regulatory interventionism. We also suggest that there are cases where policy-rich private programming is driven by different editorial values from its public counterpart which can benefit the public.
How do surges in female representation in public life affect media coverage? Can the media underrepresent the reality of women's progress? If so, is the source of underrepresentation the media itself or the selectorates that brief the media? Methods. Using automatic content analysis, we study two remarkable step changes in women's role in public life in Ireland: the 2016 elections and 2012 Olympics. Results. The increase in female participation was associated with a new and substantial gender gap in coverage, which we attribute to the media, not selectorates. Conclusion. We cannot assume that media coverage will increase proportionally as women advance in public life. The re-emergence of bias when female representation jumps may also exist outside the media in any context where there are large numbers of decisions about whether to favour males or females.
The framing of elections represents the most overt instance of the media’s power to influence politics. We content analyzed twelve newspapers’ coverage of the 2011 general election in Ireland. Ireland’s newspaper market has some special advantages for social scientists, as it allows us to separate the newspaper types/formats (tabloid vs. broadsheet) from their commercial basis (vulnerability or otherwise to short-term sales and profits). Therefore, we are able to make a particular contribution to the long-standing debate about the interaction of free market capitalism and the media. Our results do not find a homogeneous general election frame in Ireland. The variation in framing across Irish newspapers was much greater than that between the five countries for which we can find strictly comparable results. The different commercial statuses of the newspapers do seem to be related to different dominant frames of election coverage, but only after we develop a new measure that takes account of the relative overall prominence of election coverage in the newspapers examined.
Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly focused on the campaign as a game rather than a policy debate. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also reflect the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of policy varies. The global economic crisis might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us to test the impact of the crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from the three most recent national elections in Ireland, with a research design that holds other pertinent variables constant. We find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace vs. substantive policy issues.
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