Platforms, media and voters

Abstract

The paper presents data on party platforms, political communication and public opinion in the 1996 Italian election campaign. It is shown that the electoral platforms of the two major coalitions were largely overlapping, except for some economic and social issues. The centre-right coalition seemed more inclined to adopt pro-market policies, while the platform of the Ulivo coalition was more oriented toward a social partnership approach. In the month before the elections, policy issues were discussed on television more extensively than political issues. Public and private networks covered the 1996 election campaign at the same level as in 1994 and to some extent with the same bias. Voting intentions seem to have remained stable prior to and during the electoral campaign.

Political balance in the news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

“…It is also commonly found in the study of news coverage in countries with only two viable prime minister candidates such as Germany (Schulz and Zeh, 2003;Wilke and Reinemann, 2006), Israel (Sheafer and Weimann, 2005) or Spain (Semetko and Canel, 1997). An (implicit) criterion of equal treatment is also found in studies aggregating the individual parties into two major political blocs; for example, parliamentary majority versus minority, as studies from Denmark (Albaek et al, 2010), Austria (Pallaver and Pig, 2003) and Italy (Sani and Segatti, 1998) show. Additionally, it has been argued that coverage of parties proportional to their electoral size can be seen as rooted in a political system perspective; that is, as not adhering to usual news criteria (see McQuail, 1992).…”

“…The least resource demanding approach is to code the party affiliation of actors appearing in news stories (Albaek et al, 2010;Nevitte et al, 2000;Sheafer and Weimann, 2005). A more demanding approach is to count the exact length of soundor sight-bites or mentions in single sentences or similar sub-story units in newspapers (D'Alessio and Allen, 2000;Pallaver and Pig, 2003;Sani and Segatti, 1998). Some studies also include more detailed measures; for example, the order of news stories or mentions; in the case of newspapers, the appearances on the front pages or on photos; and in the case of television, whether a partisan actor is included in a news story by reference, picture or sound-bite (Brandenburg, 2005;Hopmann et al, 2011a;Zeldes et al, 2008).…”

Nichts genaues weiss man nicht!?

“…Empirische Belege für die Rolle der Massenmedien bei der Perzeption von Wahlprogrammen liefert die Studie von Sani und Segatti (1998) zum Wahlkampf zur italienischen Parlamentswahl 1996. Die Frage war, ob und wenn ja inwiefern Wahlkampfaktivitäten -insbesondere die Präsentation von Wahlprogrammen bzw.…”