Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T04:14:00.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The impact of the economic crisis on media framing: evidence from three elections in Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2013

Eoin O’Malley ,
Heinz Brandenburg ,
Roddy Flynn ,
Iain McMenamin  and
Kevin Rafter
Eoin O’Malley*
Affiliation:
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Heinz Brandenburg
Affiliation:
School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Roddy Flynn
Affiliation:
School of Communications, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Iain McMenamin
Affiliation:
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Kevin Rafter
Affiliation:
School of Communications, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

economic crisiselection coveragemedia framingIreland
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 407 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aalberg, T., Strömbäck, J. and de Vreese, C. (2012), ‘The framing of politics as strategy and game: a review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 13(2): 162–178.Google Scholar
Binderkrantz, A.S. and Green-Pedersen, C. (2009), ‘Policy or processes in focus?’, The International Journal of Press/Politics 14(2): 166–185.Google Scholar
Bowman, J. (1987), ‘Media coverage of the Irish elections of 1981–1982’, in H.R. Penniman and B. Farrell (eds), Ireland at the Polls, 1981, 1982 and 1987: A Study of Four General Elections, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, pp. 167–191.Google Scholar
Brandenburg, H. (2005), ‘Political bias in the Irish media: a quantitative study of the campaign coverage during the 2002 general election’, Irish Political Studies 20(3): 297–322.Google Scholar
Byrne, K. and O’Malley, E. (2012), ‘Politics with hidden bases: unearthing the deep roots of party systems’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 14: 613–629.Google Scholar
Cappella, J.N. and Kathleen, H.J. (1997), Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good, New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, D. and Druckman, J.N. (2007), ‘Framing theory’, Annual Review of Political Science 10: 103–126.Google Scholar
Clarke, H.D., Sanders, D., Stewart, M.C. and Whiteley, P. (2004), Political Choice in Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Conboy, M. (2011), Journalism in Britain: A Historical Introduction, London: Sage.Google Scholar
Corcoran, M. (2004), ‘The political preferences and value orientations of Irish journalists’, Irish Journal of Sociology 13(2): 23–42.Google Scholar
Cushion, S. (2012), The Democratic Value of News: Why Public Service Media Matter, Basingstoke: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Vreese, C. (2004), ‘The effects of strategic news on poltiical cynicism, issue evaluation and policy support: a two-wave experiment’, Mass Communication and Society 7(2): 191–215.Google Scholar
de Vreese, C. and Semetko, H.A. (2002), ‘Cyncial and engaged: strategic campaign coverage, public opinion, and mobilization in a referendum’, Communications Research 29(6): 615–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dearing, J.W. and Rogers, E.M. (1996), Agenda Setting, Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Dimitrova, D.V. and Kostadinova, P. (2013), ‘Identifying antecedents of the strategic game frame: a longitudinal analysis’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 90(1): 75–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downie, L. Jr. and Kaiser, R.G. (2002), The News About the News, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Entman, R.M. (1993), ‘Framing: towards clarification of a fractured paradigm’, Journal of Communications 43(4): 51–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fallows, J. (1997), Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Farnsworth, S.J. and Lichter, S.R. (2011), The Nightly News Nightmare. Media Coverage of US Presidential Elections, 1988–2008, 3rd edn., Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Farrell, B. (1978), ‘The mass media and the 1977 campaign’, in H.R. Penniman (ed.), Ireland at the Polls: The Dáil Elections of 1977, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, pp. 97–132.Google Scholar
Farrell, D.M. (1990), ‘Campaign strategies and media coverage’, in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 1989, Galway: PSAI Press, pp. 23–43.Google Scholar
Farrell, D.M. (1993), ‘Campaign strategies’, in M. Gallagher and M. Laver (eds), How Ireland Voted 1992, Limerick and Dublin: PSAI Press and Folens, pp. 21–38.Google Scholar
Funkhouser, G.R. (1973), ‘The issues of the sixties: an exploratory study in the dynamics of public opinion’, Public Opinion Quarterly 37(1): 62–75.Google Scholar
Gerber, A.S. and Green, D.P. (2008), ‘Field experiments and natural experiments’, in J.M. Box-Steffensmeier, H.E. Brady and D. Collier (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 357–381.Google Scholar
Gerring, J. (2007), Case Study Research: Principles and Practices, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gerson, M. (2012), The trouble with Obam’s silver lining. The Washington Post, 5 November.Google Scholar
Green, J. (2007), ‘When voters and parties agree: valence issues and party competition’, Political Studies 55(3): 629–655.Google Scholar
Hallin, D.C. (1994), We Keep America on Top of the World, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hallin, D.C. and Mancini, P. (2004), ‘Americanization, globalization, and secularization: understanding the convergence of media systems and political communication’, in F. Esser and B. Pfetsch (eds), Comparing Political Communications: Theories, Cases and Challenges, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallin, D.C. and Mancini, P.(2004), Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S. (1991), Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Iyengar, S. and McGrady, J. (2007), Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1984), ‘Choices, values, and frames’, American Psychologist 39: 341–350.Google Scholar
Kaid, L.L. and Strömbäck, J. (2008), ‘Election news coverage around the world: a comparative perspective’, in J. Strömbäck and L.L. Kaid (eds), The Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World, New York: Routledge, pp. 421–431.Google Scholar
Keane, J. (1993), ‘Democracy and the media – without foundations’, in D. Held (ed.), Prospects for democracy – North, South, East, West, Oxford: Polity Press, pp. 235–253.Google Scholar
Lawrence, R.G. (2000), ‘Game-framing the issues:tracking the strategy frame in public policy news’, Political Communication 17(2): 93–114.Google Scholar
Lijphart, A. (1999), Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in 36 Countries, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mair, P. (2011), ‘The election in context’, in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2011: The Full Story of Ireland's Earthquake Election, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 283–297.Google Scholar
Marsh, M. and Cunningham, K. (2011), ‘A positive choice, or anyone but Fianna Fáil?’, in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2011: The Full Story of Ireland's Earthquake Election, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 172–204.Google Scholar
McMenamin, I. (2004), ‘Varieties of capitalist democracy: what difference does East-Central Europe make?’, Journal of Public Policy 24(3): 259–274.Google Scholar
McMenamin, I., Flynn, R., O’Malley, E. and Rafter, K. (2013), ‘Commercialism and election framing: a content analysis of twelve newspapers in the 2011 Irish general election’, International Journal Press/Politics 18(2): 167–187.Google Scholar
McNair, B. (2001), The Sociology of Journalism, London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. (2003), ‘The background to the election’, in M. Gallagher, M. Marsh and P. Mitchell (eds), How Ireland Voted 2002, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 1–28.Google Scholar
Norris, P. (2009), ‘Comparative political communications: common frameworks or Babelian confusion?’, Government & Opposition 44(2): 321–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, E. and Martin, S. (2010), ‘The government and the Taoiseach’, in J. Coakley and M. Gallagher (eds), Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 5th edn., Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 295–326.Google Scholar
Patterson, T.E. (1994), Out of Order, New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Patterson, T.E. (2000), ‘The United States: news in a free-market society’, in R. Gunther and A. Mughan (eds), Democracy and the Media: A Comparative Perspective, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 241–265.Google Scholar
Reif, K. and Schmitt, H. (1980), ‘Nine second-order national elections – a conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results’, European Journal of Political Research 8(1): 3–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, D.K. and Gobetz, R.H. (1992), ‘Hard news/soft news content of the national broadcast networks, 1972–1987’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 69: 406–412.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (1999), ‘Democracy as a universal value’, Journal of Democracy 10(3): 3–17.Google Scholar
Sheafer, T., Weimann, G. and Tsfati, Y. (2008), ‘Campaigns in the holy land: the content and effects of election news coverage in Israel’, in J. Strömbäck and L.L. Kaid (eds), The Handbook of Election News Coverage around the World, New York: Routledge, pp. 209–225.Google Scholar
Stokes, D.E. (1963), ‘Spatial models and party competition’, American Political Science Review 57: 368–377.Google Scholar
Strömbäck, J. and Aalberg, T. (2008), ‘Election news coverage in democratic corporatist countries: a comparative study of Sweden and Norway’, Scandinavian Political Studies 31(1): 91–106.Google Scholar
Strömbäck, J. and van Aelst, P. (2010), ‘Exploring some antecedents of the media’s framing of election news: a comparison of Swedish and Belgian election news’, International Journal of Press/Politics 14(1): 41–59.Google Scholar
Suiter, J. and Farrell, D.M. (2011), ‘The parties’ manifestos’, in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2011, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 29–46.Google Scholar
Tracy, M. (2012), Nate Silver is a one-man traffic machine for the times. The New Republic, November 6.Google Scholar
van der Eijk, C., Franklin, M. and Marsh, M. (1996), ‘What voters teach us about Europe-wide elections: what Europe-wide elections teach us about voters’, Electoral Studies 15(2): 149–166.Google Scholar
Wilke, J. and Reinemann, C. (2001), ‘Do the candidates matter?: long-term trends of campaign coverage – a study of the German press since 1949’, European Journal of Communication 16: 291–314.Google Scholar
Wlezien, C. (2005), ‘On the salience of political issues: the problem with ‘most important problem’’, Electoral Studies 24: 555–579.Google Scholar
Zaller, J. (2003), ‘A new standard of news quality: burglar alarms for the monitorial citizen’, Political Communications 20: 109–130.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

O’Malley et al. Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download O’Malley et al. Supplementary Material(File)
File 79.9 KB