Media logic in the coverage of election promises: comparative evidence from the Netherlands and the US
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Media logic in the coverage of election promises: comparative evidence from the Netherlands and the US Erkan Ergün1 · Niels Karsten1
© The Author(s) 2019
Abstract This article analyzes the occurrence of media logic in the coverage of election promises in the Netherlands and the US. Whereas studies of media logic commonly focus separate attention on one of its various manifestations, we believe a comprehensive understanding requires a more inclusive approach. In response, we include five aspects of media logic in our study of news coverage: the occurrence of (a) the strategy frame, (b) the game frame, (c) the conflict frame, (d) personalization, and (e) negativity. Our study contributes innovatively to the existing literature by taking an approach that, rather than starting from campaign manifestos, analyzes election promises as they are reported on in newspapers. We take this approach because the media are the primary source of information about election promises for citizens. The results of our study indicate that media logic is ubiquitous in the coverage of election promises, but that media logic does not always behave across different media and political systems in the way the literature predicts. Notably, the results show that, in contrast to our expectations, coverage of election promises is more negative in the Netherlands than in the US. Keywords Election promises · Media logic · Media frames · Personalization · Negativity · Election campaigns
Introduction The practice of presenting policy views to voters via party manifestos before elections is well established in Western democracies. The rationale behind this is that voters can decide to which political actors they want to give their mandate to represent them. This is also known as the party mandate model (Louwerse 2014), on which there is an elaborate strand of research that analyses to what extent political * Erkan Ergün [email protected] 1
Tilburg Institute of Governance, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands Vol.:(0123456789)
E. Ergün, N. Karsten
actors fulfill their pledges. Studies focusing on pledge fulfillment show that politicians are in general inclined to fulfill their pledges. These include the seminal metaanalysis by Thomson et al. (2017), who utilize the data sets of 11 scholars and synchronize research from recent decades that covers 57 election campaigns in twelve countries. Pétry and Collette’s research (2009, p. 77) is also relevant since their meta-review led them to conclude that, “contrary to popular belief, political parties are reliable promise keepers”. Despite these findings, opinion polls and surveys show that most voters are skeptical regarding politicians keeping their election promises (ISSP Research Group 2008). Around 50% of the Dutch population and 83% of the US population do not believe that politicians keep these promises (Louwerse 2014; Rasmussen Reports, 2014). In light of the party mandate model, this can be problematic since the legitimacy of the system draws on t
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