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Gunnar Thesen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Political Agenda setting as mediatized politics media politics interactions from a party and issue competition perspective
The International Journal of Press Politics, 2014Co-Authors: Gunnar ThesenAbstract:The paper puts forward, and empirically explores, claims on how the literature on Political Agenda setting could inform the concept of mediatized politics. It uses as a starting point the lack of empirical research within mediatization studies, arguing that the field of Political Agenda setting offers important supplements through systematic investigations of the media’s role in promoting social problems on the Political Agenda. However, this does not imply a straightforward merging of the two traditions. Instead, I discuss how Agenda-setting perspectives offer a more active and visible role for Political actors and Political logics in the media–politics relationship, presenting analyses that find media influence on Political issue attention to be conditioned by policy responsibility and the competition between opposition and government. Furthermore, the paper takes issue with the zero-sum game interpretation of the media–politics relationship, where mediatization necessarily implies decreasing Political ...
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mediatization and Political Agenda setting changing issue priorities
Mediatization of politics : understanding the transformation of Western democracies Strömbäck J. [edit.]; e.a., 2014Co-Authors: P Van Aelst, Gunnar Thesen, Stefaan Walgrave, Rens VliegenthartAbstract:Agenda-setting is one of the most influential theories on the media’s Political influence (Graber, 2005). While often focusing on the media’s impact on public opinion, another equally important facet of Agenda-setting theory has the media’s influence over the Agendas of Political actors and policy makers as its central object of investigation. Scholars use the term “Political Agenda-setting” and in some instances “Agenda-building” to refer to the transfer of media priorities to Political priorities. Despite the growing popularity and importance of Political Agenda-setting research, it has seldom been conceptualized as part of or related to the mediatization of politics.
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Political Agenda Setting as Mediatized Politics? Media–Politics Interactions from a Party and Issue Competition Perspective
The International Journal of Press Politics, 2013Co-Authors: Gunnar ThesenAbstract:The paper puts forward, and empirically explores, claims on how the literature on Political Agenda setting could inform the concept of mediatized politics. It uses as a starting point the lack of empirical research within mediatization studies, arguing that the field of Political Agenda setting offers important supplements through systematic investigations of the media’s role in promoting social problems on the Political Agenda. However, this does not imply a straightforward merging of the two traditions. Instead, I discuss how Agenda-setting perspectives offer a more active and visible role for Political actors and Political logics in the media–politics relationship, presenting analyses that find media influence on Political issue attention to be conditioned by policy responsibility and the competition between opposition and government. Furthermore, the paper takes issue with the zero-sum game interpretation of the media–politics relationship, where mediatization necessarily implies decreasing Political ...
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when good news is scarce and bad news is good government responsibilities and opposition possibilities in Political Agenda setting
European Journal of Political Research, 2013Co-Authors: Gunnar ThesenAbstract:Recent studies have drawn attention to the Political contingencies of the media's Political Agenda-setting influence, finding, for instance, that issues from the media Agenda are more likely to attract attention if a party enjoys ownership of the issue. Supplementing the debate on why Political parties respond to news, it is argued in this article that ownership is only part of the picture and that policy responsibility, together with news tone, constitutes a stronger explanation of news politicisation. Opposition parties respond to bad news because they reflect negative developments in social problems for which the government could be held responsible. The government responds to good news that reflects positive developments in social problems because this could politicise policy success, but is also forced to react when news explicitly address government responsibility and thereby threatens its image as responsive and competent. Furthermore, it is shown that news tone and policy responsibility condition the incentive to politicise owned issues from the media Agenda. Thus, opposition parties will not politicise owned issues when news is good because this could draw attention to government success, while government is unable and unwilling to prioritise owned issues when news is bad and instead is likely to make use of its ownership strengths when news is good and the pressure to respond is low. The arguments are tested on a large-N sample of radio news stories from Denmark (2003–2004). Opposition response is measured through parliamentary questions spurred by the news stories, while government response is indicated by references to these stories in the prime minister's weekly press meeting. Results confirm the expectations, suggesting that parties care more about the tone of news stories and the type of attention they might produce, rather than what type of issues they could serve to politicise.
Stefaan Walgrave - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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How Politicians’ Attitudes and Goals Moderate Political Agenda Setting by the Media:
The International Journal of Press Politics, 2017Co-Authors: Alon Zoizner, Tamir Sheafer, Stefaan WalgraveAbstract:The media’s role in shaping the priorities of politicians, known as Political Agenda setting, is usually examined at the institutional level. However, individual politicians’ goals and attitudes are also expected to shape their level of responsiveness to the media. This study is the first to explore how individual politicians’ goals and motivations moderate their real-life level of responsiveness to the media. We examine this by using a unique sample of 197 incumbent politicians in three countries (Belgium, Canada, and Israel) and an automated content analysis of parliamentary speeches (N = 45,574) and news articles (N = 412,112). We find that politicians who view themselves as a conduit of the public (delegates) are more responsive to the media than those acting on their own judgment (trustees). Politicians involved in many issues (generalists) are also more responsive than specialists. Finally, no association is found between politicians’ negativity bias and their media responsiveness.
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Political Agenda Setting and the Mass Media
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2016Co-Authors: Stefaan Walgrave, Peter Van AelstAbstract:Recently, the number of studies examining whether media coverage has an effect on the Political Agenda has been growing strongly. Most studies found that preceding media coverage does exert an effect on the subsequent attention for issues by Political actors. These effects are contingent, though, they depend on the type of issue and the type of Political actor one is dealing with. Most extant work has drawn on aggregate time-series designs, and the field is as good as fully non-comparative. To further develop our knowledge about how and why the mass media exert influence on the Political Agenda, three ways forward are suggested. First, we need better theory about why Political actors would adopt media issues and start devoting attention to them. The core of such a theory should be the notion of the applicability of information encapsulated in the media coverage to the goals and the task at hand of the Political actors. Media information has a number of features that make it very attractive for Political actors to use—it is often negative, for instance. Second, we plead for a disaggregation of the level of analysis from the institutional level (e.g., parliament) or the collective actor level (e.g., party) to the individual level (e.g., members of parliament). Since individuals process media information, and since the goals and tasks of individuals that trigger the applicability mechanism are diverse, the best way to move forward is to tackle the Agenda setting puzzle at the individual level. This implies surveying individual elites or, even better, implementing experimental designs to individual elite actors. Third, the field is in dire need of comparative work comparing how Political actors respond to media coverage across countries or Political systems.
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how Political elites process information from the news the cognitive mechanisms behind behavioral Political Agenda setting effects
Political Communication, 2016Co-Authors: Julie Sevenans, Stefaan Walgrave, Gwendolyn Joanna EppingAbstract:Political Agenda-setting studies have shown that Political Agendas are influenced by the media Agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral Political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament’s (MP) individual, cognitive attention for specific news stories. Drawing upon a survey of Belgian MPs administered shortly after exposure to news stories, the study shows that MPs are highly selective in exploiting media cues. They pay more attention to both prominent and useful news stories, but a story’s usefulness is more important for cognitive processes that are closely linked to MPs’ real behavior in parliament. In other words, aggregate Political Agenda-setting effects are a consequence of the way in which individual MPs process media information that matches their task-related needs.
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mediatization and Political Agenda setting changing issue priorities
Mediatization of politics : understanding the transformation of Western democracies Strömbäck J. [edit.]; e.a., 2014Co-Authors: P Van Aelst, Gunnar Thesen, Stefaan Walgrave, Rens VliegenthartAbstract:Agenda-setting is one of the most influential theories on the media’s Political influence (Graber, 2005). While often focusing on the media’s impact on public opinion, another equally important facet of Agenda-setting theory has the media’s influence over the Agendas of Political actors and policy makers as its central object of investigation. Scholars use the term “Political Agenda-setting” and in some instances “Agenda-building” to refer to the transfer of media priorities to Political priorities. Despite the growing popularity and importance of Political Agenda-setting research, it has seldom been conceptualized as part of or related to the mediatization of politics.
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minimal or massive the Political Agenda setting power of the mass media according to different methods
The International Journal of Press Politics, 2011Co-Authors: Peter Van Aelst, Stefaan WalgraveAbstract:The debate on the media’s Agenda-setting power is not settled yet. Most empirical Agenda-setting studies using time-series analyses found that the media matter for the Political Agenda, but the size of the found media effects remains often modest. This nuanced view on media impact seems to contradict with the perceptions of politicians. Our comparative survey of members of parliament in four small parliamentary democracies—Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark—shows that they consider the mass media to be one of the key Political Agenda setters directly competing with the Prime Minister and the powerful Political parties. This article further explores the inconsistency between “objective” and “subjective” findings.We develop six possible explanations for the contradicting findings produced by both methods and formulate concrete suggestions to improve both methods and diminish the gap between them.
James P Cross - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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exploring the Political Agenda of the european parliament using a dynamic topic modeling approach
Political Analysis, 2017Co-Authors: Derek Greene, James P CrossAbstract:This study analyzes the Political Agenda of the European Parliament (EP) plenary, how it has evolved over time, and the manner in which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have reacted to external and internal stimuli when making plenary speeches. To unveil the plenary Agenda and detect latent themes in legislative speeches over time, MEP speech content is analyzed using a new dynamic topic modeling method based on two layers of Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF). This method is applied to a new corpus of all English language legislative speeches in the EP plenary from the period 1999 to 2014. Our findings suggest that two-layer NMF is a valuable alternative to existing dynamic topic modeling approaches found in the literature, and can unveil niche topics and associated vocabularies not captured by existing methods. Substantively, our findings suggest that the Political Agenda of the EP evolves significantly over time and reacts to exogenous events such as EU Treaty referenda and the emergence of the Euro Crisis. MEP contributions to the plenary Agenda are also found to be impacted upon by voting behavior and the committee structure of the Parliament.
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unveiling the Political Agenda of the european parliament plenary a topical analysis
Web Science, 2015Co-Authors: Derek Greene, James P CrossAbstract:This study analyzes Political interactions in the European Parliament (EP) by considering how the Political Agenda of the plenary sessions has evolved over time and the manner in which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have reacted to external and internal stimuli when making Parliamentary speeches. It does so by considering the context in which speeches are made, and the content of those speeches. To detect latent themes in legislative speeches over time, speech content is analyzed using a new dynamic topic modeling method, based on two layers of matrix factorization. This method is applied to a new corpus of all English language legislative speeches in the EP plenary from the period 1999-2014. Our findings suggest that the Political Agenda of the EP has evolved significantly over time, is impacted upon by the committee structure of the Parliament, and reacts to exogenous events such as EU Treaty referenda and the emergence of the Euro-crisis have a significant impact on what is being discussed in Parliament.
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WebSci - Unveiling the Political Agenda of the European Parliament Plenary: A Topical Analysis
Proceedings of the ACM Web Science Conference on ZZZ - WebSci '15, 2015Co-Authors: Derek Greene, James P CrossAbstract:This study analyzes Political interactions in the European Parliament (EP) by considering how the Political Agenda of the plenary sessions has evolved over time and the manner in which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have reacted to external and internal stimuli when making Parliamentary speeches. It does so by considering the context in which speeches are made, and the content of those speeches. To detect latent themes in legislative speeches over time, speech content is analyzed using a new dynamic topic modeling method, based on two layers of matrix factorization. This method is applied to a new corpus of all English language legislative speeches in the EP plenary from the period 1999-2014. Our findings suggest that the Political Agenda of the EP has evolved significantly over time, is impacted upon by the committee structure of the Parliament, and reacts to exogenous events such as EU Treaty referenda and the emergence of the Euro-crisis have a significant impact on what is being discussed in Parliament.
Peter Van Aelst - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Political Agenda Setting and the Mass Media
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2016Co-Authors: Stefaan Walgrave, Peter Van AelstAbstract:Recently, the number of studies examining whether media coverage has an effect on the Political Agenda has been growing strongly. Most studies found that preceding media coverage does exert an effect on the subsequent attention for issues by Political actors. These effects are contingent, though, they depend on the type of issue and the type of Political actor one is dealing with. Most extant work has drawn on aggregate time-series designs, and the field is as good as fully non-comparative. To further develop our knowledge about how and why the mass media exert influence on the Political Agenda, three ways forward are suggested. First, we need better theory about why Political actors would adopt media issues and start devoting attention to them. The core of such a theory should be the notion of the applicability of information encapsulated in the media coverage to the goals and the task at hand of the Political actors. Media information has a number of features that make it very attractive for Political actors to use—it is often negative, for instance. Second, we plead for a disaggregation of the level of analysis from the institutional level (e.g., parliament) or the collective actor level (e.g., party) to the individual level (e.g., members of parliament). Since individuals process media information, and since the goals and tasks of individuals that trigger the applicability mechanism are diverse, the best way to move forward is to tackle the Agenda setting puzzle at the individual level. This implies surveying individual elites or, even better, implementing experimental designs to individual elite actors. Third, the field is in dire need of comparative work comparing how Political actors respond to media coverage across countries or Political systems.
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the media as Political Agenda setters journalists perceptions of media power in eight west european countries
West European Politics, 2014Co-Authors: Arjen Van Dalen, Peter Van AelstAbstract:Studies in different countries have shown that the media can influence the attention politicians devote to different issues. However, knowledge about the cross-national contingencies of the Political Agenda-setting power of the media is limited. This study compares the perceptions of journalists of the Political Agenda-setting power of the mass media in eight parliamentary democracies with varying media and Political systems: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Building on a power balance perspective, the article looks at the autonomy of the media system (audience reach and Political control) and the concentration of power in the Political system (number of Political parties, concentration of executive power) to contextualise the role of the media in Political Agenda-setting. Journalists perceive most media influence in Norway and Sweden and least in Spain. The results indicate that the power balance between the media and Political actors to a large ex...
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minimal or massive the Political Agenda setting power of the mass media according to different methods
The International Journal of Press Politics, 2011Co-Authors: Peter Van Aelst, Stefaan WalgraveAbstract:The debate on the media’s Agenda-setting power is not settled yet. Most empirical Agenda-setting studies using time-series analyses found that the media matter for the Political Agenda, but the size of the found media effects remains often modest. This nuanced view on media impact seems to contradict with the perceptions of politicians. Our comparative survey of members of parliament in four small parliamentary democracies—Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark—shows that they consider the mass media to be one of the key Political Agenda setters directly competing with the Prime Minister and the powerful Political parties. This article further explores the inconsistency between “objective” and “subjective” findings.We develop six possible explanations for the contradicting findings produced by both methods and formulate concrete suggestions to improve both methods and diminish the gap between them.
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the contingency of the mass media s Political Agenda setting power toward a preliminary theory
Journal of Communication, 2006Co-Authors: Stefaan Walgrave, Peter Van AelstAbstract:Recently the study of the relationship between the media and the Political Agenda has received growing attention of both media and Political science scholars. However, these research efforts have not led to a general discussion or a real theory on the media’s Political Agenda setting power. This article first analytically confronts the often contradictory results of the available evidence. Then, it sketches the broad outline of a preliminary theory. Political Agenda setting by the media is contingent upon a number of conditions. The input variables of the model are the kind of issues covered, the specific media outlet, and the sort of coverage. Political context variables, the features of the Political actors at stake, are at the heart of the model. The model proposes five sorts of output ranging from no Political adoption to fast substantial adoption of media issues.
Derek Greene - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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exploring the Political Agenda of the european parliament using a dynamic topic modeling approach
Political Analysis, 2017Co-Authors: Derek Greene, James P CrossAbstract:This study analyzes the Political Agenda of the European Parliament (EP) plenary, how it has evolved over time, and the manner in which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have reacted to external and internal stimuli when making plenary speeches. To unveil the plenary Agenda and detect latent themes in legislative speeches over time, MEP speech content is analyzed using a new dynamic topic modeling method based on two layers of Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF). This method is applied to a new corpus of all English language legislative speeches in the EP plenary from the period 1999 to 2014. Our findings suggest that two-layer NMF is a valuable alternative to existing dynamic topic modeling approaches found in the literature, and can unveil niche topics and associated vocabularies not captured by existing methods. Substantively, our findings suggest that the Political Agenda of the EP evolves significantly over time and reacts to exogenous events such as EU Treaty referenda and the emergence of the Euro Crisis. MEP contributions to the plenary Agenda are also found to be impacted upon by voting behavior and the committee structure of the Parliament.
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unveiling the Political Agenda of the european parliament plenary a topical analysis
Web Science, 2015Co-Authors: Derek Greene, James P CrossAbstract:This study analyzes Political interactions in the European Parliament (EP) by considering how the Political Agenda of the plenary sessions has evolved over time and the manner in which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have reacted to external and internal stimuli when making Parliamentary speeches. It does so by considering the context in which speeches are made, and the content of those speeches. To detect latent themes in legislative speeches over time, speech content is analyzed using a new dynamic topic modeling method, based on two layers of matrix factorization. This method is applied to a new corpus of all English language legislative speeches in the EP plenary from the period 1999-2014. Our findings suggest that the Political Agenda of the EP has evolved significantly over time, is impacted upon by the committee structure of the Parliament, and reacts to exogenous events such as EU Treaty referenda and the emergence of the Euro-crisis have a significant impact on what is being discussed in Parliament.
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WebSci - Unveiling the Political Agenda of the European Parliament Plenary: A Topical Analysis
Proceedings of the ACM Web Science Conference on ZZZ - WebSci '15, 2015Co-Authors: Derek Greene, James P CrossAbstract:This study analyzes Political interactions in the European Parliament (EP) by considering how the Political Agenda of the plenary sessions has evolved over time and the manner in which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have reacted to external and internal stimuli when making Parliamentary speeches. It does so by considering the context in which speeches are made, and the content of those speeches. To detect latent themes in legislative speeches over time, speech content is analyzed using a new dynamic topic modeling method, based on two layers of matrix factorization. This method is applied to a new corpus of all English language legislative speeches in the EP plenary from the period 1999-2014. Our findings suggest that the Political Agenda of the EP has evolved significantly over time, is impacted upon by the committee structure of the Parliament, and reacts to exogenous events such as EU Treaty referenda and the emergence of the Euro-crisis have a significant impact on what is being discussed in Parliament.
