APPLICATION FORM FOR PROSPECTIVE WORKSHOP DIRECTORS

Transcription

1 APPLICATION FORM FOR PROSPECTIVE WORKSHOP DIRECTORS This form should be used for applications to run a workshop at the Joint Sessions of Workshops. The deadline for applications is 15 February each year. Title of proposed workshop Political agenda-setting and the media Name of workshop director(s): Stefaan Walgrave Jan Kleinnijenhuis Name and address of institution(s): University of Antwerp (UFSIA-UIA) Free University of Amsterdam Section Political Science Section Communication Science Korte St. Annastraat 6 De Boelelaan 1081c B-2000 Antwerp 1081 HV Amsterdam Belgium The Netherlands Telephone number/s: Walgrave: +32/10/ Kleinnijenhuis: +31/ Fax number/s: +32/10/ / address/s: walgrave@uia.ua.ac.be j.kleinnijenhuis@scw.vu.nl Please note that the information above is VERY important as it will be used in all future correspondence and printed in the academic programme. The proposal should be typed using 1.5 line spacing on three/four A4 pages using this sheet as the first page, and should cover the points outlined in the guidelines (see over). Please send this form, together with your workshop proposal, to both: a) ECPR Central Services University of Essex Wivenhoe Park COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ Essex, UK Tel: /2497 Fax: ecpr@essex.ac.uk Web: b) Dr Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot Institut d Études Politiques de Bordeaux Domaine Universitaire, BP 101 F TALENCE CEDEX France Tel: Fax: v.hoffmann-martinot@wanadoo.fr For further information, please contact either of the above.

2 Political agenda-setting and the media For many years now, the notion of agenda-setting has provided one of the most influential paradigms in media and communication research. The basic idea is that mass media determine people s issue priorities. When mass media emphasize a topic, the audience/public receiving the message will consider this topic to be important (Cohen, 1963; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Numerous studies all over the world have established firm correlations between the media s and the public s priorities (McCombs & Shaw, 1993; Rogers & Dearing, 1996). Within political science too, agendasetting is a frequently used concept. Political scientists draw on it to describe and explain how political institutions on different levels and with different functions (government, parliament, civil servants, political parties ) determine their priorities, give attention to or ignore issues, and do or do not take decisions or take a stance concerning these topics (e.g. Cobb & Elder, 1971; Kingdon, 1994; Laver & Budge, 1992; Klingeman, Hofferbert & Budge, 1994). This political agenda-setting research focuses mainly on endogenous political factors, attributing issues on the agenda of a certain political actor (e.g. government), to the influence of (the agenda of) another political actor (e.g. government party) or to issues on the same agenda in the preceding period (incrementalism). Both agenda-setting traditions, in communications and in political science, developed separately. Starting at the beginning of the 90s, though, scholars have begun to concentrate on the media, the public and the political agenda (e.g. Brandenburg, 2000; Landry et al, 1997; Kleinnijenhuis & Rietberg, 1995; Protess et al., 1991; Trumbo, 1995; Baumgartner et al., 1997). They scrutinised if and how lower agendas such as the public and the media agenda (previously the focus only of communications researchers) interact with higher, more institutional, political agendas (until recently the exclusive playground of political scientists). The outcome of their investigations generally pointed towards only modest media influence (for an overviews see: Jacobs & Shapiro, 2000). The impact of the media on the political agenda seemed to be limited, except for issues like foreign policy (Wood & Peake, 1998; Edwards & Wood, 1999; Livingston, 1997; for an opposite stance see: Mermin, 1997; Herman, 1993), for special kinds of journalism like investigation journalism (Protess et al., 1991), and for some uncommon and non-routine crisis situations (Wood & Peake, 1998; Walker, 1977; Eichhorn, 1996). Kleinijenhuis (2002) succinctly summarized the provisional state of research when he stated that the public follows the media who follow politics. The aim of this workshop is to reassess the role of the media in political agenda-setting. We think there are good reasons to reconsider or at least supplement the findings of previous studies. The number of empirical political agenda-setting studies focussing on the media has been rather limited and the

3 results of these studies were often contradictory. Definitive conclusions about the media s role in political agenda-setting cannot be drawn yet (Rogers & Dearing, 1996). Moreover, the available empirical research leading to the limited-effect conclusions might be flawed. In this workshop, we want to gather a number of studies that could broaden our knowledge of the role of the media in the political agenda-setting process and/or that could anticipate the weaknesses of political agenda-setting research. The first tenuousness of most studies is that they only take a limited number of issues into consideration. Systematic comparisons of a large number of different issues are lacking so far. Such studies might reveal substantial media effects and they could yield a better and more subtle understanding of differences in issue dynamics and in the role played by the media in their making. Secondly, most studies tried to predict a single dependent variable. The political agenda was defined as existing of either political party programmes, the legislative output, the parliamentarian agenda, the governmental agenda, or the state s budget (Rogers & Dearing, 1996). Knowing, for example, that a state s budget only changes in an incremental way, it was hardly surprising that studies found no link between media coverage for certain issues and the subsequent budgetary spending for those issues (Landry et al., 1997). Studies that split up the political agenda in different political agendas would allow us to test more subtle hypotheses about step-by-step and/or indirect media influence via a whole range of political agendas. Thirdly, not only the dependent but also the independent explaining variables could be manifold. Most bivariate studies involving just two agendas reveal significant correlations. Yet the multivariate research that is available suggests that those bivariate correlations are often illusory and that it is, therefore, paramount to study the different agendas in full (for an overview of those studies see Landry et al., 1997). Fourthly there is the specificity of the period under study. The notion of agenda-setting implies some time lag between the presence of an issue on one agenda and the subsequent infection of another agenda with that issue. As such time is a crucial variable in all agenda-setting research. This implies that one needs a period long enough, that evidence should be gathered on a continuous basis, and that the period under study should cover routine and non-routine political times (e.g. not only focussing on election times)(dalton et al., 1998; Walgrave & Deswert, 2003). Fifth, the bulk of political agenda-setting research has been carried out in the United States. If one wants to explain how a fundamental political process as the political agenda-building comes about, it is obvious that the specific features of the national political and media system play a crucial role. If we want to make progress with political agenda-setting research, we really need more studies in more different countries. Yet, in Western-Europe only some agenda-setting studies have considered the political

4 and the media agenda (for some exceptions see: Eilders, 1997; Landry et al., 1997; Rössler, 1997; Schultz, 1997). Sixth, studies of agenda-setting tend to limit themselves to the realm of issues, although less than half of the political information in the media deals with issues. Reports on political actors, on their political conflicts and political settlements, as well as reports on who is winning and who is losing may have effects apart from the classical agenda-setting effect. Such news effects on public opinion are well known (e.g. Zaller, 1995; Kleinnijenhuis et al. 2003; Shah et al. 2002). We are not aware, however, of empirical studies on the effects of these types of news on the agenda or the opinions of the political elite, although scholars have suggested that the media may play a role in construing policy fiascos (Bovens et.al. 1998). These six points of criticism concern the design of the current political agenda-setting research and denounce the limits of the available evidence. It is possible that the present studies concluded that the media play only a modest role in making the political agenda as they lacked the evidence needed to discern media influence. To reassess the role of the media in the political agenda-setting process we await all papers dealing with theoretical or empirical research on the relation between the media agenda and the political agenda(s). Especially papers that anticipate one or more of the weaknesses of the mainstream political agenda-setting research are welcome. Papers dealing with a variety of issues, reciprocally dependent variables, a multivariate approach, longitudinal data, comparative data or dealing not only with issues but also with conflicts, successes and failures will be of interest. Both quantitative studies and case studies will be considered, single nation studies as well as comparative studies. Papers focussing entirely on media effects on the general public, that do not pay attention to the effects of media on the political elite, or vice versa, will not be accepted. References M. Bovens, P. t Hart, S. Dekker, G. Verheuvel & E. de Vries (1998). De IRT-affaire: de sociale constructie van beleidsfiasco s. Beleid & Maatschappij, 25(5), H. Brandenburg, 2000, Who follows whom? The impact of parties on Media Agenda Formation in the 1997 British General Elections Campaign, Harvard Journal of Press and Politics, 7(3), R. Cobb & C; Elder, 1971, The politics of agenda-building: an alternative perspective for modern democratic theory, Journal of Politics, 33, B. Cohen, 1963, The Press and Foreign Policy, Princeton, Princeton University Press. T. Cook, 1997, News coverage of AIDS, Pippa Norris (ed.), Politics and the press: the news media and their influences, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, R. Dalton, P. Beck, R. Huckfeldt & W. Koetzle, 1998, A Test of the Media-Centred Agendasetting: Newspaper Content and Public Interests in a Presidential Election, Political Communication, 15, L. De Winter, D. della Porta & K. Deschouwer, 1996, Comparing similar countries: Italy and Belgium, Res Publica, 38(2),

5 A. Downs, 1972, Up and down with Ecology: the Issue-attention Cycle, Public Interest, 28, G. Edwards & D. Wood, 1999, Who influences whom? The president, Congress and the media, American Political Science review, 93, W. Eichhorn, 1996, Agenda-Setting Prozesse: eine theoretische Analyse individueller und gesellschaftlicher Themenstrukturierung, Fischer, Munchen. C. Eilders, 1997, The impact of editorial content on the political agenda in Germany: theoretical assumptions and open questions regarding a neglected subject in mass communication research, WZB discussion papers, FS III E. Herman, 1993, The media s role in US Foreign Policy, Journal of International Affairs, 47(1), L. Jacobs & R. Shapiro, 2000, Politicians Don t Pander, Chicago IL, University of Chicago. J. Kleinnijenhuis & E. Rietberg, 1995, Parties, Media, the public and the economy: patterns of societal agenda-setting, European Journal of Political Research, 28, J. Kleinnijenhuis, 2003, Het Publiek volgt de media die de politiek volgen. In: Raad voor maatschappelijk ontwikkeling, Medialogica. Over het krachtenveld tussen burgers, media en politiek. s Gravenhage: SDU. J. Kleinnijenhuis, D.Oegema, J.A. de Ridder, A.M.J. van Hoof & R.Vliegenthart (2003). De puinhopen in het nieuws. Alphen aan de Rijn: Kluwer. Klingemann, R. Hofferbert & I Budge (eds.), 1994, Parties, Policies and Democracy, Westview, Oxford. R. Landry, F. Varone, M. Laamary & M. Pesant, 1997 What sets the policy agenda? The media agenda or the party agenda? Empirical evidence on the societal agenda, Unpublished paper, Université de Laval, Quebec. M. Laver & I. Budge (eds.), 1992, Party Policy and Government Coalitions, St. Martin's Press, London A. Lijphart, 1999, Patterns of democracy, New Haven: Yale University Press. S. Livingston, 1997, Beyond the CNN-effect : the media foreign policy dynamic, P. Norris (ed.), Politics and the Press: the news media and their influences, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, M. McCombs & D. Shaw, 1972, The agenda-setting function of the mass media, Public Opinion Quarterly, 69(4) M. McCombs & D. Shaw, 1993, The evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas, Journal of Communication, 43 (2), M. McCombs, J.P. Llamas, E. Lopez-Escobar, F. Rey, 1997, Candidate Images in Spanish elections, Second-level Agenda-setting Effects, Journalism and mass Communications Quarterly, 74(4), J. Mermin, 1997, Television news and the American intervention in Somalia: the myth of a mediadriven foreign policy, Political science quarterly, 112 (3), P. Norris, 2000, A Virtuous Circle. Political communications in Postindustrial societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. D. Protess, F. Cook, J. Doppelt, 1991, The journalism of outrage: investigate reporting and agenda building in America, Guilford Press, New York. E. Rogers & J. Dearing, 1996, Agenda-setting, Thousand Oaks, Sage. P. Rössler, 1997, Agenda-setting: theoretische Annahmen und empirische Evidenzen einder Medienwirkungshypothese, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen. W. Schultz, 1997, Politische Kommunikation: theoretische Ansätze und Ergebnisse empirischer Forschung zur Rolle der Massenmedien in der Politik, Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden. D.V. Shah, M.D. Watts, D. Domke & D.P. Fan (2002). News Framing and Cueing of Issue Regimes: Explaining Clinton's Public Approval in Spite of Scandal. Public Opinion Quarterly 66 (3): C. Trumbo, 1995, Longitudinal modelling of public issues: an application of the agenda-setting process to the issue of global warming, Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 152. S. Walgrave & J. Manssens, 2000, The Making of the White March: the Mass Media as a Mobilizing Alternative to Movement Organisations, Mobilization, 5(2),

6 S. Walgrave & K. Deswert, 2003, The making of the (issues of the) Vlaams Blok. On the contribution of the news media to the electoral success of the Belgian extreme-right party, Paper sent for review to Political Communication. J Walker, 1977, Setting the agenda in the US senate: a theory of problem selection, British Journal of Political Science, 7, D. Wood & J. Peake, 1998, The dynamics of foreign policy agenda setting, American Political Science review, 92(1), Biographical note Stefaan Walgrave is associate professor of political science at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). His research interests lie in social movement s research and in the interaction between the mass media and political decision-making. Currently he is the coordinator of a large political agendasetting project in Belgium. He has published on social movements, mobilisation and demonstrations, green parties, political communication and agenda-setting. Jan Kleinnijenhuis is professor of communication science at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. His research interests comprise political communication and social science methodology. He has published on agenda setting, political methodology, especially on methods for content analysis, and on the effects of news in the mass media.