Patterns of Consistence and Constriction: How News Media Frame the Coverage of Direct Democratic Campaigns

Journalists have the power to enhance the visibility of certain aspects of campaign issues and, thus, are relevant mediators between political actors and citizens. To serve the public interest, news media coverage should include the views of different political camps and should enable citizens to build opinions in an enlightened way. The authors analyze journalists’ framing of the coverage of a 2008 campaign on the naturalization of immigrants. Content analysis was conducted of all campaign coverage by TV stations and major newspaper outlets over a period of 14 weeks. To identify dominant frames, the authors coded all campaign arguments made in news media coverage (N = 3,570). The results show that media coverage focused on three substantive frames—rule of law, mass naturalization, and people’s final say. The findings reveal that coverage was not balanced but was clearly in favor of the rule of law frame. This framing bias applies to different types of media, including public service TV and elite newspapers. Furthermore, the authors found a striking bias toward institutional actors, who were covered much more often than civil society actors. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211426326 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-61733 Published Version Originally published at: Gerth, Matthias A; Siegert, Gabriele (2012). Patterns of consistence and constriction: How news media frame the coverage of direct democratic campaigns. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(3):279-299. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211426326 http://abs.sagepub.com/ American Behavioral Scientist http://abs.sagepub.com/content/56/3/279 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0002764211426326 2011 2012 56: 279 originally published online 15 December American Behavioral Scientist Matthias A. Gerth and Gabriele Siegert Coverage of Direct Democratic Campaigns Patterns of Consistence and Constriction : How News Media Frame the