National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR)
Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century
Working Paper No. 93
Issue Competition between Parties across
Communication Channels: An Empirical Analysis of
the 2011 Swiss Federal Elections
Caroline Dalmus, University of Fribourg
Regula Hänggli, University of Fribourg
Laurent Bernhard, University of Zurich
Contact:
[email protected]
July 2016
Abstract
During election campaigns one central question arises for parties: Which issues should they
focus on? The literature offers two prominent theories explaining parties’ issue choices,
namely the issue ownership theory, which argues that parties focus on the issues they own
and the riding the wave theory, which endorses that parties predominantly focus on issues
that are of public relevance and prominent in the media. While the prior leads to issue
divergence (actors talk about different issues), the latter produces issue convergence (actors
talk about the same issues). Empirical support exists for both theories, which leads to the
assumption that other factors may influence parties’ issue choices as well. In the present
study we argue that different communication channels foster different issue choices. We
conducted a quantitative content analysis on the 2011 Swiss federal elections 1. We analyze
statements from political parties in party owned and media-owned channels, namely paid
advertising (n=1’697), election manifestos (n=132), press releases (n=341), and newspapers
(n=534). The results reveal that issue choices vary across communication channels. While a
stronger focus on each party’s core issues can be detected in paid advertisement, issue
convergence increases in election manifestos and proves to be highest in press releases.
Keywords: issue competition, party behavior, election campaigns, news coverage, different
communication channels
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This study was supported by the National Center of Competence in Research ‘Challenges to
Democracy in the 21st Century’ (NCCR Democracy), funded by the Swiss National Science
Foundation.
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INTRODUCTION
During election campaigns setting the issue agenda is a crucial activity for political
actors. Scholars have been studying the factors that influence these choices for decades.
The two most prominent theories explaining parties’ issue choices are the issue ownership
theory (Petrocick, 1996; Budge & Farlie, 1983; Robertson, 1976) and the riding the wave
theory (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1994; Sides, 2006; Sigelman & Buell, 2004; Wagner &
Meyer, 2014). While the prior argues that parties focus on the issues they own, the latter
endorses that parties predominantly focus on issues which are of public relevance and
prominent in the media. Numerous of studies have tested both theories and come to
contradicting results: Some offer evidence for the dominance of the issue ownership strategy
(e.g. Petrocick, 1996; Budge & Farlie, 1983), others for the wave-riding strategy (e.g.
Sigelman & Buell, 2004; Sides, 2006). Here, the question arises, if the inconsistency in the
results is owed to the fact that both strategies are conditioned by other factors. When looking
closer at the different studies it becomes apparent that they all base their analyses on
different communication channels, like party manifestos, advertisement or newspaper
coverage. This is problematic, since different communication channels serve different needs
and therefore might lead to varying issue choices according to channel. Indeed, ElmelundPraestekaer (2011) showed that issue agendas differ across channels due to strategic
considerations. The author defined the level of control parties exert over a channel and the
target audience they try to reach as the influencing factors.
In the present study we ask the following: Do channles matter and in how far do
strategic choices vary across those channels? For this purpose we analyze election
manifestos, paid advertisment and press releases as well as newspaper coverage eight
weeks prior to the Swiss elections in 2011. In a first step, we anlyze if the issue agendas in
press releases, election manifestos and paid advertisement vary. Afterwards, we search for
patterns that can explain possible variations. Here, we expect that one influencing factor is
the characteristic of a channel as being mediated or unmediated. In a last step, we compare
the agendas in press releases, election manifestos and paid advertisement with those in the
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media coverage in order to analyze, if there are certain similarities or dissimilarities between
the agendas in party controlled and media controlled communication channels.
THEORY: ISSUE COMPETITION AND PARTIES’ STRATEGIES
Setting an issue agenda is a central activity for political actors during election
campaigns. While organizing events and having candidates showing their faces in the media
is just a superficial aspect of election campaigns, it is the focus on issues that fills parties’
campaigns with content and gives substance to them. Through focusing on issues, parties
create a picture of themselves and communicate what they stand for. Here, one central
question arises for the parties: Which issues should they focus on? Numerous studies have
focused on analyzing parties’ issue choices and have presented a variety of explanations for
their behavior. One branch of research argues that parties’ decisions primarily rely on their
issue ownership status (Petrocik, 1996). Parties may present issues selectively, since some
issues work better for them than others (Budge and Farlie,1983, p. 271). Specific parties are
perceived to have competence on specific issues, for example a liberal party when it comes
to questions concerning the economy or social democrats when social questions are at
stake. Therefore, the goal of parties is not to position themselves on a variety of given issues
but to highlight only specific issues, predominantly those they consider to own. Through this
behavior political actors have the capacity to contribute to the salience of issues in the news
(Boydstun, 2013). Highlighting their preferred issues comes along with ignoring the other
parties’ strong issues. Such behavior aims to reduce the salience of an opponent’s issue and
can be described as a dismissive strategy (Meguid, 2005, p. 349). Robertson (1976) as well
as Budge and Farlie (1983) were able to show in an analysis of election manifestos that
candidates mainly emphasize issues exclusively associated with their own party when they
appeal to a certain state or problem of society. Additionally, this behavior occurs when
parties feel they are bound to win or to lose. A lesser emphasis on parties’ core issues
occurs, when the respective parties feel to be in a competitive situation with other parties. In
this case parties develop to be what Budge and Farlie (1983, p. 280) call ‘catch-all’ parties,
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who move ‘across-the-board’ in order to not only “strengthen the commitment of previous
party supporters” but also “capture the sympathy of even the strongest adherents of rival(s)”.
Based on the ideas of the selective emphasis theory Carmines and Stimson (1993)
developed their theory of issue competition, which refers to parties’ struggle about which
issue should dominate the agenda. Since it is likely that issue ownership only has an
influence on voters’ decisions if the issue is perceived as being important (Bélanger &
Meguid, 2008, pp. 479-480), putting their issues on the agenda is crucial for parties.
As it becomes apparent, the issue ownership strategy is characterized by issue
divergence and therefore quite dissimilar party agendas. As a consequence, parties are said
to talk past each other rather than engaging in dialogue (Riker, 1993, 4), which implies that
“issue ownership theories suggest that a vital component of the democratic system does not
function” (Kaplan, Park & Ridout, 2006, 725). Another problematic aspect about the issue
ownership approach lies in the fact that parties choose their issues regardless of other
factors such as voter priorities (Damore, 2005, 73) or issue saliency in the media. Some
more recent studies have overcome this weakness by introducing the idea that political
actors are confronted with issues being debated intensely in the media and therefore might
have to focus on these issues as well (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1994; Sides, 2006; Sigelman
& Buell, 2004; Wagner & Meyer, 2014). Such behavior is described as the ‘ride the wave’
strategy (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1994), following which political actors benefit from the
salience of an issue in the media by intensifying their focus on it. Sides (2006) and Sigelman
and Buell (2004) could show that besides focusing on core issues, political actors do
elaborate on issues they do not own but which are currently discussed in the media and are
important to the electorate. In contrast to issue ownership, wave-riding leads to issue
convergence and therefore party agendas which are rather similar.
While the issue ownership perspective may lead to the conclusion that it is solely the
political actors who influence which issues are salient and which are not, the ‘ride the wave’
strategy also ascribes issue emphasis power to the media. Besides political actors media
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may introduce certain issues and influence their salience as well (Green-Pedersen &
Stubager, 2010; Strömbäck & Nord, 2006; Van Aelst, Thesen, Walgrave, & Vliegenthart,
2014). Media do not just simply transmit issues and positions brought up by political actors,
but select, ignore and emphasize them. Besides reflecting politics, media have an impact of
their own on politicians and parties and are rather an “exogenous variable” with influencing
power than a “dependent variable” (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 8). They also have the ability
to give visibility to issues of public importance or at least those they perceive as important.
Additionally, media create and reflect what seems to be the public opinion and therewith give
the people as well as politicians a point of orientation about what a majority of the people
thinks concerning a specific issue. Not least, media actors have a high affinity for sensational
events, crisis or catastrophes. Therefore, politicians as well as the media are able to set
issues and influence their salience. As a consequence, the issue choice may be conditioned
by both issue ownership as well as media attention.
Considering communication channels. The literature presents support for both, the
issue ownership strategy (e.g. Budge & Farlie, 1983; Petrocik, 1996) and the ‘riding the
wave’ strategy (e.g. Sides, 2006; Sigelman &Buell, 2004; Damore, 2004; Petrocik, Benoit &
Hansen, 2003-2004). Here, it becomes apparent, that most studies focus on a single channel
or two maximum. While Budge & Farlie (1983) or Wagner and Meyer (2014) analyze party
manifestos, Sides (2006) focuses on advertisement and Siegelman and Buell (2004) or
Petrocik (1996) on newspaper coverage. The question arises, if divergent results are owed to
the different channels under observation. There is a possibility that certain strategies work in
some channels but are less useful in others. This consideration is owed to the fact that
channels differentiate in the level of control political actors exert over them and the target
groups they address. While channels like party manifestos or paid advertising are clearly and
solely controlled by parties, other channels are media controlled (Elmelund-Praestekaer,
2011, pp. 40-42; Walter & Vliegenthart, 2010, p. 444) or at least strongly controled by
media’s logic. Therefore, political actors not only have the electorate as target group but also
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the media, which “are the key in the battle for votes” (Strömbäck & Van Aelst, 2013, p.347),
since they are the intermediary between the political system and the voters (Mazzoleni &
Schulz, 1999, p. 250).
Being the first scholar to systematically analyze parties’ issue agendas in different
channels (election manifestos, newspaper advertisement, letters-to-the-editor, TV
presentation programs, party leader debates), Elmelund-Praestekaer (2011) could show in
the case of Denmark that variations among channels exist due to strategic considerations of
political actors. He hypothesized that the content of a party’s issue agenda is defined by the
amount of control a party exerts over a channel and the audience a channel is aiming at. The
results showed that the agendas of media controlled channels were most congruent with the
agenda of election manifestos, while party controlled channels showed less congruence with
the election manifestos. In the case of negative campaigning Walter and Vliegenthart (2010)
could also show that channels matter and strategies of political actors vary between paid
publicity, election debates and newspaper coverage.
It seems to play a crucial role if information is transmitted to the electorate directly or
indirectly via the media. In the present study, communication channels are therefore referred
to as being either mediated or unmediated (Hänggli, 2015, p. 6). Unmediated channels are
characterized by their direct link between parties and the electorate. There is no “gatekeeper”
who needs to be passed or convinced. The control over the content lies solely in the hands
of the parties. While mediated channels do also aim at the electorate, the information does
not directly flow to the people but has to pass the media. Political actors depend on
journalists and editors who decide what and who they will report on, or, like Strömbäck and
Nord (2006, p. 161) put it: “On the dance floor, the political actors are doing what they can to
invite the journalists to dance, but ultimately, it is the journalists who choose who they are
going to dance with”. Political actors are therefore forced to create content, which is likely to
be picked up by the media. Parties can focus on an issue which is already salient in the
media due to catastrophes or crisis. They herewith increase visibility and show that they are
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concerned (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006, p. 101). Such behavior might be fruitful especially
when an owned issue is big on the media’s agenda. They also can try to re-activate an issue
which gained great media attention in the past and is likely to be picked up again.
Additionally, bringing in a new issue is a possibility, assumed that it meets the selection rules
of the media. Once picked up by the media information is then carried to the electorate
through the news coverage. Besides the electorate, news coverage additionally reaches the
political actors and thereby functions as reveres channel. On the one hand, actors can
control in how far their information has been picked up and how their opponents’ behave. On
the other hand, they can observe which issues are strong in the public debate.
RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHESES
In the present study we are interested in the following question: Do channles matter and in
how far do they condition the presence of the issue ownership and the riding the wave
strategy? In order to detect if channels matter at all, we need to analyze if there are any
differences between the issue choices across channels. If issue ownership or wave-riding
are the dominant or sole factors in defining the issue agendas and are independent of the
regarded communication channel we should find no significant variation in issue choices
across channels. If we do find variations though, this would indicate that the communication
channel somehow conditions the usage of strategies. We expect to find variation across
channels to that effect that the issue diversity will vary. Yet, the parties will “stay on
message”, meaning that the focus on their core issues stays rather strong across all
channels. We expect parties to focus stronger on core issues in paid advertisement, for
example, and therefore expect a less diverse issue agenda. On the contrary, we expect
higher issue diversity in election manifestos, since manifestos are published at a single point
of time and serve the need to create a versatile picture of the party.
H1: Parties tend to focus on their core issues, but their agendas are more diverse in
mediated channels than in unmediated channels.
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We assume that the crucial aspect defining issue choices of parties in different
channels is the flow of information either directly or indirectly to the electorate. While
information which directly flow to the electorate are independent from the media and its logic,
information which pass the media need to fulfill certain characteristics in order to be picked
up and used in the news coverage. Therefore, we expect that the difference of issue
agendas in channels is dependent on whether a channel is mediated or unmediated.
Through mediated channels political actors try to enter the media arena. Here, all actors face
similar conditions and the same salient issues, which may motivate them to “ride the wave”.
Due to this reason we expect issue agendas across parties to be similar in mediated
channels. Unmediated channels leave more space for individual preferences. Parties not
necessarily need to react to salient issues or meet media routines, but may focus on issues
they feel to be competent on. Since those differ among parties we expect the parties’ issue
agendas to be rather dissimilar in unmediated channels. This leads to the following
hypothesis:
H2: In mediated channels parties’ issue agendas are more similar than in unmediated
channels.
Finally, we expect to find a pattern concerning the parties’ communication channels and the
newspaper coverage. Content in mediated channels is created to serve a specific need,
namely to be visible in the media coverage. Additionally, information in mediated channels
are likely to be produced as a reaction to ongoing media coverage. Therefore, it is likely that
the issue agenda in mediated channels is rather similar to the agenda in news coverage.
Unmediated channels, on the other hand, are less sensitive to actual media coverage or the
media’s logic in general. Therefore, issue agendas in unmediated channels are expected to
be rather dissimilar from the issue agenda in the news coverage.
H3: Issue agendas in mediated channels are more similar to the issue agendas in the
newspaper coverage than issue agendas in unmediated channels.
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DATA, METHOD AND CASE SELECTION
Data. As introduced above we differentiate between mediated and unmediated
channels. In order to test our hypothesis we therefore need to analyze communication
channels of both types. Paid advertisement represents a channel over which political actors
exert maximal control. Besides the content, the actors also decide when, where and how
often the advertisement will be published. There is no “gatekeeper” who needs to be passed
or convinced. Same holds for election and party manifestos. Even though manifestos target a
rather small part of the electorate, predominantly internal groups (Elmelund-Praestekaer,
2011, p. 42) such as party members and loyal voters, the link to them is direct and solely the
parties decide about the content. Paid advertising and election manifestos are therefore
chosen as unmediated channels. Press releases do not directly target the electorate. Yet, the
goal of press releases is to get into the media and thereby reach the people indirectly. Even
though it is the actors themselves who create the content of the press releases, they are
constraint by the media’s logic. If journalists do not pick up the content of the press release, it
is invisible for the electorate. Political actors are therefore forced to create press releases,
which are likely to be picked up by the media. Press releases figure as mediated channel.
Since some studies use media coverage to investigate the strategic choices of political
actors we additionally include this “channel” in our analysis. We do not count newspaper
coverage as a communication channel of the parties, because even though parties may
transport their messages to the public through the media, they do not have control over this
channel. Yet, we are interested in how far political actors may influence the issue agenda
with which they occur in the media.
The present study relies on two datasets. Newspaper articles, election manifestos
and press releases were collected and content analyzed by the NCCR Democracy in Zurich.
The data consist of a full sample of articles published during election times in the Swiss
quality newspaper NZZ and the tabloid Blick during eight weeks prior to the elections 2011.
Additionally, election manifestos and press releases published during this time were
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analyzed. All together we include 924 texts distributed as followed: NZZ (n=545), Blick
(n=143), election manifestos (n=59) and press releases (n=177). The level of analysis is
statement on issues made by speakers, like single individuals (e.g. politicians) as well as
groups of individuals (e.g. parties). In order to be coded, statements had to fulfill two
requirements: First, a statement had to be on an issue concerning national politics. Second,
the statement had to contain either an explicitly mentioned position or
interpretation/elaboration on the issue. Statements on issues were coded concerning their
content and style. In total, N=2’143 statements on the issues welfare, economy, budget,
culture, Europe, education/leisure, army, security, immigration, institutional reforms, ecology,
infrastructure, elections and events, which were divided into 127 subcategories were coded.
Since the last two issue categories are not political ones they were excluded in the present
study which led to a total of N=1’007 statements (election manifestos: n=132, press releases:
n=341, newspaper articles: n=534).
The coding was conducted by coders from different countries who were either trained in
Mainz (Germany) or Zurich (Switzerland). The results concerning the reliability were
satisfying. For the issue coding (14 top-issue categories, 127 sub-issue categories), a Scott’s
Pi of .51 and Cohens Kappa of .50 was reached.
The paid advertisement was collected and content analyzed by the project Année
Politique Suisse. Originally, data was collected for the complete year 2011 in 24 newspapers.
To make the data comparable to the data collected by the NCCR, we only took those
advertisements for our analysis, which were published in the last eight weeks prior to
Election Day. We included all 24 newspapers in our analysis, since a reduced focus only on
the quality newspaper NZZ and the tabloid Blick would have biased the analysis. Parties not
only advertise in the big newspapers but primarily in newspapers of regions where they are
strong. Therefore, in order to get a complete picture of the advertisement activities we
needed to include a greater number of newspapers. In total, N=1’219 advertisements
containing 1’697 statements on issues were analyzed. Since the issue categories differed
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from those of the NCCR democracy, they were recoded to fit the issue categories used for
the analysis of the election manifestos, press releases and media output.
Methods. In order to test hypothesis 1 we use a measure which captures attention
diversity. Boydstun, Bevan & Thomas (2014) tested the inverse Herfindahl Index and
Shannon’s H for their ability to capture the attention different issues on an agenda receive.
Due to its higher sensitivity, especially when the level of diversity is either high or low, the
authors recommend Shannon’s H and its normalized version as an appropriate measure for
attention diversity (Boydstun, Bevan & Thomas, 2014, 193). In order to have a value ranging
between 0 and 1 we use the normalized Shannon’s H:
𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑛′ 𝑠 𝐻 ∗ =
where:
− ∑�
𝑖=1�𝑝(𝑥𝑖 )� ∗ ln 𝑝(𝑥𝑖 )
ln(𝑁)
𝑥𝑖 = item/issue
𝑝(𝑥𝑖 ) = the proportion of total attention the item/issue receives
ln(𝑥𝑖 ) = the natural log of the proportion of attention the item/issue receives
N = the total number of items/issues
While a value of 0 indicates that a single issue on an agenda receives all the attention, a
value of 1 is reached when all issues receive equal attention. In our case, for example, a
value of one would be reached if all twelve issue categories would receive 8.3% of attention.
In order to test hypotheses 2 and 3 we will use a convergence measure introduced by
Siegelman & Buell (2004), which measures the similarity between two issue agendas. In our
study we use this measure to compare issue agendas of two parties with each other as well
as the issue agendas of one party in different channels.
𝑛
𝐶𝐶 = 100 − ��
|𝑃1 −𝑃2 |� /2
𝑖=1
where:
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𝑃1 = total attention issue agenda 1 devotes to a particular issue
𝑃2 = total attention issue agenda 2 devotes to a particular issue
Using the formula will lead to values ranging between 0 and 100, where 0 indicates no
convergence at all (all parties focus on completely different issues) and 100 equals complete
convergence (all parties focus on the same issues). Especially in a multiparty system where
some parties are ideologically closer than others, a value of 0 is unlikely, since some parties
will always focus on similar issues. Additionally, it is likely that during elections some kind of
dialogue appears (Simon, 2002, 3). Therefore, it is likely that in the present study we will
always find a certain degree of convergence. The question arises when it is justified to talk of
a rather low or high degree. Taking other studies as a benchmark, convergence should be
higher in newspaper coverage and speeches than in advertisement and press releases.
Siegelman & Buell (2004) analyzed the Times’s newspaper coverage from 1960 to 2000 and
found an average convergence degree of 75.3. They further used data from other studies to
check for the convergence in other communication channels. In the speeches of the 1968 US
presidential candidates they found a convergence of 76.6. For television commercials during
the US elections in 2000 they found a lower convergence value of 67.3 and analyzing party
manifestos coded by the Manifesto Research Group, the lowest value of 65.3 was
discovered.
Case selection. The formulated hypotheses will be investigated in the context of the
2011 Swiss federal elections. This case is chosen, since political debates in Switzerland are
of a substantial rather than a symbolic nature, even during election campaigns which are
said to be primarily symbolic in a great number of countries (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006, p.
97). Additionally, the Swiss national elections, which are normally characterized by only
marginal changes concerning party strength, showed in 2011 some noticeable alterations.
While the mainstream parties rather lost, two unestablished parties, the Conservative
Democrats (BDP) and the Green Liberals (GLP), were the winners of the election, both
gaining 5.4% of the vote shares (Lachat, Lutz, & Stadelmann-Steffen, 2014, pp. 515-519).
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Due to the fact that the 2011 elections were the first ones in which BDP and GLP competed,
these elections are of higher interest. Additionally, results by Gerber and Bühlmann (2014)
point in the direction that the usage of paid ads helped the unestablished parties to be
successful. It is therefore of interest to further analyze the parties’ strategies in different
channels.
RESULTS
Different channels, different issue diversity. In our first hypothesis we formulated the
idea that channels matter when it comes to setting the issue agenda. Instead of solely
expecting factors like issue ownership to influence parties’ choices we argued that different
channels serve different purposes and that therefore the attention diversity will vary among
channels since they demand different strategic actions. As we expected each party has (a)
core issue(s) on which it focuses rather strongly in all analyzed channels. However, we can
see that the attention diversity differs.
****************************
Please insert Table 1 about here
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Table 1 shows the relative attention each party dedicates to the twelve issues under analysis
as well as the amount of diversity for each channel and party (Shannon’s H). In the
advertisement the parties’ issue agendas are rather homogenous. Instead of focusing on a
variety of issues all parties focus on a rather small number. Here, the parties prefer issues
aiming at their ideological core: In their advertisement, the SVP devotes 45 percent to their
core issue immigration. The FDP even mentions in 52 percent of the statements their core
issue economics. The GPS reaches the highest score with 67 percent of their statements
being on the issue ecology. CVP and SP both strongly focus on questions concerning
welfare (CVP: 34%, SP: 35%) and economics (CVP: 28%, SP: 21%), choices, which can
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also be explained by their ideological identification: While the SP is strongly concerned with a
variety of questions concerning the welfare state and the labor market, the CVP traditionally
focuses on family politics and small and medium-sized enterprises. As for the BDP and the
GLP it is not possible to state what their ideological core is, the issue they are traditionally
identified with. This is owed to the fact that the 2011 elections were the first ones where both
parties participated. However, just like the established parties both GLP and BDP reveal a
similar pattern and focus their attention on a small number of issues: the GLP dedicates 61
percent of their statements to the issue ecology, which makes sense, since the party’s name
already indicates that they are “green”. Additionally, they owe 24 percent of their statements
to economics, which fits the liberal aspect of the party’s name. The BDP focuses on
economics (40%) and education/leisure (20%). The strong focus on core issues also reflects
itself in the diversity measure. Compared to the other channels, most parties reach the
lowest diversity in their advertisement. On average, the parties’ attention diversity lies at .63,
while the average for both election manifestos and press releases reaches the value .77.
This indicates that the election manifestos as well as the press releases are less focused.
Especially in the election manifestos we can see for most parties the tendency to make
statements on a number of issues rather than to focus on only one or two issues strongly.
This is owed to the fact that election manifestos are released prior to the elections and
function to present a whole picture of what a party stands for. In manifestos parties not only
focus on their core issues but also on numerous societal questions.
Mediatized vs. unmediatized channels. In Hypothesis 2a and 2b we formulated that
the crucial aspect lies in the channels characteristic, namely if it is a mediatized or an
unmediatized channel. For mediatized channels we expect the parties’ issue agendas to be
rather similar, since all parties aim at being in the news and face similar conditions for
access. In the present paper we chose press releases as representative for mediated
channels. In Table 2 we can see the convergence scores of all parties in the press releases,
election manifestos and paid advertisements.
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****************************
Please insert Table 2 about here
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In the press releases, the overall score across all seven parties is 55. Compared to the
overall measures of the other two channel types the convergence is the highest (PM: 52,
Ads: 47), yet, at a rather low level. This is owed to the fact that we are not regarding a twoparty system in which one party is strong on some issues and the opponent strong on the
others. In the case of Switzerland we have seven parties of which some are ideologically
closer than others. If we take a look at Table 4 we can see that the party furthest right, the
SVP, and the party furthest left, the GPS, reach the lowest similarity with the other parties
(SVP: 43, GPS: 51). All other parties reach measures equal to or above the overall mean.
The differing similarities might be explained by the fact that several issues are salient in the
media and important to the public. Right before the elections the parliament held its autumn
session and decided on a number of issues and laws such as immigration and asylum laws
as well as an enlargement of the army. Additionally, the economic crisis was still prevailing
and a couple of month prior to the elections the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima took
place, an event, which can easily be reactivated by media and politicians to reinforce the
issue nuclear and renewable energy. Therefore, not all parties necessarily focus on the same
salient issues but choose those most convenient for them. While the right (SVP) heavily
concerns itself with the issue immigration, the center-right (SVP, FDP, CVP, BDP, GLP) also
focuses on the issue Europe. For the center parties (BDP, GLP) additionally budgetary
questions are of interest. The issue ecology, predominantly nuclear and renewable energy, is
focused on by the center-left (BDP, GLP, SP, GPS). Finally, the left (SP, GPS) also makes a
higher amount of statements on the enlargement of the Swiss army. All parties mention the
issue economic to a similar degree.
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Looking at the overall convergence scores of press releases, election manifestos and
advertisements we can report support for hypothesis 2. In comparison, the issue agendas
have the highest convergence in the press releases. It becomes more pronounced, if we take
into consideration that parties do not focus on all salient and publicly important issues equally
but choose to “ride the wave” on an issue being most convenient to them. The
advertisements show the lowest similarities, since here the parties strongly focus on one or
two issues being at their ideological core, like we already pointed out at the beginning of the
results. The measure for election manifestos is a bit higher, due to the parties aim to present
a complete profile and position themselves on a number of issues.
Getting in the news. Finally, we expected that parties’ issue agendas in the press
releases (mediated channel) are rather similar to the issue agendas in the news coverage,
while the issue agendas in election manifestos and paid advertising (unmediated channels)
are rather dissimilar to the agendas in the media (Hypothesis 3). As we can see in Table 3,
there is no general difference between the issue agendas in unmediated channels and the
media and in mediated channels and the media.
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Please insert Table 3 about here
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At the level of single parties, we can see that for SVP, FDP and CVP the issue agendas in
the press releases have the highest similarity with those in the media. This is owed to the
fact that especially FDP and CVP publish press releases on a great number of issues. The
SVP’s press releases are a bit less heterogeneous. Of the three parties, they reach the
lowest convergence score between press releases and news coverage, especially since the
issue immigration, which they focus on quite strongly in the press releases, gets hardly
picked up by the media. For GLP and BDP the convergence between press releases and
media output is quite low (GLP: 32, BDP: 38.5). Both parties appear heterogeneous in the
16
press releases but are reported on mainly homogenous, with statements on only a small
number of issues. The GLP occurs with 63% of their statements on ecological questions.
If we go one step further and analyze in how far the parties’ media agendas
converge, we can observe that especially the agendas of the established parties become
quite similar in the media coverage. Table 4 shows the overall convergence in the media
coverage across parties. The overall mean is 60. If we differentiate between established
(SVP, FDP, CVD, SP, GPS) and unestablished parties (GLP, BDP) though, we can see that
the overall convergence score only among the established parties is much higher (75). It
appears as if the media aims at reporting on issues quite heterogeneous by giving the
readers not only one perspective on a topic but also the positions of the other established
parties.
****************************
Please insert Table 4 about here
****************************
Of course it is not applicable how prominent each party occurs in an article, yet, the aim is to
bring in multiple party perspectives on an issue and give all established players room for their
statement on an issue. As a result, in the present study the actors do not primarily occur with
statements on their preferred issues in the media, but are displayed as versatile players. On
the contrary, the unestablished parties who came along quite versatile in the press releases
are reduced to a small set of issues the few times they appear in the media coverage. This
can be explained by the fact that political actors with power are more likely to occur in the
media than actors who are less powerful.
17
CONCLUSION
This study suggests that communication channels matter when it comes to issue competition
in election times. While paid advertisements revealed a strong ideological core orientation,
election manifestos contained statements on a larger variety of issues. Press releases yet
again differed, since they served the need to meet or reactivate salient issues. Therefore,
future research on the issue choices of political actors should always considered that
strategies, which occur in one communication channel, are not necessarily present in
another. There is no “best” channel to analyze the strategic choices of political actors. Each
channel serves different aims and has different needs, which condition the choices the actors
make. One central goal of the paper was to find proof that factors like issue ownership or the
desire to “ride the wave” are not independently responsible for issue choices, but that the
channel of communication conditions them. Even though the paper does not present
empirical evidence about the strategies that are prevalent according to the type of
communication channel, it offers some indications. The results point in the direction that the
issue ownership strategy might be strong especially in unmediated channels. According to
the literature one characteristic of the issue ownership strategy is the divergence of parties’
issue choices. We could show that especially in the advertisement this was the case. A
further step that needs to be taken now is to find an appropriate measure to capture issue
ownership and analyze to what extent a the issue focus is in line with the issues a given
parties owns. Even though we already interpreted the found issue agendas in the
advertisement as being close to the parties’ core orientation, we did not provide any
systematic measure of the similarity between the agendas and the owned issues.
“Riding the wave” seems to be more popular in mediated channels. One indicator for this
strategy is issue convergence. The overall convergence score we found in press releases
was the highest compared to the other channels. However, we could qualify this by
considering that not all parties focus on the same salient issue but choose, out of a number
of prevailing issues one, which is most convenient to them. Here, one weakness of the
18
present study is the lack of defining a list of salient issues, even though issues that were
current by the time of the election were named. One way to provide a systematic measure of
important issues are election surveys, in which people are asked which issues they assume
to be the most pressing.
Finally, it became apparent that power seems to play a crucial role for occurring in the news.
With regard to the established parties we could see that all of them appear with statements
on similar issues in the media. Parties, which had a quite heterogeneous focus in the press
releases, therefore had the highest similarities between issue agendas in press releases and
in the media. The unestablished parties, GLP and BDP, were displayed less versatile in the
media.
19
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21
APPENDICES
Table 1
Issue Agendas across channels and parties
SVP
Ads
Welfare
Economic
0.7
PR
Ads
EM
PR
Ads
12.0
34.1
27.3
14.1
11.3
6.7 21.4
18.5
11.1
20.0
8.0
28.0
2.3
22.7
0.0
20.5
5.1
40.3
8.1
20.0 14.3
1.7
3.4
3.7
2.7
0.9
0.0
2.6
1.6
26.9 12.1
0.0 0.0
5.1
17.3
4.0
9.1
5.1
3.2
8.6
14.8
11.1
0.0
0.7
7.5
9.1
2.6
45.3
0.0
23.1 43.1
0.0 1.7
1.7
0.0
10.7
0.5
0.0
2.6
21.0
0.0
20.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
3.7
2.7
0.0
4.5
2.6
0.0
0.0
0.0
6.7
7.1
13.7
0.0
Security
8.9
11.5
3.4
1.7
0.0
4.0
2.3
4.5
1.6
0.0
1.7
8.2
7.4
9.3
16.4
18.2
17.9
14.1
1.6
Ecology
Institutional Reforms
1.4
3.4
1.4
0.0
4.5
7.7
0.0
1.2
8.6
9.9
14.8
3.7
5.3
infrastructure
23.1
0.0
4.0
7.9
0.0
5.1
3.2
99.9 100.0
99.9
100.0
n=
563
Shannon’s H
0.68
99.9 99.8 100.1
26
58
292
27
0.71 0.74
0.69
0.88
GLP
Ads
Welfare
Economic
9.1
EM
75 214.0
0.92
0.68
SP/Juso
PR
15.4 4.3
7.7 21.7
0.0 17.4
Ads
EM
PR
Ads
35.1
33.3
23.1
8.3
20.5
3.3
20.0
13.3
33.3
0.0
9.5
1.8
Budget
Culture
0.0
0.0
4.3
3.0
0.0
0.0
1.8
Europe
0.0
6.7
5.1
0.0
7.7 21.7
7.7 0.0
0.0
Education/Leisure
3.6
0.0
0.0
Immigration
0.0
0.0
4.3
1.1
0.0
Army
0.0
0.0
8.7
6.8
0.0
0.0
Security
0.0
Ecology
60.6
3.0
infrastructure
Total
n=
Shannon’s H
3.0
6.7 14.3
7.1
20.0 21.4
0.0 0.0
6.7
0.0
99.9 100.0 100.0 100.1 99.9
22.0
78.0
62
0.76
0.89
0.70
EM
15
14
0.80 0.77
18.2
12.1
6.1
PR
3.3
19.7
4.9
0.0
0.0
18.2
0.0
0.6
3.0
3.3
2.6
0.6
6.1
0.0
12.8
3.6
3.0
16.4
1.6
0.0
1.1
0.0
0.0
0.0
3.0
0.0
38.5 17.4
7.7 0.0
15.6
20.5
0.3
20.0
0.0
0.0
66.7
0.0
15.2
9.1
45.9
1.6
0.0
9.6
6.7
2.6
7.1
6.1
3.3
15.4
9.7
13.3 14.3
0.0 0.0
GPS
24.2
0.0
Institutional Reforms
PR
11.1
Europe
Total
EM
5.5
5.2
Army
EM
51.5
3.1
Culture
Immigration
Ads
BDP
1.7
Budget
3.8
PR
CVP
7.7 13.8
3.8 8.6
16.3
5.0
Education/Leisure
EM
FDP
99.9 100.1 99.8 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.1 100.0
33
0.45
23
365
15
39
168
33
61
0.71 0.77
13
0.74
0.68
0.67
0.50
0.89
0.65
Note. The frequencies are in percentages. Shanon’s H can range between 0 and 1.
22
Table 2
Convergence Scores for Press Releases, Election Manifestos and Paid Advertisement
PR
SVP
SVP
FDP
CVP
BDP
60
45
41.5
47.5
75
66
62
FDP
60
CVP
45
75
BDP
41.5
66
62
GLP
47.5
68.5
57.5
64.5
SP/Juso
GLP SP/Juso
GPS
Mean
30
32
42.7
68.5
54.5
50
62.3
57.5
61.5
54
59.2
64.5
61.5
49
57.4
60
56.5
59.1
61.5
54.8
30
54.5
61.5
61.5
60
GPS
32.0
50.0
54.0
49.0
56.5
61.5
Mean
42.7
62.3
59.2
57.4
59.1
54.8
50.5
55.1
PM
SVP
FDP
CVP
BDP
GLP SP/Juso
GPS
Mean
45
30
29
27
22.5
34
31.1
63
65
53
58.5
59
57.3
65
61
71.5
59
58.3
56
73.5
52
56.8
56.5
55
51.4
57.5
56.7
SVP
FDP
45
CVP
30
63
BDP
29
65
65
GLP
27
53
61
56
22.5
58.5
71.5
73.5
SP/Juso
GPS
56.5
50.5
34
59
59
52
55
57.5
Mean
31.3
57.3
58.3
56.8
51.4
56.7
52.8
52.0
Ads
SVP
FDP
CVP
BDP
GLP SP/Juso
GPS
Mean
37.5
26.5
33
21
29
19
27.7
62
75.5
41.5
56.5
35.5
51.4
64.5
53.5
86.5
45.5
56.4
46
55
35
51.5
48
81
48.5
49
54.0
SVP
FDP
37.5
CVP
26.5
62
BDP
33
75.5
64.5
GLP
21
41.5
53.5
46
SP/Juso
29
56.5
86.5
55
48
GPS
19
35.5
45.5
35
81
49
27.7
51.4
56.4
51.5
48.5
54.0
Mean
52.8
44.2
44.2
47.7
Note. The scores can range between 0 and 100.
23
Table 3
Convergence Scores for mediated and unmediated channels and news coverage across parties
Unmediated x Media
EM x NC
Mediated x Media
Ads x NC
PR x NC
SVP
46.5
49
60.5
SP/Juso
59.5
67.5
59.5
CVP
56.5
54.5
63.5
FDP
67.5
62.5
73.5
GPS
65.5
55
60.5
GLP
65.5
76
32
BDP
43
50.5
38.5
Mean
57.7
59.3
55.4
Note. The scores can range between 0 and 100.
24
Table 4
Convergence-Scores News Coverage
SVP
SVP
FDP
CVP
BDP
GLP SP/Juso
GPS
Mean
85
71
46.5
41
84.5
69
66.2
76
56.5
56.5
50
84.5
68
70.0
43
75.5
70
65.3
25.5
55
40.5
46.8
38.5
62
43.3
66.5
67.4
FDP
85
CVP
71
76
BDP
46.5
56.5
56.5
GLP
41
50
43
84.5
84.5
75.5
55
38.5
69
68
70
40.5
62
66.5
Mean
66.2
70.0
65.3
46.8
43.3
67.4
62.7
Established
77.4
78.4
73.1
51.0
46.9
77.8
68.4
Unestablished
43.8
53.3
49.8
25.5
25.5
46.8
51.3
SP/Juso
GPS
25.5
62.7
60.2
Note. The scores can range between 0 and 100.
25