Hajo G Boomgaarden
Biographic Data
| ID | 223708 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hajo G Boomgaarden |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hajo G |
| FAMILY NAME | Boomgaarden |
| SIGNATURE | BOOMGAARDEN H G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vienna |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1405 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
The Austrian Political Advertisement Scandal: Patterns of “Journalism for Sale
Mounting concern surrounds the influence of political actors on journalism, especially as media outlets face increasing financial pressures. These circumstances can give rise to instances of media capture, a mutually corrupting relationship between political actors and media organizations. However, empirical evidence substantiating such mechanisms and their consequences remains limited, particularly in the context of Western democracies. This cha…
Automated Detection of Media Bias Using Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing: A Systematic Review
Media bias has long been a subject of scholarly interest due to its potential to shape public perceptions and behaviors. This systematic review leverages advances in natural language processing (NLP) to explore automated methods to detect media bias, addressing five core questions: it examines the definitions and operationalization of media bias, explores the NLP tasks addressed for its detection, the technologies used, and their respective outco…
Same but different
The Exponential Random Graph family of models (ERGM) is a powerful tool for social science research as it allows for the simultaneous modeling of endogenous network characteristics and exogenous variables such as gender, age, and socioeconomic status. However, a major limitation of ERGM is that it is mainly used for descriptive analysis of a single network. This paper examines two methods for estimating multiple networks: hierarchical and integra…
Mapping the European media landscape – Meteor, a curated and community-coded inventory of news sources
We present Meteor, a new inventory for European news sources (i.e. EU + UK, CH, NO, IL): https://wp3.opted.eu/ . This inventory will facilitate researchers’ efforts to select sources across platforms and gather related textual data. It contains the names of print and online news sources, social media accounts, news blogs, and alternative news media sources, as well as rich meta-information for each entry (e.g. language, audience size, topical foc…
How do executives communicate about crises? A framework for comparative analysis
A plethora of accumulating crises, and the public frustration with how they were tackled, have provided fertile ground for growing public scepticism towards the European Union (EU). The way in which political leaders manage these crises may well decide the future of the EU. Research has addressed these developments comprehensively. However, it has not, to date, provided an adequate analytical lens to confront the crisis theme explicitly and there…
Media and Public Attitudes Toward Migration in Europe: A Comparative Approach
Media Framing Dynamics of the ‘European Refugee Crisis’: A Comparative Topic Modelling Approach
The complexity and duration of the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ created a climate of uncertainty, which left ample room for mass media to shape citizens’ understanding of what the arrival of these refugees meant for their respective country. This study analyses the national media discourses in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Spain for this time period. Applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling in five languages …
Claiming the Crisis: Mediated Public Debates about the Refugee Crisis in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia
The arrival of refugees to Europe increased dramatically in 2015. This situation produced polarized responses across the European Union and caused intensive media attention and public debate. This study investigates claim-making on the so-called refugee crisis in the public sphere in three countries: Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It asks who shaped the discourse on the crisis in national public realms, how the discourse took shape and…
Media Use and Its Effects in a Cross-National Perspective
This contribution provides a critical reflection on the state-of-the-art of cross-national media use and media effect studies. Increasing availability of data sources, advances in theorizing and facilitation of international research collaboration have contributed to an increasing application of cross-national perspectives in communication research. Contingencies of media use and media effects brought about by national media systems or sociopolit…
The Role of Implicit Attitudes in Populist Radical‐Right Support
Previous research on the populist radical right (PRR) has focused exclusively on explicit measures in explaining support for these contested political players. In this study, we explore the role of implicit attitudes in predicting vote likelihood for a PRR party. We use an online survey (n = 773) among Dutch respondents in which we measured implicit attitudes towards the Dutch PRRPartij voor de Vrijheid(PVV) with a Single‐Target Implicit Associat…
One Bias Fits All? Three Types of Media Bias and Their Effects on Party Preferences
Bias in political news coverage may have a profound influence on voter opinions and preferences. However, the concept of media bias actually encompasses different sub-types: Visibility bias is the salience of political actors, tonality bias the evaluation of these actors, and agenda bias the extent to which parties address preferred issues in media coverage. The present study is the first to explore how each type of bias influences party preferen…
Shifting the refugee narrative? An automated frame analysis of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis
In 2015, Europe faced the arrival of over 1.25 million refugees fleeing from war-affected countries. The public mainly learned about this issue through domestic media. Through the use of computer-assisted content analysis, this study identifies the most dominant frames employed in the coverage of refugee and asylum issues between January 2015 and January 2016 in six Austrian newspapers (N = 10,606), particularly focusing on potential differences …
Dynamic Spirals Put to Test: An Agent-Based Model of Reinforcing Spirals Between Selective Exposure, Interpersonal Networks, and Attitude Polarization
Within the context of partisan selective exposure and attitude polarization, this study investigates a mutually reinforcing spiral model, aiming to clarify mechanisms and boundary conditions that affect spiral processes—interpersonal agreement and disagreement, and the ebb and flow of message receptions. Utilizing agent-based modeling (Abm) simulations, the study formally models endogenous dynamics of cumulative processes and its reciprocal effec…
Will Conflict Tear Us Apart? The Effects of Conflict and Valenced Media Messages on Polarizing Attitudes toward EU Immigration and Border Control
European migration and border control has occupied a prominent spot on the European political agenda. The news media present the topic in a polarized fashion and reports conflicting viewpoints on how the European Union (EU) and national governments should address the issue. We argue that this conflict in news messages can have a polarizing effect on public perceptions regarding the EU's performance on this topic, and that this effect can be moder…
Nuclear voices in the news: A comparison of source, news agency and newspaper content about nuclear energy over time
While news media are frequently criticized for their alleged increasing reliance on ‘subsidized content’ provided by sources and news agencies, this claim is seldom empirically verified. Based on insights from computer science, this study proposes an approach to quantitatively compare source, news agency and newspaper content over time. Including press releases from two corporate actors and one nongovernmental actor as well as articles of news ag…
Victims or perpetrators? Explaining media framing of Roma across Europe
Discrimination against Roma is a reality across Europe. The extent to which stereotyped, discriminatory beliefs of this minority group are reflected or reinforced by news media has received only limited attention. This study investigates media framing of Roma and explains variation in how European news media frame Roma in diagnostic and prognostic terms. We content analysed 825 news articles from newspapers in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia, …
A Clearer Picture: The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Framing Effects
Visuals in news media help define, or frame issues, but less is known about how they influence opinions and behavior. The authors use an experiment to present image and text exemplars of frames from war and conflict news in isolation and in image–text congruent and incongruent pairs. Results show that, when presented alone, images generate stronger framing effects on opinions and behavioral intentions than text. When images and text are presented…
At Odds: Laughing and Thinking? The Appreciation, Processing, and Persuasiveness of Political Satire
This study constructs and tests a conceptual model of how and for whom political satire affects political attitudes. With an experiment, we show that young adults compared to older people are more absorbed in satirical items than in regular news. Subsequently, absorption decreased counterarguing such that the attitude toward the satirized object was affected negatively. By contrast, we show that political satire positively affects the attitude to…
Media Cues and Citizen Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties
Right-wing populist parties are thriving across Europe. Usual explanations for the success of these parties are based on notions related to economics, national identity or cultural alienation. Some authors, however, have shown that the mass media also play a significant role. Whereas these studies provide evidence drawing on macro-level data resources and/or qualitative accounts, there is little systematic evidence about how mass media coverage m…
Real World is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional Source of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigration, Comparing Denmark and the Netherlands
Most people are unable to accurately estimate the number of immigrants in their country. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the size of the immigrant population would affect people’s immigration attitudes. Part of the effect of immigration on attitudes occurs not so much because of real immigration figures, but rather because of media reporting about immigration. In this study, negative attitudes towards immigration are explained by investigati…
Cynics All Around? The Impact of Election News on Political Cynicism in Comparative Perspective: News and Political Cynicism
Previous research suggests that the news media's reporting about politics in terms of strategy fosters political cynicism. The question remains, however, what individual and contextual factors facilitate or inhibit this effect. In this study, we draw on a unique multimethod and comparative cross-country design, combining a media content analysis (N = 48,892) with a 2-wave panel survey conducted in 21 countries (N = 22,791) during the 2009 Europea…
The Impact of Media Coverage and Motivation on Performance-Relevant Information
Representative democracy requires that citizens know the facts about political performance, and if more such facts are available in the media, citizens have more opportunity to acquire them. In view of increasing media choice, such an opportunity may vary from one individual media environment to another. However, it remains unclear how differences in information acquisition correspond with differences in the information available specifically in …
Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the E uropean U nion
News about the E uropean U nion ( EU ) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU ‐15 (1999), EU ‐25 (2004) and EU ‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament ( EP ) elections. The analyses focus in particular on exp…
Media Personalisation in Context: A Cross-National Comparison between the UK and the Netherlands, 1992–2007
The phenomenon of (media) personalisation has generated a considerable amount of scholarly attention and is regarded as being a significant aspect of contemporary politics and political communication. To investigate long-term trends in personalisation, this study draws on a unique data set that is composed of Dutch and British newspaper articles from a sixteen-year period. The evidence suggests that personalisation is present in both countries, b…
The impact of information acquisition on EU performance judgements
Public evaluations of EU performance are not only critical indicators of the EU's output legitimacy, but also shape future support for European integration. For citizens to monitor the political performance of the EU they need relevant facts, yet it is anything but clear that gains in information about EU performance causechangein judgements about such performance. Drawing on two‐wave panel data, this article examines whether acquiring informatio…
Shifting the refugee narrative? An automated frame analysis of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis
In 2015, Europe faced the arrival of over 1.25 million refugees fleeing from war-affected countries. The public mainly learned about this issue through domestic media. Through the use of computer-assisted content analysis, this study identifies the most dominant frames employed in the coverage of refugee and asylum issues between January 2015 and January 2016 in six Austrian newspapers (N = 10,606), particularly focusing on potential differences …
Explaining the rise of anti-immigrant parties: The role of news media content
Projecting EU Referendums: Fear of Immigration and Support for European Integration
This study tests competing hypotheses about public support for European integration and projects referendum voting behaviour. It emphasizes anti-immigration sentiments as a key variable for understanding reluctance about integration. Drawing on survey data, it is shown that anti-immigration sentiments, economic considerations and the evaluation of domestic governments are the strongest predictors of both attitudinal support for integration and in…
How news content influences anti‐immigration attitudes: Germany, 1993–2005
Immigration is an increasingly important political issue in Western democracies and a crucial question relates to the antecedents of public attitudes towards immigrants. It is generally acknowledged that information relayed through the mass media plays a role in the formation of anti‐immigration attitudes. This study considers whether news coverage of immigrants and immigration issues relates to macro‐level dynamics of anti‐immigration attitudes.…
Media Effects on Public Opinion about the Enlargement of the European Union
Studies of public support for matters of European integration tend either to neglect or inadequately model the role of the mass media. This study investigates how news media content affects public support for the enlargement of the EU. Other influences on support for integration, such as economic evaluations, anti‐immigration sentiment, domestic political considerations and cognitive mobilization are accounted for. The study draws on two‐wave pan…
Hard and Soft: Public Support for Turkish Membership in the EU
Support for European integration is a function no longer only of `hard' economic and utilitarian predictors but also of `soft' predictors such as feelings of identity and attitudes towards immigrants. Focusing on the issue of the potential membership of Turkey in the European Union (EU), this study demonstrates that the importance of `soft' predictors outweighs the role of `hard' predictors in understanding public opinion about Turkish membership…
News on the move: Exogenous events and news coverage of the European Union
News coverage about the European Union (EU) has the potential to inform citizens about and to involve them in matters of European integration. Investigations of factors that explain variation in EU news coverage, however, are rare. This study explains weekly variation in the visibility of EU news in newspapers from seven EU member states for the period 1990 to 2006. It identifies exogenous factors that relate to the EU polity, its policies and na…
Religious intolerance and Euroscepticism
Research on Euroscepticism focuses increasingly on the role of group identities: national identities and attitudes towards multiculturalism. Yet hardly any attention has been paid to the way in which religious intolerance shapes Euroscepticism. We argue that religious intolerance influences not only diffuse Euroscepticism, but also more specifically opposition to enlargement of the European Union with Turkey. To examine the relationship between r…
Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the E uropean U nion
News about the E uropean U nion ( EU ) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU ‐15 (1999), EU ‐25 (2004) and EU ‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament ( EP ) elections. The analyses focus in particular on exp…
Media Framing Dynamics of the ‘European Refugee Crisis’: A Comparative Topic Modelling Approach
The complexity and duration of the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ created a climate of uncertainty, which left ample room for mass media to shape citizens’ understanding of what the arrival of these refugees meant for their respective country. This study analyses the national media discourses in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Spain for this time period. Applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling in five languages …
Real World is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional Source of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigration, Comparing Denmark and the Netherlands
Most people are unable to accurately estimate the number of immigrants in their country. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the size of the immigrant population would affect people’s immigration attitudes. Part of the effect of immigration on attitudes occurs not so much because of real immigration figures, but rather because of media reporting about immigration. In this study, negative attitudes towards immigration are explained by investigati…
Covering the crisis: Media coverage of the economic crisis and citizens’ economic expectations
Dynamic Spirals Put to Test: An Agent-Based Model of Reinforcing Spirals Between Selective Exposure, Interpersonal Networks, and Attitude Polarization
Within the context of partisan selective exposure and attitude polarization, this study investigates a mutually reinforcing spiral model, aiming to clarify mechanisms and boundary conditions that affect spiral processes—interpersonal agreement and disagreement, and the ebb and flow of message receptions. Utilizing agent-based modeling (Abm) simulations, the study formally models endogenous dynamics of cumulative processes and its reciprocal effec…
The Role of Implicit Attitudes in Populist Radical‐Right Support
Previous research on the populist radical right (PRR) has focused exclusively on explicit measures in explaining support for these contested political players. In this study, we explore the role of implicit attitudes in predicting vote likelihood for a PRR party. We use an online survey (n = 773) among Dutch respondents in which we measured implicit attitudes towards the Dutch PRRPartij voor de Vrijheid(PVV) with a Single‐Target Implicit Associat…
Real-World Indicators and the Coverage of Immigration and the Integration of Minorities in Dutch Newspapers
A B S T R A C T ■ An intriguing question in communication science deals with factors determining the intensity of news reporting about certain issues. The study investigates whether the prominence of immigration and the integration of minorities in news coverage reflects real-world developments or whether it is dependent on (political) key events. The authors compare the direct effects of real-world developments and key events in Dutch newspapers…
Media Personalisation in Context: A Cross-National Comparison between the UK and the Netherlands, 1992–2007
The phenomenon of (media) personalisation has generated a considerable amount of scholarly attention and is regarded as being a significant aspect of contemporary politics and political communication. To investigate long-term trends in personalisation, this study draws on a unique data set that is composed of Dutch and British newspaper articles from a sixteen-year period. The evidence suggests that personalisation is present in both countries, b…
Media Cues and Citizen Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties
Right-wing populist parties are thriving across Europe. Usual explanations for the success of these parties are based on notions related to economics, national identity or cultural alienation. Some authors, however, have shown that the mass media also play a significant role. Whereas these studies provide evidence drawing on macro-level data resources and/or qualitative accounts, there is little systematic evidence about how mass media coverage m…
Will Conflict Tear Us Apart? The Effects of Conflict and Valenced Media Messages on Polarizing Attitudes toward EU Immigration and Border Control
European migration and border control has occupied a prominent spot on the European political agenda. The news media present the topic in a polarized fashion and reports conflicting viewpoints on how the European Union (EU) and national governments should address the issue. We argue that this conflict in news messages can have a polarizing effect on public perceptions regarding the EU's performance on this topic, and that this effect can be moder…
The Impact of Media Coverage and Motivation on Performance-Relevant Information
Representative democracy requires that citizens know the facts about political performance, and if more such facts are available in the media, citizens have more opportunity to acquire them. In view of increasing media choice, such an opportunity may vary from one individual media environment to another. However, it remains unclear how differences in information acquisition correspond with differences in the information available specifically in …
How do executives communicate about crises? A framework for comparative analysis
A plethora of accumulating crises, and the public frustration with how they were tackled, have provided fertile ground for growing public scepticism towards the European Union (EU). The way in which political leaders manage these crises may well decide the future of the EU. Research has addressed these developments comprehensively. However, it has not, to date, provided an adequate analytical lens to confront the crisis theme explicitly and there…
Claiming the Crisis: Mediated Public Debates about the Refugee Crisis in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia
The arrival of refugees to Europe increased dramatically in 2015. This situation produced polarized responses across the European Union and caused intensive media attention and public debate. This study investigates claim-making on the so-called refugee crisis in the public sphere in three countries: Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It asks who shaped the discourse on the crisis in national public realms, how the discourse took shape and…
Victims or perpetrators? Explaining media framing of Roma across Europe
Discrimination against Roma is a reality across Europe. The extent to which stereotyped, discriminatory beliefs of this minority group are reflected or reinforced by news media has received only limited attention. This study investigates media framing of Roma and explains variation in how European news media frame Roma in diagnostic and prognostic terms. We content analysed 825 news articles from newspapers in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia, …
The impact of information acquisition on EU performance judgements
Public evaluations of EU performance are not only critical indicators of the EU's output legitimacy, but also shape future support for European integration. For citizens to monitor the political performance of the EU they need relevant facts, yet it is anything but clear that gains in information about EU performance causechangein judgements about such performance. Drawing on two‐wave panel data, this article examines whether acquiring informatio…
Covering the US presidential election in Western Europe: A cross-national comparison
The Austrian Political Advertisement Scandal: Patterns of “Journalism for Sale
Mounting concern surrounds the influence of political actors on journalism, especially as media outlets face increasing financial pressures. These circumstances can give rise to instances of media capture, a mutually corrupting relationship between political actors and media organizations. However, empirical evidence substantiating such mechanisms and their consequences remains limited, particularly in the context of Western democracies. This cha…
Projecting EU Referendums: Fear of Immigration and Support for European Integration
This study tests competing hypotheses about public support for European integration and projects referendum voting behaviour. It emphasizes anti-immigration sentiments as a key variable for understanding reluctance about integration. Drawing on survey data, it is shown that anti-immigration sentiments, economic considerations and the evaluation of domestic governments are the strongest predictors of both attitudinal support for integration and in…
Media Effects on Public Opinion about the Enlargement of the European Union
Studies of public support for matters of European integration tend either to neglect or inadequately model the role of the mass media. This study investigates how news media content affects public support for the enlargement of the EU. Other influences on support for integration, such as economic evaluations, anti‐immigration sentiment, domestic political considerations and cognitive mobilization are accounted for. The study draws on two‐wave pan…
Real-World Indicators and the Coverage of Immigration and the Integration of Minorities in Dutch Newspapers
A B S T R A C T ■ An intriguing question in communication science deals with factors determining the intensity of news reporting about certain issues. The study investigates whether the prominence of immigration and the integration of minorities in news coverage reflects real-world developments or whether it is dependent on (political) key events. The authors compare the direct effects of real-world developments and key events in Dutch newspapers…
Explaining the rise of anti-immigrant parties: The role of news media content
Hard and Soft: Public Support for Turkish Membership in the EU
Support for European integration is a function no longer only of `hard' economic and utilitarian predictors but also of `soft' predictors such as feelings of identity and attitudes towards immigrants. Focusing on the issue of the potential membership of Turkey in the European Union (EU), this study demonstrates that the importance of `soft' predictors outweighs the role of `hard' predictors in understanding public opinion about Turkish membership…
How news content influences anti‐immigration attitudes: Germany, 1993–2005
Immigration is an increasingly important political issue in Western democracies and a crucial question relates to the antecedents of public attitudes towards immigrants. It is generally acknowledged that information relayed through the mass media plays a role in the formation of anti‐immigration attitudes. This study considers whether news coverage of immigrants and immigration issues relates to macro‐level dynamics of anti‐immigration attitudes.…
Covering the US presidential election in Western Europe: A cross-national comparison
News on the move: Exogenous events and news coverage of the European Union
News coverage about the European Union (EU) has the potential to inform citizens about and to involve them in matters of European integration. Investigations of factors that explain variation in EU news coverage, however, are rare. This study explains weekly variation in the visibility of EU news in newspapers from seven EU member states for the period 1990 to 2006. It identifies exogenous factors that relate to the EU polity, its policies and na…
(In)direct Framing Effects: The Effects of News Media Framing on Public Support for Turkish Membership in the European Union
News framing can exert a strong influence on public opinion. Following a media content analysis, this article investigates the effects of news framing on support for membership of Turkey in the European Union. A first experimental study ( n = 304) showed a significant difference in the level of support for Turkish membership between respondents who were exposed to a positively valenced news frame and respondents who had received a negative frame.…
Changes in Political News Coverage: Personalization, Conflict and Negativity in British and Dutch Newspapers
Political news coverage has – allegedly – undergone profound changes in the past decades. A professionalization of both politics and journalism, increasing market pressures and technological developments (Negrine & Lilleker, 2002) have led to a new quality in the link between political actors and institutions and the mass media, but are also claimed to have greatly affected the way politics is covered in the media. Such changes include overall de…
Covering the crisis: Media coverage of the economic crisis and citizens’ economic expectations
Religious intolerance and Euroscepticism
Research on Euroscepticism focuses increasingly on the role of group identities: national identities and attitudes towards multiculturalism. Yet hardly any attention has been paid to the way in which religious intolerance shapes Euroscepticism. We argue that religious intolerance influences not only diffuse Euroscepticism, but also more specifically opposition to enlargement of the European Union with Turkey. To examine the relationship between r…
The impact of information acquisition on EU performance judgements
Public evaluations of EU performance are not only critical indicators of the EU's output legitimacy, but also shape future support for European integration. For citizens to monitor the political performance of the EU they need relevant facts, yet it is anything but clear that gains in information about EU performance causechangein judgements about such performance. Drawing on two‐wave panel data, this article examines whether acquiring informatio…
Cynics All Around? The Impact of Election News on Political Cynicism in Comparative Perspective: News and Political Cynicism
Previous research suggests that the news media's reporting about politics in terms of strategy fosters political cynicism. The question remains, however, what individual and contextual factors facilitate or inhibit this effect. In this study, we draw on a unique multimethod and comparative cross-country design, combining a media content analysis (N = 48,892) with a 2-wave panel survey conducted in 21 countries (N = 22,791) during the 2009 Europea…
The Impact of Media Coverage and Motivation on Performance-Relevant Information
Representative democracy requires that citizens know the facts about political performance, and if more such facts are available in the media, citizens have more opportunity to acquire them. In view of increasing media choice, such an opportunity may vary from one individual media environment to another. However, it remains unclear how differences in information acquisition correspond with differences in the information available specifically in …
Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the E uropean U nion
News about the E uropean U nion ( EU ) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU ‐15 (1999), EU ‐25 (2004) and EU ‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament ( EP ) elections. The analyses focus in particular on exp…
Media Personalisation in Context: A Cross-National Comparison between the UK and the Netherlands, 1992–2007
The phenomenon of (media) personalisation has generated a considerable amount of scholarly attention and is regarded as being a significant aspect of contemporary politics and political communication. To investigate long-term trends in personalisation, this study draws on a unique data set that is composed of Dutch and British newspaper articles from a sixteen-year period. The evidence suggests that personalisation is present in both countries, b…
A Clearer Picture: The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Framing Effects
Visuals in news media help define, or frame issues, but less is known about how they influence opinions and behavior. The authors use an experiment to present image and text exemplars of frames from war and conflict news in isolation and in image–text congruent and incongruent pairs. Results show that, when presented alone, images generate stronger framing effects on opinions and behavioral intentions than text. When images and text are presented…
At Odds: Laughing and Thinking? The Appreciation, Processing, and Persuasiveness of Political Satire
This study constructs and tests a conceptual model of how and for whom political satire affects political attitudes. With an experiment, we show that young adults compared to older people are more absorbed in satirical items than in regular news. Subsequently, absorption decreased counterarguing such that the attitude toward the satirized object was affected negatively. By contrast, we show that political satire positively affects the attitude to…
Media Cues and Citizen Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties
Right-wing populist parties are thriving across Europe. Usual explanations for the success of these parties are based on notions related to economics, national identity or cultural alienation. Some authors, however, have shown that the mass media also play a significant role. Whereas these studies provide evidence drawing on macro-level data resources and/or qualitative accounts, there is little systematic evidence about how mass media coverage m…
Real World is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional Source of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigration, Comparing Denmark and the Netherlands
Most people are unable to accurately estimate the number of immigrants in their country. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the size of the immigrant population would affect people’s immigration attitudes. Part of the effect of immigration on attitudes occurs not so much because of real immigration figures, but rather because of media reporting about immigration. In this study, negative attitudes towards immigration are explained by investigati…
Nuclear voices in the news: A comparison of source, news agency and newspaper content about nuclear energy over time
While news media are frequently criticized for their alleged increasing reliance on ‘subsidized content’ provided by sources and news agencies, this claim is seldom empirically verified. Based on insights from computer science, this study proposes an approach to quantitatively compare source, news agency and newspaper content over time. Including press releases from two corporate actors and one nongovernmental actor as well as articles of news ag…
Victims or perpetrators? Explaining media framing of Roma across Europe
Discrimination against Roma is a reality across Europe. The extent to which stereotyped, discriminatory beliefs of this minority group are reflected or reinforced by news media has received only limited attention. This study investigates media framing of Roma and explains variation in how European news media frame Roma in diagnostic and prognostic terms. We content analysed 825 news articles from newspapers in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia, …
One Bias Fits All? Three Types of Media Bias and Their Effects on Party Preferences
Bias in political news coverage may have a profound influence on voter opinions and preferences. However, the concept of media bias actually encompasses different sub-types: Visibility bias is the salience of political actors, tonality bias the evaluation of these actors, and agenda bias the extent to which parties address preferred issues in media coverage. The present study is the first to explore how each type of bias influences party preferen…
Shifting the refugee narrative? An automated frame analysis of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis
In 2015, Europe faced the arrival of over 1.25 million refugees fleeing from war-affected countries. The public mainly learned about this issue through domestic media. Through the use of computer-assisted content analysis, this study identifies the most dominant frames employed in the coverage of refugee and asylum issues between January 2015 and January 2016 in six Austrian newspapers (N = 10,606), particularly focusing on potential differences …
Political science (32 works) · Politics (25 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (17 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Media Studies and Communication (13 works) · Social Media and Politics (13 works) · Media Influence and Politics (12 works)