Arjen Van Dalen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4152016 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arjen Van Dalen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arjen |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Dalen |
| SIGNATURE | VAN DALEN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern Denmark |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5785-2245 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 718 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Preaching to the choirs. Political parties’ online targeting strategies in multi-party systems
Research suggests that political campaigns use online political microtargeting to mobilize a party’s existing voter base rather than to persuade new voters. However, most studies have been conducted in the US, where low turnout and high partisanship create optimal conditions for such a strategy. In this study, we analyze novel data on political parties’ use of targeting in Facebook and Instagram ads to examine the nature of microtargeting. The co…
“I Think It’s Exciting and Frightening at the Same Time”: Audience Sentiments Toward the Use and Labeling of Generative AI in Journalism
This study explores audience sentiments toward generative artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism by analyzing in-depth qualitative interviews with Danish news consumers. Findings show that while the users acknowledge AI’s potential to improve efficiency and writing quality—and are sometimes delighted by the prospects—they emphasize the need for a human journalist in the loop. Many are concerned about AI replacing human journalists; some fear …
A Little of that Human Touch: How Regular Journalists Redefine Their Expertise in the Face of Artificial Intelligence
Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence raise fundamental questions about its impact on the journalistic profession and the future role of journalists in news production. However, the attitudes of regular journalists towards artificial intelligence remain largely unexplored. We address this gap by investigating the potentials and concerns that Danish journalists attribute to the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism. J…
Revisiting the Algorithms Behind the Headlines. How Journalists Respond to Professional Competition of Generative AI
Due to its ability to process and create human-like texts, Generative AI such as ChatGPT is a potential game changer in news making. This paper re-examines central research areas that were analyzed around the emergence of earlier versions of automated news writing in the 2012 article The Algorithms behind the Headlines. The current paper employs a sociology of professions- and boundary work- perspective to understand how journalists (re)assert th…
Automated News Reading in the Neural Age: Audience Reception and Perceived Credibility of a News Broadcast Read By a Neural Voice
Automated journalism is rapidly developing in the news industry. Among the most recent and promising technological potentials are neural voices, i.e., text-to-speech technology powered by neural networks. Based on a reception analysis with in-depth qualitative interviews (N = 12), this study explores how Danish radio listeners receive a full news broadcast read by a neural voice and perceive the credibility of the neural reader and the news conte…
Economic Beat Journalists: Which Audience Perceptions, What Conception of Democracy
Economic coverage often takes the perspective of the audience rather than financial insiders by applying news values such as domestication and identification, especially in democratic-corporatist countries and since the Great Recession. While research has looked into how this mainstreaming of economic news materializes in news content (role performance), less is known about the democratic motives and audience perceptions which drive this coverage…
Political Journalists
The democratic functions of the media are at the center of discussions about the societal role of journalists (e.g., McNair 2009; Strömbäck 2005). These democratic functions, like the information, watchdog, and expression function are laid down in legal texts (Graber 2003) and ethical codes (Sonnenberg 1997) and are part of the core values of the occupational ideology of journalists (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2001)
Red Economy, Blue Economy: How Media-Party Parallelism Affects the Partisan Economic Perception Gap
Partisan identities do not only shape people’s political attitudes, but also their perceptions of real-world developments. This is evident from the partisan economic perception gap: Government supporters have more positive economic perceptions than opposition supporters, especially when the economic situation is ambiguous. Recent research has shown that the size of this partisan gap varies across different contexts and that the state of the econo…
Journalism, Trust, and Credibility
This chapter examines the related concepts of trust in the press and credibility of information. At the heart of concerns about the functions that journalism fulfills in society are worries about the trustworthiness of the press and credibility of public information. In journalism studies and the communication literature more broadly, the terms trust and credibility are closely connected. Communication researchers and journalism scholars started …
Data Journalism Research: Studying a Maturing Field across Journalistic Cultures, Media Markets and Political Environments
Although data journalism is practiced globally, data journalism research has traditionally focused on a limited set of countries, primarily within the liberal and democratic corporatist media systems. Many recently published studies illustrate a growing scholarly interest in data journalism in other parts of the world, but these studies are still limited in number. This special issue brings together five new empirical studies of data journalism a…
Rethinking journalist–politician relations in the age of populism: How outsider politicians delegitimize mainstream journalists
The relation between journalists and politicians in liberal democracies is traditionally conceptualized as highly institutionalized, based on mutual dependence, and grounded in a shared culture of jointly respected role relations. While this conceptualization provides a fruitful framework to understand the relation between mainstream journalists and politicians, it falls short in explaining the way outsider politicians such as Beppe Grillo, Donal…
Economic News: Informing the Inattentive Audience
"This book tells the story of how the news media can help the inattentive members of the public become better educated and knowledgeable 'economic citizens'. The authors argue that changes in the economy, journalism and consumer culture have made economic news more visible, more mainstream and more accessible. They show how economic news not only affects economic perceptions, but also interest in the economy, knowledge about the economy, and econ…
Caught in the Nexus: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis of Public Trust in the Press
Despite signs of declining press trust in many western countries, we know little about trends in press trust across the world. Based on comparative survey data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), this study looks into national levels of trust in the press and identifies factors that drive differences across societies and individuals as well as over time. Findings indicate that the widely noted decline in media trus…
The impact of ambiguous economic news on uncertainty and consumer confidence
Journalistic practice emphasizes both positive and negative aspects of news stories. Nevertheless, the effects of ambiguous news, which includes both positive and negative information, are under-investigated. This study examines how exposure to ambiguous economic news affects uncertainty and ‘consumer confidence’. Consumer confidence refers to citizens’ evaluations of their personal economic situation and of the national economy and is an anteced…
Changing Times, Changing Journalism: A Content Analysis of Journalistic Role Performances in a Transitional Democracy
Although the democratic role of journalism in new democracies is heavily debated, systematic empirical analysis is scarce. This paper studies how the performance of the watchdog and civic journalism role in Chilean newspapers develops during 22 years of democratic transition. We challenge the homogenization-thesis, which has often characterized thinking about the role of the media in democratic transition, assuming an automatic unidirectional tre…
News Priming and the Changing Economy: How Economic News Influences Government Evaluations
It has recently been claimed that the economy does not exert strong influence on evaluations of incumbent governments in a globalized environment owing to the complex nature of the world’s economy. We question this claim and examine whether and how exposure to economic news affects economic evaluations of governments and how these in turn affect overall government evaluations. The study, which is based on a two-wave national panel study in Denmar…
Challenging the Citizen–Consumer Journalistic Dichotomy: A News Content Analysis of Audience Approaches in Chile
Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news ( N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis tha…
A Welfare State of Mind: Nordic journalists’ conception of their role and autonomy in international context
The development of journalism in the Nordic countries has been shaped by two interconnected ideologies: the welfare state and democratic corporatism. International reviews have repeatedly emphasized the similarities of the media systems in these countries. However, less work has been done on the professional identity of individual journalists working within these systems. In this article, the similarities and differences between journalists’ prof…
Mediated Uncertainty
A growing body of research shows that uncertainty affects individual perceptions and preferences. However, we still know little about how uncertainty in news content affects public opinion formation. Building upon literature on the processing of uncertain information and prospect theory, we argue that uncertainty in the news lowers public expectations and fosters pessimism. A time-series analysis of national monthly consumer confidence data, econ…
Policy Considerations on Facebook: Agendas, Coherence, and Communication Patterns in the 2011 Danish Parliamentary Elections
Given the importance of issue competition in a West European context and the growing use of Facebook in elections, this paper studies how politicians use Facebook to shape the campaign agenda. We analyze the issues addressed in 6,388 Facebook posts by candidates in the Danish 2011 parliamentary election. A limited share of Facebook updates is dedicated to issues. The Facebook agenda did not respond to standings in the polls, nor to the media agen…
Economic News Through the Magnifying Glass: How the media cover economic boom and bust
One of the normative functions of economic news is surveillance, making monitorial citizens aware of significant economic developments. In this light, it is important to look at the way economic news covers periods of recession and economic boom. Previous studies have focused on how the media cover monthly developments of the economy rather than how coverage varies over the course of the economic cycle. Based on parallels between self-reinforcing…
The predictors of economic sophistication: Media, interpersonal communication and negative economic experiences
In analogy to political sophistication, it is imperative that citizens have a certain level of economic sophistication, especially in times of heated debates about the economy. This study examines the impact of different influences (media, interpersonal communication and personal experiences) on learning effects about the economy. We conducted a national two-wave panel survey and a media content analysis in Denmark. Media effects were examined th…
Europeanization of national public spheres? Cross-national media debates about the European Union's socio-economic strategy
This paper studies the Europeanization of media coverage of the European Union's (EU) socio-economic strategy, which is a crucial building block for developing a European Public Sphere. As the EU level increasingly influences public policy in member states, there should correspondingly be a more intense and visible media debate with attention for EU-level and cross-national policies and developments. On the basis of a content analysis (2000–2010)…
Political Journalism in Comparative Perspective
Political journalism is often under fire. Conventional wisdom and much scholarly research suggest that journalists are cynics and political pundits. Political news is void of substance and overly focused on strategy and persons. Citizens do not learn from the news, are politically cynical, and are dissatisfied with the media. This book challenges these assumptions, which are often based on single-country studies with limited empirical observation…
Interviews in a Polarized Television Market: The Anglo-American Watchdog Model Put to the Test
Television interviews with political candidates are pivotal moments in election campaigns. Previous studies in Anglo-American contexts have shown that adversarialism in television interviews can be predicted by the power of the politician and by the status of the interviewer. However, worldwide the structural conditions of the liberal media system are unique. This article studies how the Anglo-American watchdog model of interviews should be adapt…
Between Rhetoric and Practice: Explaining the gap between role conception and performance in journalism
A large body of research in journalism studies has analyzed which social and political roles news professionals consider they must fulfill in society. These studies are based on the assumption that role conception influences news content. However, the gap between ideals and practice is inevitable, since the constraint to which journalists are exposed limits the possibility of living up to their normative standards. While recent studies have addre…
Different roles, different content? A four-country comparison of the role conceptions and reporting style of political journalists
The relation between journalistic role conceptions and news content is central for the understanding of differences in journalistic cultures. Previous research has shown that the professional roles of individual journalists can influence their behaviour and that occupational socialization leads to similar role conceptions within countries. This article therefore studies the relation between cross-national differences in role conceptions and news …
Caught in the Nexus: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis of Public Trust in the Press
Despite signs of declining press trust in many western countries, we know little about trends in press trust across the world. Based on comparative survey data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), this study looks into national levels of trust in the press and identifies factors that drive differences across societies and individuals as well as over time. Findings indicate that the widely noted decline in media trus…
Structural Bias in Cross-National Perspective: How Political Systems and Journalism Cultures Influence Government Dominance in the News
The battle for media attention is an integral part of political conflicts. Because of structural bias in the news, government generally dominates this battle for media attention. This article argues, first, that the attention for government and parliament in the news reflects the power balance in the political system and, second, that this relation is moderated by cross-national differences in journalistic cultures, in particular the importance o…
Members of Parliament: Equal Competitors for Media Attention? An Analysis of Personal Contacts Between MPs and Political Journalists in Five European Countries
Power relations between politicians and journalists are often depicted as an ongoing tango with one actor leading the other. This study analyzes interactions between politicians and journalists not by posing the question of who leads whom, but rather by investigating which politicians are invited to dance in the first place, and which are better positioned to take the lead. Building upon theories and past research into press–government relations,…
Challenging the Citizen–Consumer Journalistic Dichotomy: A News Content Analysis of Audience Approaches in Chile
Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news ( N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis tha…
A Welfare State of Mind: Nordic journalists’ conception of their role and autonomy in international context
The development of journalism in the Nordic countries has been shaped by two interconnected ideologies: the welfare state and democratic corporatism. International reviews have repeatedly emphasized the similarities of the media systems in these countries. However, less work has been done on the professional identity of individual journalists working within these systems. In this article, the similarities and differences between journalists’ prof…
The Fourth Estate as Superpower: An empirical study of perceptions of media power in Belgium and the Netherlands
The power of the media has long been at the centre of communication studies, mostly focusing on the effects they have on the public. Power over politics is far less studied, however many politicians complain about such media power after a lost election or when observing political cynicism among the public. In this paper, the results of a survey on politicians and journalists in Belgium and the Netherlands are presented, showing the perceptions of…
Rethinking journalist–politician relations in the age of populism: How outsider politicians delegitimize mainstream journalists
The relation between journalists and politicians in liberal democracies is traditionally conceptualized as highly institutionalized, based on mutual dependence, and grounded in a shared culture of jointly respected role relations. While this conceptualization provides a fruitful framework to understand the relation between mainstream journalists and politicians, it falls short in explaining the way outsider politicians such as Beppe Grillo, Donal…
Data Journalism Research: Studying a Maturing Field across Journalistic Cultures, Media Markets and Political Environments
Although data journalism is practiced globally, data journalism research has traditionally focused on a limited set of countries, primarily within the liberal and democratic corporatist media systems. Many recently published studies illustrate a growing scholarly interest in data journalism in other parts of the world, but these studies are still limited in number. This special issue brings together five new empirical studies of data journalism a…
The Algorithms Behind the Headlines: How machine-written news redefines the core skills of human journalists
With the introduction of machine-written news, the automation of journalism has entered a new phase. Algorithms can now automatically generate news stories on the basis of statistical information and a set of stock phrases, without interference from human journalists. This paper analyses reactions to the launch of a network of machine-written sport websites to see how this new technology forces journalists to re-examine their own skills. In their…
Changing Times, Changing Journalism: A Content Analysis of Journalistic Role Performances in a Transitional Democracy
Although the democratic role of journalism in new democracies is heavily debated, systematic empirical analysis is scarce. This paper studies how the performance of the watchdog and civic journalism role in Chilean newspapers develops during 22 years of democratic transition. We challenge the homogenization-thesis, which has often characterized thinking about the role of the media in democratic transition, assuming an automatic unidirectional tre…
The people behind the political headlines: A comparison of political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain
Political journalism plays a central role in all democratic societies. But the way political journalists fulfil this role varies from country to country. To better understand the role of political journalists in different democracies, this article explores which features of political journalism are universal and which characteristics vary cross-nationally. Comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom a…
Suspicious minds: Explaining political cynicism among political journalists in Europe
Critics claim that journalists spread a cynical view of politics, as their relation with politicians is characterized by mistrust and hyper-adversarialism. To gain an insight into how cynical journalists themselves are about politics and how this can be explained, this article investigates the role relationship between politicians and journalists in four European countries with different political communication systems. The empirical basis for th…
The Media as Political Agenda-Setters: Journalists’ Perceptions of Media Power in Eight West European Countries
Studies in different countries have shown that the media can influence the attention politicians devote to different issues. However, knowledge about the cross-national contingencies of the political agenda-setting power of the media is limited. This study compares the perceptions of journalists of the political agenda-setting power of the mass media in eight parliamentary democracies with varying media and political systems: Belgium, Denmark, Ge…
The Fading Public Voice: The polarizing effect of commercialization on political and other beats and its democratic consequences
The increasing commercialization of media markets in Denmark and abroad have led to concerns about journalism's role in democracy. In discussions about the influence of budget cuts and increased competition on the way journalists work, the difference between political journalists and other journalists is often disregarded. This paper argues that commercialization has a polarizing effect. It strengthens the political beat at the expense of other b…
The Effects of Human Interest and Conflict News Frames on the Dynamics of Political Knowledge Gains: Evidence from a Cross‐national Study
A well‐functioning democracy needs the news media to provide information to its citizens. It is therefore essential to understand what kinds of news contents contribute to gains in citizens' political knowledge and for whom this takes place. Extant research is divergent on this matter, especially with respect to ‘softer’ news coverage. This cross‐national study investigates the effects of exposure to human interest and conflict frames in the news…
A Little of that Human Touch: How Regular Journalists Redefine Their Expertise in the Face of Artificial Intelligence
Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence raise fundamental questions about its impact on the journalistic profession and the future role of journalists in news production. However, the attitudes of regular journalists towards artificial intelligence remain largely unexplored. We address this gap by investigating the potentials and concerns that Danish journalists attribute to the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism. J…
Economic News Through the Magnifying Glass: How the media cover economic boom and bust
One of the normative functions of economic news is surveillance, making monitorial citizens aware of significant economic developments. In this light, it is important to look at the way economic news covers periods of recession and economic boom. Previous studies have focused on how the media cover monthly developments of the economy rather than how coverage varies over the course of the economic cycle. Based on parallels between self-reinforcing…
Policy Considerations on Facebook: Agendas, Coherence, and Communication Patterns in the 2011 Danish Parliamentary Elections
Given the importance of issue competition in a West European context and the growing use of Facebook in elections, this paper studies how politicians use Facebook to shape the campaign agenda. We analyze the issues addressed in 6,388 Facebook posts by candidates in the Danish 2011 parliamentary election. A limited share of Facebook updates is dedicated to issues. The Facebook agenda did not respond to standings in the polls, nor to the media agen…
Mediated Uncertainty
A growing body of research shows that uncertainty affects individual perceptions and preferences. However, we still know little about how uncertainty in news content affects public opinion formation. Building upon literature on the processing of uncertain information and prospect theory, we argue that uncertainty in the news lowers public expectations and fosters pessimism. A time-series analysis of national monthly consumer confidence data, econ…
Europeanization of national public spheres? Cross-national media debates about the European Union's socio-economic strategy
This paper studies the Europeanization of media coverage of the European Union's (EU) socio-economic strategy, which is a crucial building block for developing a European Public Sphere. As the EU level increasingly influences public policy in member states, there should correspondingly be a more intense and visible media debate with attention for EU-level and cross-national policies and developments. On the basis of a content analysis (2000–2010)…
Readers’ Advocates or Newspapers’ Ambassadors: Newspaper Ombudsmen in the Netherlands
At the beginning of the 21st century, politicians, scholars and journalists want news media to be more accountable and transparent. The newspaper ombudsman is often considered an example of an accountability mechanism. Similarly to Japan, the US and elsewhere, newspapers in the Netherlands have introduced this function in the newsroom. A questionnaire and open-ended interviews with Dutch ombudsmen showed two different views of the function: on th…
News Priming and the Changing Economy: How Economic News Influences Government Evaluations
It has recently been claimed that the economy does not exert strong influence on evaluations of incumbent governments in a globalized environment owing to the complex nature of the world’s economy. We question this claim and examine whether and how exposure to economic news affects economic evaluations of governments and how these in turn affect overall government evaluations. The study, which is based on a two-wave national panel study in Denmar…
Interviews in a Polarized Television Market: The Anglo-American Watchdog Model Put to the Test
Television interviews with political candidates are pivotal moments in election campaigns. Previous studies in Anglo-American contexts have shown that adversarialism in television interviews can be predicted by the power of the politician and by the status of the interviewer. However, worldwide the structural conditions of the liberal media system are unique. This article studies how the Anglo-American watchdog model of interviews should be adapt…
Readers’ Advocates or Newspapers’ Ambassadors: Newspaper Ombudsmen in the Netherlands
At the beginning of the 21st century, politicians, scholars and journalists want news media to be more accountable and transparent. The newspaper ombudsman is often considered an example of an accountability mechanism. Similarly to Japan, the US and elsewhere, newspapers in the Netherlands have introduced this function in the newsroom. A questionnaire and open-ended interviews with Dutch ombudsmen showed two different views of the function: on th…
The Fourth Estate as Superpower: An empirical study of perceptions of media power in Belgium and the Netherlands
The power of the media has long been at the centre of communication studies, mostly focusing on the effects they have on the public. Power over politics is far less studied, however many politicians complain about such media power after a lost election or when observing political cynicism among the public. In this paper, the results of a survey on politicians and journalists in Belgium and the Netherlands are presented, showing the perceptions of…
Members of Parliament: Equal Competitors for Media Attention? An Analysis of Personal Contacts Between MPs and Political Journalists in Five European Countries
Power relations between politicians and journalists are often depicted as an ongoing tango with one actor leading the other. This study analyzes interactions between politicians and journalists not by posing the question of who leads whom, but rather by investigating which politicians are invited to dance in the first place, and which are better positioned to take the lead. Building upon theories and past research into press–government relations,…
Suspicious minds: Explaining political cynicism among political journalists in Europe
Critics claim that journalists spread a cynical view of politics, as their relation with politicians is characterized by mistrust and hyper-adversarialism. To gain an insight into how cynical journalists themselves are about politics and how this can be explained, this article investigates the role relationship between politicians and journalists in four European countries with different political communication systems. The empirical basis for th…
Structural Bias in Cross-National Perspective: How Political Systems and Journalism Cultures Influence Government Dominance in the News
The battle for media attention is an integral part of political conflicts. Because of structural bias in the news, government generally dominates this battle for media attention. This article argues, first, that the attention for government and parliament in the news reflects the power balance in the political system and, second, that this relation is moderated by cross-national differences in journalistic cultures, in particular the importance o…
Different roles, different content? A four-country comparison of the role conceptions and reporting style of political journalists
The relation between journalistic role conceptions and news content is central for the understanding of differences in journalistic cultures. Previous research has shown that the professional roles of individual journalists can influence their behaviour and that occupational socialization leads to similar role conceptions within countries. This article therefore studies the relation between cross-national differences in role conceptions and news …
The Algorithms Behind the Headlines: How machine-written news redefines the core skills of human journalists
With the introduction of machine-written news, the automation of journalism has entered a new phase. Algorithms can now automatically generate news stories on the basis of statistical information and a set of stock phrases, without interference from human journalists. This paper analyses reactions to the launch of a network of machine-written sport websites to see how this new technology forces journalists to re-examine their own skills. In their…
The people behind the political headlines: A comparison of political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain
Political journalism plays a central role in all democratic societies. But the way political journalists fulfil this role varies from country to country. To better understand the role of political journalists in different democracies, this article explores which features of political journalism are universal and which characteristics vary cross-nationally. Comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom a…
The Fading Public Voice: The polarizing effect of commercialization on political and other beats and its democratic consequences
The increasing commercialization of media markets in Denmark and abroad have led to concerns about journalism's role in democracy. In discussions about the influence of budget cuts and increased competition on the way journalists work, the difference between political journalists and other journalists is often disregarded. This paper argues that commercialization has a polarizing effect. It strengthens the political beat at the expense of other b…
Dodging the Gatekeepers: Social media in the campaign mix during the 2011 Danish elections
Although politicians, scholars and campaigners claim that social media such as Facebook and Twitter profoundly change election campaigns, still little is known about the place of social media in the overall campaign mix and its use compared to traditional campaigning channels like the mass media. Cluster analysis of a representative survey among the candidates in the 2011 parliamentary election in Denmark shows that the candidates can be divided …
The Media as Political Agenda-Setters: Journalists’ Perceptions of Media Power in Eight West European Countries
Studies in different countries have shown that the media can influence the attention politicians devote to different issues. However, knowledge about the cross-national contingencies of the political agenda-setting power of the media is limited. This study compares the perceptions of journalists of the political agenda-setting power of the mass media in eight parliamentary democracies with varying media and political systems: Belgium, Denmark, Ge…
Between Rhetoric and Practice: Explaining the gap between role conception and performance in journalism
A large body of research in journalism studies has analyzed which social and political roles news professionals consider they must fulfill in society. These studies are based on the assumption that role conception influences news content. However, the gap between ideals and practice is inevitable, since the constraint to which journalists are exposed limits the possibility of living up to their normative standards. While recent studies have addre…
The Effects of Human Interest and Conflict News Frames on the Dynamics of Political Knowledge Gains: Evidence from a Cross‐national Study
A well‐functioning democracy needs the news media to provide information to its citizens. It is therefore essential to understand what kinds of news contents contribute to gains in citizens' political knowledge and for whom this takes place. Extant research is divergent on this matter, especially with respect to ‘softer’ news coverage. This cross‐national study investigates the effects of exposure to human interest and conflict frames in the news…
Political Journalism in Comparative Perspective
Political journalism is often under fire. Conventional wisdom and much scholarly research suggest that journalists are cynics and political pundits. Political news is void of substance and overly focused on strategy and persons. Citizens do not learn from the news, are politically cynical, and are dissatisfied with the media. This book challenges these assumptions, which are often based on single-country studies with limited empirical observation…
Interviews in a Polarized Television Market: The Anglo-American Watchdog Model Put to the Test
Television interviews with political candidates are pivotal moments in election campaigns. Previous studies in Anglo-American contexts have shown that adversarialism in television interviews can be predicted by the power of the politician and by the status of the interviewer. However, worldwide the structural conditions of the liberal media system are unique. This article studies how the Anglo-American watchdog model of interviews should be adapt…
Policy Considerations on Facebook: Agendas, Coherence, and Communication Patterns in the 2011 Danish Parliamentary Elections
Given the importance of issue competition in a West European context and the growing use of Facebook in elections, this paper studies how politicians use Facebook to shape the campaign agenda. We analyze the issues addressed in 6,388 Facebook posts by candidates in the Danish 2011 parliamentary election. A limited share of Facebook updates is dedicated to issues. The Facebook agenda did not respond to standings in the polls, nor to the media agen…
Economic News Through the Magnifying Glass: How the media cover economic boom and bust
One of the normative functions of economic news is surveillance, making monitorial citizens aware of significant economic developments. In this light, it is important to look at the way economic news covers periods of recession and economic boom. Previous studies have focused on how the media cover monthly developments of the economy rather than how coverage varies over the course of the economic cycle. Based on parallels between self-reinforcing…
The predictors of economic sophistication: Media, interpersonal communication and negative economic experiences
In analogy to political sophistication, it is imperative that citizens have a certain level of economic sophistication, especially in times of heated debates about the economy. This study examines the impact of different influences (media, interpersonal communication and personal experiences) on learning effects about the economy. We conducted a national two-wave panel survey and a media content analysis in Denmark. Media effects were examined th…
Europeanization of national public spheres? Cross-national media debates about the European Union's socio-economic strategy
This paper studies the Europeanization of media coverage of the European Union's (EU) socio-economic strategy, which is a crucial building block for developing a European Public Sphere. As the EU level increasingly influences public policy in member states, there should correspondingly be a more intense and visible media debate with attention for EU-level and cross-national policies and developments. On the basis of a content analysis (2000–2010)…
News Priming and the Changing Economy: How Economic News Influences Government Evaluations
It has recently been claimed that the economy does not exert strong influence on evaluations of incumbent governments in a globalized environment owing to the complex nature of the world’s economy. We question this claim and examine whether and how exposure to economic news affects economic evaluations of governments and how these in turn affect overall government evaluations. The study, which is based on a two-wave national panel study in Denmar…
Challenging the Citizen–Consumer Journalistic Dichotomy: A News Content Analysis of Audience Approaches in Chile
Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news ( N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis tha…
A Welfare State of Mind: Nordic journalists’ conception of their role and autonomy in international context
The development of journalism in the Nordic countries has been shaped by two interconnected ideologies: the welfare state and democratic corporatism. International reviews have repeatedly emphasized the similarities of the media systems in these countries. However, less work has been done on the professional identity of individual journalists working within these systems. In this article, the similarities and differences between journalists’ prof…
Mediated Uncertainty
A growing body of research shows that uncertainty affects individual perceptions and preferences. However, we still know little about how uncertainty in news content affects public opinion formation. Building upon literature on the processing of uncertain information and prospect theory, we argue that uncertainty in the news lowers public expectations and fosters pessimism. A time-series analysis of national monthly consumer confidence data, econ…
Caught in the Nexus: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis of Public Trust in the Press
Despite signs of declining press trust in many western countries, we know little about trends in press trust across the world. Based on comparative survey data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), this study looks into national levels of trust in the press and identifies factors that drive differences across societies and individuals as well as over time. Findings indicate that the widely noted decline in media trus…
The impact of ambiguous economic news on uncertainty and consumer confidence
Journalistic practice emphasizes both positive and negative aspects of news stories. Nevertheless, the effects of ambiguous news, which includes both positive and negative information, are under-investigated. This study examines how exposure to ambiguous economic news affects uncertainty and ‘consumer confidence’. Consumer confidence refers to citizens’ evaluations of their personal economic situation and of the national economy and is an anteced…
Political science (33 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Media Studies and Communication (25 works) · Social Media and Politics (23 works) · Politics (22 works) · Law (21 works) · Media studies (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Journalism (14 works) · Political economy (11 works)