Fighting for attention: Media coverage of negative campaign messages

Autor(en)

Martin Haselmayer, Thomas Meyer, Markus Wagner

Abstrakt

The article studies whether and how negative campaigning is a successful strategy for attaining media attention. It combines extensive content analyses of party and news texts with public opinion surveys to study the success of individual press releases in making the news. The empirical analysis draws on 1496 party press releases and 6512 news reports in all national media outlets during the final 6 weeks of Austria's 2013 general election campaign. We find that negative campaigning is a successful strategy to attract the attention of journalists and editors. It is particularly relevant for rank-and-file politicians, who lack the intrinsic news value of high public or party office, and for messages that focus on a rival's best issues. These findings have broader implications for understanding party strategies and 'negativity bias' in the news.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Journal

Party Politics

Band

25

Seiten

412-423

Anzahl der Seiten

12

ISSN

1354-0688

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068817724174

Publikationsdatum

08-2017

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Sociology and Political Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/7ab7ae21-c60e-4392-9d10-4e167e1b050f