Political Communication Cultures in Western Europe

Attitudes of Political Actors and Journalists in Nine Countries

B. Pfetsch

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780230302013
• eBook ISBN: 9781137314284
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers new and compelling insight into the orientations that shape the cultures of political communication in nine Western democracies. It is a truly comparative account of the views of 2500 political elites and media elites between Helsinki and Madrid on their relationship and their exchanges.

1

Blind Spots in the Analysis of the Media–Politics Relationship in Europe

Barbara Pfetsch

Introduction

This volume tackles the underlying cultural foundations of the relationship between the media and politics in European democracies. We use the concept of political communication culture to relate to the attitudes of key actors in political communication, such as high-ranking journalists in the national media, political elites and their spokespersons. Our study moves beyond and compliments the manifest actions and outcomes of political communication and their correlates, such as individual news media reports and single campaigns, which can be observed as products or in terms of their effects. We tend to lose out on accounting for the beliefs that inspire the daily routines of journalists meeting with politicians and spokespersons, and the results of these encounters. When we are left to speculate about actors’ political attitudes and interpretations of their professional roles, we miss important features of the production and communication of political messages. Therefore, one claim driving this study has been to take a closer look at the media–politics relationship, and to understand the orientations that undergird the interactions. By researching attitudinal underpinnings, we aim to identify the normative basis of an “emergent shared culture” (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995, p. 36), which binds politicians and journalists together in the mutual exchange of messages and in ongoing negotiations about what is to be published.

Our study continues the tradition of comparative political communication research, which the pioneers in the field, Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch (1995), have never become tired of emphasizing. When the scholars in the mid-1990s came up with the claim for more systematic inquiry into the political communication system, they were motivated by the diagnosis of a “crisis of public communication”. They had viewed a fluidity and instability of the modern political publicity process that has been straining “the grain of citizenship” (p. 203). At the time they held the changes in communication technologies— particularly the obtrusiveness of television as the prime medium for political information, electoral volatility, societal fragmentation, the weakening of party ties and the rise of political technocrats and professional media managers—responsible for the crisis. Looking at this state of affairs from the perspective of the 21st century, the problems seem to have become considerably worse. With the advent and proliferation of new media, digital information and communications technology and the Internet in all contemporary Western countries, another stage of media development has arrived and penetrated all aspects of individual and public communication. This process has increased the fluidity and insecurity of communication relations in all realms of society, and there is no reason to believe that also the conventional relations between the media and political actors have not been affected. Our study does not account systematically for the frictions and tensions that stem from this media environment. It must be noted, however, that it takes place in a situation which set off new dynamics with respect to production, content, speed of dissemination and reach of political messages.

In the academic field of communication there have been continuous attempts to grasp the essential characteristics of the media–politics relationship and at the same time to account for variations of societies, cultures and political systems. The most solid attempt to describe the setting of the media in politics is the study Comparing Media Systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004), which presents a typology of media systems. While Hallin and Mancini focus mainly on institutional models of the media–politics relationship, their approach falls short of accounting for the subjective dimension of the linkages on the side of the actors. We believe that the attitudinal basis of interaction has been the blind spot in the study of media systems. Thus the orientations of the actors within the structural and institutional settings of the media and politics interaction are a complementary, yet necessary, dimension. Our study fills this gap by addressing the subjective dimension of the media–politics relationship.

The state of the art

While there has been a long tradition of theoretical reasoning about the interdependence of the media and politics, empirical comparative studies of political communication cultures in European settings are rare. Most research on the attitudes underlying political communication has involved single-nation or binational approaches, drawing primarily on snapshots gained by interviewing a limited number of actors. Exist-ing literature on the culture of the media and politics focuses on addressing two dimensions: i) perceptions of the general nature, power distribution, structures and constraints of the media–politics relationship and ii) attitudes about strategic aspects and political influence. There are clear signs from various European countries that the exchange relations have been vulnerable and often they are governed by ambiguity.

Mutual control and recognition of professional norms have been found to govern the exchanges between politicians and journalists, according to an early study from Sweden (Larsson, 2002). However, German research on politicians’ and journalists’ views on their mutual understanding pointed out that the political communication culture was divided when aspects of political power came into play (Kepplinger, 2009a; Maurer, 2011; Pfetsch and Mayerhöffer, 2011). In fact, studies from various European countries demonstrate that the relationship is characterized by a mutual imputation of (legitimate or illegitimate) power and influence with respect to who “leads the tango” in setting and framing the public agenda. Strömbäck and Nord (2006) have found in Sweden that journalists rather than politicians are believed to ultimately control the production and the content of political messages. Also, Walgrave (2008) shows that in Belgium politicians believe in a rather strong agenda-setting power of the media. Van Aelst et al. (2008) contrast media power perceptions of politicians and journalists in Belgium and the Netherlands, and confirm that journalists are perceived to make or break politicians. Journalists share this view but seem to justify their power by holding rather critical views about politicians. In fact, a recent study of both groups of protagonists on perceptions of political media influence in Germany finds that media effects are perceived as powerful but at the same time negative (Dohle and Vowe, 2012).

The relationship of politicians and journalists has been described using the terminology of ambivalent emotions. Van Aelst and Aalberg (2009) speak of patterns of “love and hate” as feelings that are closely intertwined in the exchange. For Belgium, Sweden and Norway their study shows that informality goes together well with a deep-rooted suspicion. There is also empirical evidence that journalists are more sober and skeptical about their interaction with politicians than the other way round. It seems that political reporters in many Western European countries have become cynical (Van Dalen et al., 2011). In fact, the cynicism of journalists about politicians interacts with perceptions of political pressure and negative views of spin doctors and media salacity (Van Dalen et al., 2011; Van Aelst et al., 2008; Plasser and Lengauer, 2010b).

At the same time, in an earlier analysis of the data from this study, we find that the relationship between journalists and politicians plays on two stages (Pfetsch et al., 2009): While on the front stage, politicians highlight their relationship with journalists as rather harmonious, on the back stage, diverging interests and tensions govern the interaction resulting from conflicting interests of their institutions of origin. The intensity of this pattern is greater in countries where political communication is highly politicized (see also Chapter 13).

A new interpretation of the relationship has been provided by Davis (2009), who argues that the interaction between journalists and politicians in the UK has exceeded the formerly functional exchange of publicity for information and has become to a great deal “reflexive” (Davis, 2010, pp. 71–73). On the basis of interviews, the study shows that the relations impact the social and symbolic construction of the political arena and that journalists have become an integral part of the political process by influencing policy agendas, party politics and legislative outcomes (Davis, 2009, 2010). Politicians have been found to use the frequent contact with journalists as a means of gaining insider information and policy advice; and journalists have been instrumental as tools for political conflict between and within parties. In countries as different as New Zealand and Denmark, it has been found that over time and under circumstances of mediatization, politicians have become quite comfortable and friendly in their dealings with the media (Ross, 2010). For Denmark a longitudinal study shows that politicians nowadays feel much freer than they did ten years ago to exploit their “privileged” position as news suppliers in a competitive media environment (Elmelund-Praestekaer et al., 2011).

The individual studies provide evidence from various countries and address the critical aspects of the media–politics relationship. At the same time, the state of the art can be characterized by a broad array of countries, indicators and measures, and also there seems to be a lack of theoretical reasoning and conceptual scrutiny. So when we started to investigate political communication culture, the objective was to take the chances of a more encompassing and systematic conceptual approach and also to apply a truly comparative design to the empirical study of political communication cultures in Europe (see Chapter 2).

The comparative framework

Comparative studies have emerged as a vibrant and lively field of ongoing empirical research in political communication (see Esser and Hanitzsch, 2012). Particularly in journalism studies we have a long tradition of comparative research (for a recent account, see Hanitzsch and Donsbach, 2012), while truly comparative studies of political elites and studies that include both groups are rather selective and limited to a few countries. Moreover, empirical studies of role perceptions and ethical views of journalists (see, e.g., Weaver and Willnat, 2012; Hanitzsch et al., 2012) have not always arrived at conclusive findings with respect to an authoritative and coherent journalism culture. While a set of common professional core beliefs, role perceptions and ethical views are shared by journalists around the globe (Hanitzsch and Donsbach, 2012, p. 267), other attitudes are marked by national and cultural idiosyn-cracies. It has been debated whether one could classify them into a category such as European journalism culture (Hanitzsch and Donsbach, 2012, p. 492).

Our study concentrates on Western European countries only as we cover Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. All cases, except for Slovenia, are highly developed countries with fairly longstanding traditions of democratic government. Except for Switzerland, they are members of the European Union (EU), which politically and economically binds them together to some degree. With respect to comparative research design, with the selection of the nine countries under study, we commit to a “most similar systems research design” (Przeworski and Teune, 1970). The logic of this variant of comparative approaches is that we start from a rough notion of rather similar macroconstellations of economic and political development and also shared patterns of the European notion of party democracy and free media. Against the background of these general constellations, we apply a truly comparative design. Our objective is to provide an encompassing empirical assessment of national political communication cultures by demonstrating similarities and differences in the attitudes of political communication actors with regard to various aspects of political communication and thus classify emerging patterns along common dimensions.

In our empirical study of political communication culture we faced the task of defining adequate dimensions and categories to determine political communication culture on a national level, particularly as we deal with journalism cultures and the cultures of political elites within and across countries. In designing the study we confronted multiple intervening factors and complexities of the analysis since within each country and within each sector, individual politicians and journalists are constrained by the structures of their political and media systems. The only way to deal with these complexities was to apply a strictly comparative design that operates with functional equivalent samples and measures. The comparative approach enabled us not only to move beyond the narrow perspective of describing parochial attitudinal patterns but also to hold certain factors constant. Nevertheless, an important premise of our study has been that there are no absolute standards to judge what is the “right” and the “wrong” political communication culture. Instead we have chosen to commit to an analytical approach of political communication culture that has allowed us to measure meaningful and functional equivalent categories of political communication.

The broader objective of our study has been not only to hammer out the professional and national political communication cultures in European countries but also to establish the similarities and differences along relevant theoretical dimensions. In the most abstract way we look at attitudes regarding the input, output, system and roles of political communication (see Chapter 2). In the empirical analyses documented in this volume we compare political communication elites across countries with regard to attitudes toward various objects of the political communication system, such as public opinion (Chapter 6), the democratic performance of the media (Chapter 7), politicization (Chapter 8), media power (Chapter 9), news-making (Chapter 10), agenda-setting (Chapter 11), role perceptions of politicians and journalists (Chapter 12) and their interaction patterns (Chapter 13). In a larger framework of political communication, the orientations that we study are thought of as “cognitive heuristics” (Sherman and Corty, 1984) that guide the decision-making and the interaction between politicians, journalists and communication experts. However, the effort of our study to reveal the cultural orientations underlying political communication has also involved the methodological and conceptual challenges of comparative research on attitudes held by groups or country aggregates, as there are heterogeneity of samples and multidimensionality of concepts and measures (see Hanitzsch and Donsbach, 2012, pp. 269–271). Eventually we can establish that the understanding of the political communication systems is relatively similar across national borders while there are professionally diverging notions of the self and the other irrespective of national borders (Chapter 5).

The idea behind comparative designs in political communication has been that empirical patterns of attitudes can be related to structural features of the political and economic environment. We assume that the political culture of a country, as well as the systems and roles of the media and politics, influences the political communication culture (Pfetsch, 2004, 2008a). We also base our work on the assumption that larger clusters of countries share their political and cultural communalities and make up families of nations (Castles, 1993a) with particular models of media systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). While the category of the nation state as an adequate unit of comparison has been contested in communication research (Livingstone, 2003), we consider the nation state still as a relevant and meaningful unit for the comparison of political communication culture. Political elites and governments work within institutional settings of governance and political decision-making that are organized along the boundaries of nation states. Even if the EU adds new layers of European multilevel government, research on European public communication demonstrates that for the media and political communication the national media has always been the relevant level of news-making and of the media–politics interaction, even if the European level has gained significance (Statham, 2010).

The cross-cultural comparison is guided by the claim that we can identify clusters of political communication cultures across Europe driven by similar political and policy cultures: a group of Nordic countries that exposes rather laid-back democratic corporatist, yet highly professional, media relations. They are characterized by a rather “media-driven political communication culture”, based on beliefs in strong independent media as political forces. The Nordic countries contrast with the “traditional political communication culture” of the Southern European countries, where political media functions are performed in a climate of constant struggle against outside political and economic pressures. This latter group of countries stands out by its more politicized patterns of political communication, which are dominated by the premises of politicians (see Chapter 5). In between those two political communication, the German-speaking continental countries involve slightly more politicized yet still consensus-oriented approaches, representing a “mixed political communication culture” in which actors try to find a balance between media power and political influence. We find that these cultural patterns conform with how politicians and journalists judge media power and the pressures involved in news-making, and also with respect to their social relations and conflicts (see Chapter 13). However, with regard to other dimensions, attitudinal patterns did not reveal such clear-cut groupings, and a great deal of heterogeneity was found within and across countries. In our overall assessment of multidimensional constructs, we identified a fourth type of political communication culture characterizing France and Denmark. In this “strategic political communication culture”, attitudinal patterns involve basic perceptions of political communication as a strategic power game.

In addition to these patterns, which indicate larger cultural cleavages within Europe, many dimensions of political communication culture were found to be strongly determined by differences between the professional cultures of journalists, political actors and their spokespersons, such as the perception of democratic performance, media power and political media roles. We also clearly established the importance of the roles of political spokespersons in media–politics relations, finding that the contrasting orientations of politicians and journalists are bridged by political spokespersons or communication advisors, whose attitudes characterize them as intermediaries. Finally, we found evidence that in the assessment of political media functions, in addition to professional roles, strategic political considerations were of a high priority.

The study as a collective effort of researchers in nine countries

This volume presents a truly cross-national comparative study of political communication, which would not have been possible without the expertise of the principal investigators and researchers from the countries that we studied. It thus represents the collective effort of a group of scholars from the fields of communication and political science who share a curiosity about the media–politics relationships in their own countries and beyond. The comparative chapters were written by teams of authors who took up specific questions of current political communication analysis, and at the same time worked within the larger framework of political communication cultures. We are grateful to the endorsement of the European Science Foundation, which has supported the project within its Euro Cores Programme. With the support of grants from seven national research funding councils¹ we managed to complete surveys with 2,500 journalists, politicians and sp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Blind Spots in the Analysis of the Media–Politics Relationship in Europe
• Part I
• Part II
• References
• Index