Explaining media-centered reporting styles: an internationally comparative typology and explication of election campaign coverage in TV evening news

Abstract

This study investigates “soundbites” and “metacoverage” using content analysis of TV evening news broadcasts during national election campaigns. Combining these perspectives provides insights into election campaign reporting styles: While soundbite indicators are concerned with the form of news stories, metacoverage represents news content. Using an internationally comparative sample of Swiss, German, US, British, French and Italian elections, the analysis consists of three main steps: Describing, classifying and explaining reporting styles. These aims are completed using ANOVAs, correspondence analysis, cluster analysis and QCA. The findings indicate three distinct election campaign reporting styles: A non-interventionist, candidate-centered reporting style, an interventionist, journalist-centered reporting style and a further interventionist, campaign-centered reporting style. QCA is used to relate these election campaign reporting styles to contextualfactors. Thus, thecontribution ofthisdissertationistwofold:Firstly, the study shows how mixed methods can be applied for mutual benefit. Secondly, the identification and explanation of election campaign reporting styles contributes to the discussion on the relation between media and political actors.