Who gets in the news?

A news value and political context perspective on

media appearances of political parties

Christoffer Green-Pedersen

Peter B. Mortensen

Gunnar Thesen

POLIS-research unit

Department of Political Science

Aarhus University

cgp@ps.au.dk/Peter@ps.au.dk/gunnar.thesen@iris.no

http://ps.au.dk/polis

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One implication of the mediatization of politics, often referred to as the 1st dimension of

mediatization (Strömbäck 2008), is that communication between the political system and voters

almost exclusively takes place in the media. Getting into the media, communicating issue priorities

and positions to the electorate, has therefore become a central concern for politicians. Studying the

media appearances of political actors – which politicians and parties actually get in the media –

should consequently be an important approach when investigating the media-politics interaction.

Not surprisingly, a literature has therefore emerged looking at the media appearance of politicians

(e.g. Schoenbach et al. 2001; Tresch 2009; Hopman et al. 2011). Within this literature, a key

question has been the existence of an “incumbency” or “Kanzler” bonus, i.e. that the incumbent

party or party leader gets more media coverage than the opposition or opposition leader.

This bonus describes an important characteristic of mediatized politics and raises a

question about the underlying mechanisms. What is it about the interaction between media and

politics that generates an incumbency bonus? Furthermore, understanding these mechanisms

contributes to answering broader question about how modern mass media interact with the political

system or what mediatized politics actually implies.

The incumbency bonus is typically explained by the role of news criteria for the

function of modern mass media. Especially, existing studies refer to criteria of newsworthiness such

as relevance and the elite status or power of actors. The incumbent party is considered more

powerful than the opposition and therefore receives more coverage. In effect, media coverage

comes to reflect the power structure of the political system (e.g. Hopman et al. 2011; De Swert &

Walgrave 2002; Schönbach et al 2001). This explanation is hard to disagree with, but also leaves

many questions open. How can it be combined with the journalistic norm of objectivity and

“political balance” (Hopman et al. 2012)? And how can one explain – as will be shown below – that

the incumbency bonus is larger in routine times than during election campaigns?

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The paper offers a more elaborated understanding of the mechanisms behind media

coverage of political actors which not only explains the incumbency bonus, but also allows us to

predict variation in how much political actors, especially the incumbent parties get into the media.

The news criteria of relevance or elite status/power do not by themselves determine who gets media

attention. They are interpreted based on two important norms of modern journalism. One norm is

that modern media should function as a “watch dog” focusing on societal problems and what should

or should not be done about them (Boydstun 2013; Mancini 2005). This produces an emphasis on

incumbent actors, but at the same time a tendency towards critical, negative news coverage. The

other norm is that of objective and impartial journalism (Hopman et al 2012), which implies a

balanced coverage where both sides of a political conflict get attention.

Variations in the size of the incumbency bonus could be explained by the varying

weight given to these partly conflicting professional norms, and this is where political context

becomes crucial. An election campaign is for instance very different from “routine times politics”,

and during an election campaign the norm of objectivity increases its importance and relevance as

the media focus on “covering the campaign”. The main question at stake is who will win the

election and a balanced coverage must pay attention to both incumbents and challengers. Outside of

an election campaign, the watch dog role is particularly relevant as the media monitors all kinds of

societal problems, framing the coverage in light of questions regarding “who’s responsible” and

“what could be done”? The government is mostly part of the answer, and consequently the

incumbency bonus is higher than during election campaigns.

Empirically, the paper analyses media coverage of Danish politics over a 20 years

period (1984-2003) based on Danish radio news broadcasts. Due to the long-time period, this is a

unique dataset which allows us to show how news criteria and journalistic norms are combined

depending on political context.

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The incumbency bonus and the “reflection of power” argument

Existing studies of the media appearances of politicians have focused on the so-called “Kanzler

bonus” or incumbency bonus. Studies in a number of different national contexts have shown that

government parties/Prime ministers get more media coverage than the opposition and its leader

(Semetko 1996; Brants & van Praag 2006; Hopman et al. 2011; Schoenbach et al. 2001. Walgrave

& de Swert 2005, de Swert & Walgrave 2002; Asp 2006: Schulz & Zeh 2006). However, some

variation in the size of the bonus has also been found. For instance, Schoenbach (2001) only finds

an incumbency bonus in Germany not in the Netherlands, while Schulz and Zeh (2006) document a

decreasing bonus in German election campaigns. Hopman et al. (2011) further show that the size of

the incumbency bonus in Danish elections campaigns vary with the likelihood of re-election of the

government. The more likely a government was to be re-elected, the more coverage it gets relative

to the opposition.

These findings raise the question of what explains the “incumbency bonus”. The most

widespread answer draws on news value theory. This theory (Harcup & O’Neil 2001; Shoemaker

2006) argues that a set of criteria exists that most journalists tend to agree on, and which specifies

several properties of an event that increase its ‘newsworthiness’. The presence of conflict is one

such property, or news criteria, which greatly enhances the possibility that an event will be covered

in the news. Other criteria are relevance and prominence/elite status, which makes news media

focus on formal political power. The more formal power, the more prominent and relevant an actor

is and the more coverage the actor gets. Incumbents are more powerful than other political actors.

They are capable of affecting nearly all members and aspects of society through their decisions, and

this increases their relevance as objects of news coverage. This ”reflection of power due to news

criteria” argument has not only been used to explain the incumbency bonus (.e.g. Hopman et al.

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2011; De Swert & Walgrave 2002, Schönbach et al. 2001). Tresch (2008) also finds that the

coverage of Swiss MPs is “power dependent”.

As a mechanism for explaining the incumbency bonus, the focus on how news criteria

cause the media to reflect political power seems very plausible. On the other hand, it also presents a

rather broad and vague explanation of which actors get in the news. Most importantly, it is unclear

what should cause variation in the size of the incumbency bonus. Why should it for instance

diminish in election time? Furthermore, the media is portrayed in a very passive way. Can

journalism simply be reduced to re-producing the political power structure, and how does this fit

with the norm of objectivity and political balance (Hopman et al. 2012) or the norm of critical

journalism (Mancini 2005)?

In sum, the existing literature is dominated by a media routine perspective that

portrays the media as reflectors of political power. What is needed is a theory that both incorporates

different media norms and the interplay between media routines and political context. Such a theory

should address the mechanisms producing variations in the incumbency bonus and be judged by its

ability to supplement existing explanations of why some political actors get more media attention

than others. The next section sketches the building blocks for our theoretical perspective,

introducing further dynamics to both the media and political side of political news coverage.

A news value and political context perspective

Acknowledging the strong results and plausible explanations in extant studies, we agree that a

media routine perspective should serve as a starting point when analyzing news coverage of

different political actors. The results on the incumbency bonus clearly indicate how news criteria

related to elite status/power resonates with empirical data at different times and in different political

settings. However, both the functioning of modern mass media and political context as well as their

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interaction needs further theoretical elaboration to explain variation in the coverage of political

actors.

In terms of media dynamics modern journalism cannot be reduced to just news

criteria. There are other professional norms or practices which need to be included. Thus, we find it

relevant to view the existence of an incumbency bonus in light of the increasingly dominant western

tradition of neutral informational journalism (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Mancini 2005). Most

importantly, this tradition is interesting because it accommodates partly conflicting journalistic

norms that on the one hand would seem to predict, and on the other hand contradict, the existence of

an incumbency bonus. On the one hand then, neutral informational professionalism covers the idea

of the media as “watch dog” or “fire patrol” (Boydstun 2013; Mancini 2005). Empirical studies

indicate that such a norm affects news coverage, finding for instance that media have a clear

negativity bias where they focus disproportionally on societal problems or failures (Soroka 2012).

This critical watch dog norm of modern mass media has implications for how political actors are

approached. The importance or relevance of political actors is gauged in relation to societal

problems and failure. Hence, power is understood to imply responsibility, as political actors are

considered important to the extent that they could be blamed for and/or do something about the

societal problems and challenges. Hence, the watch dog norm make actors in office more

newsworthy, at the same time offering an explanation of the incumbency bonus where media

actively challenges, and not only reflects, political power.

Another central norm in neutral informational journalism is that of objectivity

(Mancini 2005). The media should present a neutral and balanced picture of reality, avoiding

political biases that could question the media’s independence from political power. Exactly what

political balance implies in term of how coverage of political actors should be distributed is debated

(Hopman et al. 2012). However, one clear implication is that the media should cover both sides of a

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political conflict. The persistent finding of an incumbent bonus may seem to contradict this norm,

but this rather points to the norm being just one of several norms underlying journalistic practice.

In sum, news criteria provide a logical starting point for understanding the dynamics

of modern mass media. But only a starting point. There is no fixed answer to how they should be

interpreted and therefore we need to include the watch dog norm and the norm of objectivity. These

different norms highlight that the relevance of actors is sometimes gauged from the perspective of

societal problems and failures, where a critical focus on incumbents is highly relevant, and at other

times from the perspective of political conflicts or party competition, implying that the issue of

impartiality and balance between contenders is crucial. Still, a key question remains if we are to

predict variation in the coverage of political actors: when will each of the two norms dominate.

Here, we need an understanding of the political context as well.

The political context is partly dictated by formal rules like the distinction between

routine and election times. However, to understand how the political context interacts with media

dynamics, we need more than just the formal rules. Therefore, we draw on policy agenda-setting

literature. As argued by Wolfe et al. (2013), this literature has been rather separate from media

studies, although they address related questions about attention dynamics. From a policy agenda-

setting perspective, media dynamics often reinforce political dynamics and vice versa. Thus, the

policy agenda-setting perspective allows us to focus on the aspects of the political context which

interact with media dynamics.

Policy agenda-setting literature has pointed to the importance of the government vs.

opposition dynamic (Green-Pedersen & Mortensen 2009; Vliegenhart et al 2011; Thesen 2013).

Governments face the responsibility of all kinds of policy problems. Very often the media hold

incumbents accountable for the both the existence and solving of these problems. The opposition

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will often use news stories about societal problems to attack the government, but at the same time

the opposition enjoys flexibility. It can react to the news stories that if finds particularly attractive,

for instance news that directly questions government competence (Thesen 2013). Governments find

themselves in a much less flexible situation. When the media or political opponents raise questions

about societal problems, the government has to respond whether or not government action is a cause

of the problems at all or whether the government actually has any chance to do something about the

problems. This understanding of the opposition/government dynamic is in line with the well-known

“cost of ruling” finding, i.e. governments loose electoral support over time (e.g. Paldam & Scott

1995). Thus, the other side of the formal power of governments is their costly responsibility for all

kind of societal problems.

In sum, the argument of this paper is that political context conditions how multiple,

and sometimes conflicting, media norms and news values are applied in practice, and thus which

political actors receive coverage. Note that this is an extended ‘political system perspective’,

focusing on more than formal political power without arguing that formal power is not important. In

the following this leads to a set of hypotheses that allow us to test a number of implications of the

above argument, and at the same time go beyond the “reflection of power” perspective. Again, the

point is not that the latter is wrong, but rather that it should be supplemented considerably in order

to better explain the media appearances of political parties.

How does media coverage of politicians vary?

Our point of departure is that news values that encourage a “reflection of power” together with the

watch dog norm create a clear incumbency bonus in media coverage of political actors. Thus, in line

with the existing literature, our first hypothesis reads:

H1: Incumbents get more media coverage than challengers.

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However, as argued above we are looking to expand this finding through explaining variation in the

incumbency bonus. First, we argue that political balance in the news is likely to vary according to

where we are in the representational cycle. Following up the argument above, the idea is that news

coverage of political actors follow the dynamics of the government-opposition competition. The

general rule is that a focus on policy issues is consistent with a focus on incumbents. However,

routine times and election campaigns provide different contexts in this respect. In routine times, the

opposition-government dynamic centers on the many societal problems that surface in news

coverage, and media attention is therefore concentrated on the government due to its policy

responsibility (see above). In other words, the watch dog norm and news values related to negativity

and the elite status or power (of government) dominate decisions about newsworthiness. The

journalistic norm of balance between coverage of incumbents and opposition parties plays a less

prominent role.

However, in line with the neutral or informational professionalism in modern

journalism, the application of different news values or norms vary according to the political reality

being covered. And during election campaigns the political reality, and thus the role of different

news norms and values, changes. Part of an election campaign is of course about how the

government has performed, which still leads to an incumbency focus. But an election campaign is

also about what the future government will do, as incumbents and challengers debate which issues

need to be addressed and which solutions need to be applied. This means that the media will pay

attention to, and inform the electorate about, the different contenders’ platforms and ideas, and that

there is less time to discuss the constant media stream of information on current societal problems.

Not least, elections are contests, and during these contests the norm of objectivity demands more

balance between the media visibility of incumbents and challengers. Furthermore, the news value of

conflict increases its importance vis-à-vis negativity and power as determinants of newsworthiness.

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Overall then, during election campaigns opposition parties (and parties without representation) are

more relevant and newsworthy because they’re in the contest, running for seats, office and future

influence. And because the opposition-government game during campaigns does not concentrate

exclusively on how the incumbents are handling the day-to-day challenges and problems

communicated in the media. The expectations derived from this argument are summarized in our

second hypothesis:

H2: The incumbency bonus is larger in routine times politics than during election campaigns.

Pursuing the argument above, it is important to take into account that the nature and level of conflict

between government and opposition does not only vary between campaigns and routine times

politics. In between elections, different policy issues vary in the interest that they attract from the

political system. The level of conflict varies according to how politicized issues are. As argued

above, the incumbency bonus is partly the result of the greater flexibility of the opposition.

Opposition parties can choose not to react to news stories if they find no interest in competing on

them. Typically, these are news stories on depoliticized issues that attract little attention in the

media and the public. Incumbents are on the other hand obliged to respond, as they hold policy

responsibility regardless of issue saliency or politicization. In contrast, when attention is high in

media and the public, opposition parties will want to join the media coverage otherwise being

unable to communicate their engagement, and positions, on salient political issues.

From the perspective of the media, and the role and importance of different news

values, issues that are not politicized are also less interesting because they lack the conflict between

political competitors that could sustain further coverage. When they nevertheless reach the media,

this is due largely to the watch dog norm. The media cover all sorts of negative issue developments,

not only those which are already attracting interest in party competition, looking to confront those

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in office. Balanced coverage is thus of less relevance. However, when the media reports on

politicized issues, or when news become politicized, conflict and party competition is one of the

key news values. Consequently, the norm of objectivity and the goal of dividing attention more

equally among the different contenders become more important. Overall then, the size of the

incumbency bonus is expected to vary with the degree of attention to issues in the media:

H3: The incumbency bonus is greater for issues that attract little media attention compared to

highly salient issues.

The argument behind the general incumbency bonus was that the power of incumbents, through

their policy relevance, creates a dominance in media coverage. It follows from this that the

incumbency bonus should vary according to government strength. A majority government, not

depending on the support of opposition parties to pass legislation, should as a consequence produce

the highest incumbency bonus. Minority governments that need to negotiate support with one or

several opposition parties would on the other hand, in theory, share some of the incumbency bonus

with their external support parties. Note however also that the strength of minority governments

vary and that those who rely on stable and predictable support in parliament will suffer fewer

parliamentary defeats and exert a stronger influence on policymaking. We argue that the news

media not only consider who’s in office (and who’s not), but also pick up on the details of how

policy responsibility is shared in a political system. In line with our focus on a more active media,

we also underline that concentration of power is likely to strengthen the watch dog role. Not only

because it makes it easier to identify, and communicate, who’s responsible. But also because the

watch dog norm implies that the media will counterweight concentration of power. We therefore

expect the media to invest more resources in controlling and challenging strong governments that

for instance are able to control information and keep important discussions and decision-making

processes behind closed doors. Overall, the fourth proposition is therefore that:

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H4: The incumbency bonus increases with the government’s parliamentary strength.

Furthermore, as noted in the above argument, the sharing of policy responsibility typical of minority

rule enhances the policy influence of the opposition. Or more precisely, it means that opposition

parties belonging to the same block as the government often will enjoy more influence than

opposition parties of the opposing block. According to the general argument underlying the

incumbency bonus, this should create a similar bonus – a support party bonus – distinguishing

between the level of media coverage for different opposition parties. This bonus is however not

only related to the news value of elite status or power of support parties. Support parties are also

interesting from a media perspective because they hold blackmail potential vis-à-vis government.

When a minority government proposes new policies then, there will often be considerable media

interest related to how support parties respond. This feature of minority rule, and the special role of

external support parties, adds a special dynamic of interest to the media, namely a conflict within

the government bloc (between parties in office and parties outside office but in the same bloc). In

sum, the political context of minority rule means that some opposition parties are deemed more

newsworthy than others, as seen from both the news value of power and of conflict. As a fifth

proposition then, we expect to find that:

H5: Government support parties appear more in the news than opposition parties that support the

alternative government.

To sum up, the argument states that what shapes media coverage of politics is the interaction

between media norms and political context. During an election campaign the norm of political

balance increases its importance relative to the news values of negativity and elite status/power and

this reduces the incumbency bonus. Politics during routine times is centered around media coverage

of societal problems and how governments respond to them. Due to their negativity bias the media

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come to reinforce the government and opposition logic, making political news into a question of

what the government has done, should have done or will do. However, once a political conflict

breaks out where the opposition enters, norms of objectivity and political balance reduces the

incumbency bonus. The parliamentary strength of the government will also be important because it

influences how much the government needs to take the opposition parties into account when trying

to provide solutions to government problems, and because the watch dog role is proportional to the

concentration of power.

Data

Most of the studies of media appearances have so far relied on studies of election campaigns (see

Semetko 1996; Brants & van Praag 2006; Hopman et al. 2011; Schoenbach et al. 2001.; Asp 2006:

Schulz & Zeh 2006). There are thus only a few studies (Walgrave & de Swert 2005, de Swert &

Walgrave 2002) looking at media appearance in general, and the incumbent bonus in particular,

outside of election campaigns. In the following we draw on a unique dataset of Danish radio news

from 1984-2003. The dataset which contains more than 190.000 news features, provides the

opportunity to study media appearances of political actors over time and in varying contexts.

News features were coded twice daily using the issues addressed in Danish radio news (at

noon and 6.30 pm) when long versions of the hourly radio news were broadcast. The radio news

were produced by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR), which in this period could be said to

enjoy a de-facto monopoly on broadcasting radio news nationally. The database covers the period

1984-2003. Studies of the Danish media system (Lund 2002), which indicate that many stories

originate in the major national newspapers, but that the radio news is the most important filter for

stories raised in the newspapers to make it into the TV news in the evening. Radio news thus link

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newspapers and TV, thereby constituting the best single source for measuring the agenda of the

mass media in general.1

Besides the coding of the issue content of the news features, the dataset also contains coding

of the political actors in the news features. What has been coded is actor prominence or appearance,

not just visibility. Thus political actors were only coded when they actually expressed a statement or

when their statements were presented. This means that when an actor is just mentioned, for instance

criticized, the actor is not coded. So if a party criticizes the government, only the party is coded, not

the government. The coding allowed for including multiple actors, for instance groups of parties

jointly presenting a statement. Other actors than parties like interest groups, experts, and public

organizations were also coded. Green-Pedersen & Stubager (2007) contain the details of the coding.

Operationalization and descriptive findings

To investigate the hypotheses, we first of all need an operationalization of which parties are

considered the “incumbent parties” and which parties are considered opposition parties. The Danish

party system is organized around a bloc of left wing and a bloc of right-wing parties. The left-wing

bloc consists of the Social Democrats, the Socialist People’s Party and more extreme left-wing

parties. Typically, the Social Liberals have also supported the left-wing bloc, although in certain

periods it has supported the right-wing bloc. This was for instance the case from 1982 to 1993. The

right-wing bloc consists of the Liberals and the Conservatives and the radical right-wing parties.

The two small center parties, the Centre Democrats and Christian People’s Party have typically also

supported the right-wing bloc. Denmark has a tradition of minority government meaning that not all

parties from a bloc actually take part in the government. However, all parties clearly belong to a

bloc when it comes to the question of government formation and even the center parties which have

1 Probably due to their limited tradition for “self-made” stories, the Danish radio news have never been subject to any regulation of their coverage during election times for instance requiring a certain balance in their coverage.

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sometimes changed bloc always indicate before an election which bloc they will support (Green-

Pedersen & Thomsen 2005).

The incumbent parties are of course the parties in government, but the question is

which parties can be considered the opposition in the sense of the government alternative. Here

there are two options, namely either to include just the parties who were likely to form an

alternative government or to include all the parties belonging to the opposite bloc of the

government.2 In the following, we mainly compare the appearance of the incumbent parties with the

parties who constitute the alternative government, but we also try out an alternative

operationalization where we include the entire bloc of opposition parties. In this case, we also

include the parties from the government bloc, which are not in government but that could be

regarded as part of the government’s parliamentary basis (support parties).

When analyzing the data in the following, we have chosen to reduce the dataset in two

ways. First of all, we have excluded the large number of news features (approx. 70 000) which

reports political news from abroad with no relation to Danish politics. This could for instance be a

civil war somewhere or a US presidential election. Second, our argument applies to political news,

which we have proxied by selecting only those news features about Denmark which actually

contains a political actor. This leaves us with 31 003 news features for the analyses. These

reductions have been made to avoid that the dataset is full of a large number of irrelevant

observations.

As the first step in our analysis, we simply look at the incumbency bonus pr. year and

pr. election. Figure 1 clearly supports H1, showing the existence of a considerable incumbency

2 Which parties would have formed an alternative government is of course not completely certain. But the parties have always made it clear in advance whether they had ambitions of joining a government or not, so in practice this has been rather easy to determine.

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bonus every year varying from 32% in 1992 to 55% in 1996. Further, an alternative

operationalization provides a very similar picture, though the bonus is typically slightly higher.

Figure 1: The development of the incumbency bonus, 1984-2003.

Figure 1 also shows no clear diminishing trend over time. If anything, the trend is towards an

increasing bonus. Thus to the extent that an increasing “tabloidization” of Danish radio news has

taken place,3 it has not caused a decreasing incumbency bonus.4

Table 1 looks specifically at election campaigns. Generally, the size of the bonus is smaller as also

predicted by hypothesis H2. The average bonus during election campaign is smaller than the lowest

3 Binderkrantz & Green-Pedersen (2009) investigate the tabloidization of Danish radio news and do not find an increasing tabloidization, except during election campaigns. 4 Hopmann et al. (2011) do also not find a clear trend in the size of the incumbency bonus when analyzing Danish election campaigns from 1994 to 2007 based on TV coverage

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Incumbency bonus*

Alternativeoperationalization**

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annual size of the bonus as shown in figure 1. However, the size of the bonus during election

campaigns appears more varying than during routine rimes. 5

Table 1: The development of the incumbent bonus in election campaigns. Election year Bonus 1984 21.7 % 1987 23.1 % 1988 33.0 % 1990 40.7 % 1994 49.3 % 1998 23.8 % 2001 14.3 % Total 30.1 %

As a first step in the analysis, we can examine H2 by testing whether the average incumbency bonus

differs between routine and election times. Table 2 clearly confirms this. Thus, the argument of this

paper that routine and election times provide very different contexts, which lead to different sizes of

the incumbency bonus, can clearly be supported.6 However, to test these ideas and the other

hypotheses, we need to model all variables of interest simultaneously. In the subsequent analyses,

we therefore use the media appearances of the actors (government (incumbents) vs alternative

government (challengers), or government support parties vs alternative government support parties)

as the dependent variable in a set of multivariate models trying to explain the incumbency bonus.

By just looking at the media appearances pr. year (or even per month) we would not be able to

5 Like in routine times, election times also provide no clear trend over time. The bonus rises until 1994, but then declines. This is very similar to the findings of Hopmann et al. (2011) which analyse election campaigns from 1994 to 2007. 6 Similar to the analysis of Hopmann et al. (2011), table 1 also provides evidence that the stronger the chances of re-election are, the stronger incumbency bonus. The government in 1994 was a majority government, which was sure to continue in office though perhaps as a minority government after the election. Along the same lines, the government running for re-election in 1998 was very uncertain whether it could continue, and the government running in 2001 was clearly expected to lose. The exception seems to be the government running in 1990, which was in a very uncertain position, but still enjoyed a large incumbency bonus.

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capture the hypothesized variation across election campaigns and routine times, and between highly

salient and less salient issues. Therefore, the following analyses have weeks X issues as the unit of

analysis, and consequently models media appearances pr. week pr. issue. The issues in the

following are 27 policy issues like health, education, defense etc.

Table 2. Incumbency bonus routine times vs election campaigns, mean comparison. Mean incumbency bonus

Routine times 45.0

Election campaigns 30.1

Difference 14.9***

* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

Table 3 displays the variables applied in the multivariate models. The dependent variable – media

appearances - is measured relative to all political news. If for instance the incumbents have a score

of 75 percent, this means that a minimum of one government actor is present in 3 out of 4 news

features on a given issue topic a given week. The dummy variable incumbents distinguishes

between government/incumbents (1) and alternative government/challengers (0), while incumbent

support separates government support parties (1) from alternative government support parties (0).

The coefficients of these dummies are used to test the existence of an incumbency bonus (H1) and a

support party bonus (H5). The variable election campaign simply marks the campaign weeks in the

dataset (note that an election campaign in Denmark usually lasts about three weeks). News saliency

is operationalized as the count of news features for each unit (week X issue). Parliamentary strength

was measured as the share of seats that a party category held in the Parliament. The latter three

variables are interacted with the incumbent-dummy to test H2, H3 and H5. Due to results finding

that opinion polls affect media coverage (Hopman et al. 2011), we also include a variable indicating

the poll standing of the different party categories (government, alternative government, government

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support, alternative government support)7. Finally, government color (Right of center government)

was included as a control variable.

Table 3. Descriptives of variables in the multivariate models. Variable Mean Std. dev. Min Max Dependent variable: Media appearances (share of all political news) 46.25 43.33 0 100 Independent variables: Incumbents* 0.5 0.50 0 1 Incumbent support** 0.5 0.50 0 1 Election campaign 0.021 0.143 0 1 News saliency 5.327 4.866 1 60 Parliamentary strength – incumbents and challengers* 37.91 4.954 30.86 50.86 Parliamentary strength – support parties** 11.67 3.485 6.286 18.286 Poll standing – incumbents and challengers* 36.29 4.269 -23.2 46.0 Poll standing – support parties** 11.63 3.836 0 25.2 Right of centre government 0.561 0.496 0 1 *Applied in the models comparing the media appearances of government and alternative government, testing H1, H2, H3 and H4. ** Applied in the model comparing the media appearances of government support parties and alternative government support parties, testing H5.

Results

For the multivariate analyses we have estimated multilevel models using STATA (xtmixed command)

with restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimations. The estimation relies on both fixed effects

(coefficients) and random effects (random intercepts). The dataset consists of crossed panels, with 27

issue categories repeated over 1059 weeks for both incumbents and challengers (27 x 1059 x 2 =

57186). As explained earlier however, we only estimate relationships for those units (weeks X issue

categories) where a minimum of 1 political actor appears in the news. Thus the number of cases is

reduced to 25194.

7 Surveys performed by Gallup, data available through Askham-Christensen (2012).

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Explaining the incumbency bonus

Table 4 presents 5 models, where the first only includes main effects while the subsequent three

show the results for each of the proposed interaction effects (H2, H3, H4). We use the full model

(5) to evaluate the hypotheses.

Table 4. Multilevel model (weeks and issue categories), dependent variable: Media appearances (pct) of incumbents and challengers (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Incumbents 47.55*** 47.68*** 49.30*** 32.16*** 34.10*** (0.640) (0.641) (0.861) (4.659) (4.695) Election campaign 2.271 6.825** 2.271 2.018 6.343** (1.549) (2.190) (1.549) (1.551) (2.192) News saliency 0.0792+ 0.0792+ 0.204** 0.0804+ 0.201** (0.0467) (0.0467) (0.0623) (0.0467) (0.0623) Parliamentary strength 0.502*** 0.510*** 0.498*** 0.204+ 0.211+ (0.0767) (0.0767) (0.0767) (0.118) (0.118) Poll standing -0.493*** -0.491*** -0.490*** -0.450*** -0.446*** (0.0662) (0.0662) (0.0662) (0.0674) (0.0674) Right of center government 0.0350 0.0603 0.0313 0.000763 0.0216 (0.480) (0.480) (0.480) (0.480) (0.480) Incumbent X Election campaign

-9.106** -8.643** (3.096) (3.097)

Incumbent X Saliency

-0.250** -0.240** (0.0825) (0.0825)

Incumbent X Parliamentary strength

0.420*** 0.416*** (0.126) (0.126)

Constant 20.80*** 20.34*** 19.97*** 29.60*** 28.29*** (2.563) (2.567) (2.577) (3.679) (3.693) RE parameters Sd. Level 1 (issues) 3.186*** 3.186*** 3.186*** 3.177*** 3.177*** (0.510) (0.510) (0.510) (0.509) (0.509) Sd. Level 2 (weeks) .000000210*

.000000215*

.000000214*

.000000207*

.000000216*

(.000000130) (.000000132) (.000000131) (.000000138) (.000000139) Sd. Residual 35.15*** 35.14*** 35.14*** 35.14*** 35.13*** (0.157) (0.157) (0.157) (0.157) (0.157) N 25194 25194 25194 25194 25194 chi2 12862.6*** 12875.2*** 12876.0*** 12878.9*** 12903.5*** Standard errors in parentheses + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Overall, the results reflect a confirmation of the theoretical perspective and the expectations

developed in previous sections. First, as expected (H1) and already indicated in Figure 1,

20

incumbency have as strong and positive impact on the share of media coverage that political actors

get. Second, in line with H2, the gap in media appearances between incumbents and challengers is

reduced during election campaigns, as the negative and significant coefficient for the interaction of

incumbents and election campaign indicates. Table 5 spells out this interaction effect, showing that

while incumbents experience a small reduction in coverage during campaigns, challengers increase

their appearances by more than 6 percentage points.

Table 5. Adjusted predictions, incumbent and challenger news coverage in routine and election times.

Routine times

Election campaigns

Difference elections-routine

Incumbents 69.70 67.40 -2.30 Challengers 21.48 27.82 6.34 Difference

incumbents-challengers 48.22 39.58 -8.64

Third, news saliency also has a negative and significant effect on incumbency dominance in media

coverage, thus supporting H3. The interaction between incumbents and news saliency is illustrated

in Figure 2, where we see that the lines representing incumbents and challengers get closer as the

number of broadcasted news features for an issue increases. Thus, when an issue attract a minimum

of media attention the incumbency bonus approaches a 50 percentage point difference, a number

which is reduced to 35 for those issues that receive maximum attention.

21

Fig 2. Adjusted margins, incumbent and challenger media appearances across varying news saliency.

Fourth, as expected in H4, parliamentary strength increases the incumbency bonus, as shown by the

positive and significant interaction between incumbents and parliamentary strength. Figure 3

illustrates the interaction, presenting adjusted predictions of media appearances across the

respective range of parliamentary strength that incumbents and challengers had in the period which

we study. The line representing incumbents is steeper, meaning that although stronger

parliamentary representation increases media coverage for both actors, the pay-off is better for

government. Thus, the potential for more media attention is considerably higher when government

strength increases compared to when the alternative government increases its parliamentary

representation. If we just concentrate on the strength-interval where the two actors overlap, a

change from a 33 to a 40 percent parliamentary base would increase incumbent coverage by 4.4

percentage points and challenger coverage by only 1.5 percentage points.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Med

ia a

ppea

ranc

es (p

ct),

linea

r pre

dict

ion

News saliency (no. of broadcasted news features)

Incumbents

Challengers

22

Fig 3. Adjusted predictions, incumbent and challenger media appearances across varying parliamentary strength.

Note that strength in opinion polls significantly reduces media appearances. From our perspective,

stressing the watch dog norm and the negativity bias of the media, this raises the question whether

the direction of causality might not be opposite that which is modeled above. In other words, it

seems slightly contra-intuitive to speak of an ‘incumbency bonus’ when governments are constantly

met with negative and critical media attention. Furthermore, the idea that a high level of media

appearances might reduce government support would provide a plausible input to the concept of

‘cost of ruling’ discussed above.

As a careful start to such a research agenda, we therefore conclude with a simple set

of Granger causality tests of the relationship between opinion polls and media appearances. When

including one and two weeks lags in the model Table 6 provides evidence of one-sided causality

going from media appearances to standing in polls. Furthermore, the effect is negative which

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Med

ia a

ppea

ranc

es (p

ct),

linea

r pre

dict

ion

Parliamentary strength (pct)

Incumbents

Challengers

23

supports the idea that media appearances may be a double-edged sword, but only when you are an

incumbent party (see model 1) and not when you belong to the opposition (see model 3 in table 6).

Table 6. Granger tests, relationship poll standing and media appearances. (1) (2) (3) (4) Incumbency

parties Incumbency

parties Challenger

parties Challenger

parties

Dependent variables

Pollst Media appearancest

Pollst Media appearancest

Independent variables

Pollst-1 0.449*** 0.490 0.510*** 0.506 (0.0116) (0.461) (0.0119) (0.635) Pollst-2 0.359*** -0.419 0.419*** -0.806 (0.0115) (0.458) (0.0119) (0.633) Media appearancest-1 -0.000333* 0.0432** -0.000180 0.0735*** (0.000130) (0.0138) (0.000103) (0.0137) Media appearancest-2 0.000174 0.0421** -0.0000199 0.0330* (0.000130) (0.0137) (0.000102) (0.0136) Constant 7.158*** 61.94*** 2.534*** 30.87*** (0.336) (4.901) (0.206) (3.805) N 7313 5380 7313 5380 X2 8070.47*** 21.81*** 26051.57*** 50.46*** Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

A support party bonus?

Finally, the question was whether there exists a ‘support party bonus’ (H5), indicating that in

systems with frequent minority governments some of the media dominance that governments in

majority systems enjoy rub off on opposition parties that support the government. If we start by

comparing means, we find that the incumbent supporters appear in 12.7 percent of the news, while

those who support the challengers figure in 8 percent. The difference is significant and substantial,

suggesting that the sharing of policy responsibility through minority rule affects the balance of

media coverage between different opposition parties.

24

Oftentimes, opposition parties that support the government will have a stronger

representation in parliament than opposition parties supporting the alternative government (as

they’re part of the winning bloc so to speak). Thus, to control for parliamentary strength and the

other variables applied in the multivariate analyses above, we ran a multivariate model comparing

the opposition parties that support the government and opposition parties that support the alternative

government. Table 7 presents the results, showing that parliamentary strength indeed explains some

of the difference in media appearances between incumbent supporters and alternative government

supporters. However, the significant and positive coefficient of the incumbent support variable

provide unambiguous support for the conclusion drawn from the simple mean comparison above.

This would seem to corroborate our expectations in H5 regarding how the special role of support

parties increases news worthiness, first of all due to their policy influence and relevance but also

because they potentially add a dimension of within-bloc conflict (between those in office and those

outside) to political news.

Table 7. Multilevel model (weeks and issue categories), dependent variable: Media appearances (pct) of government supporters and alternative government supporters (1) Incumbent support 3.739*** (0.339) Election campaign -1.001 (1.186) News saliency 0.0907** (0.0329) Share in parliament 0.445*** (0.0963) Poll standing -0.0641 (0.0794) Right of center government 0.174 (0.394) Constant 3.313*** (0.761) RE parameters Sd. Level 1 (issues) 2.314*** (0.372) Sd. Level 2 (weeks) 2.313*** (0.293)

25

Sd. Residual 24.66*** (0.112) N 25194 chi2 302.2*** Standard errors in parentheses + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

26

Conclusion

This paper has suggested a new perspective on the media appearances of political parties. Rather

than just applying the “reflection of power perspective” which has dominated the literature so far,

we argue that what determines the media appearance is the interaction between media dynamics and

the political context. Media dynamics refer to news values as traditionally highlighted (i.e. elite

status/power/prominence, negativity, conflict) but also other aspect like the norm about political

balance and critical journalism which lead to a focus on societal problems. The political context

refers to not only the formal strength of government, but most importantly also to the competition

between opposition and government, and how this changes between routine and election times and

between highly salient and less salient issues.

Thus, the incumbency bonus, which has been central in the literature so far, is the

result of how the media focus on societal problems and confront the government with the problems

as governments are expected to “solve” problems. What is interpreted as a question of government

power in the existing literature is, from our perspective, just as much a question of responsibility. In

fact, considering the critical news attention underlying the dominance of government actors in the

media, talking about an incumbency “bonus” is questionable unless negative coverage is better than

no coverage. However, it does not seem so. The analysis above indicated that increases in the

incumbency bonus in one week leads to a drop in opinion polls in the following week. When the

political context shifts to election times, the journalistic norm about political balance gains

increasing importance and thus reduces the incumbency bonus.

Understanding the mechanisms behind the incumbency bonus is also relevant in

relation to the broader question about the interaction between media and politics. Like the “balance

of power” discussion which dominated studies of the mutual relationship between the media agenda

27

and the political agenda (van Noije et al 2008), the literature on media appearances has also tended

to discuss whether a media or a political logic generates the incumbency bonus. However as seen

from the perspective of this paper, the contrastation between a media and a political perspective is

somewhat misplaced. The key challenge is rather to understand how media dynamics and the

political context interact. Thus the combination of the negativity bias of mass media and the

government vs. opposition dynamics is crucial in generating the incumbency bonus. News values

and thus media dynamics are important in themselves, but their ability to explain variations with

regards to who gets in the media is limited when not attached to a political context. The political

context is reflected through a mirror of media dynamics which leads to a certain structure of media

appearances.

For further research into how media covers politics, much further research into the

political context is required. This paper has clearly shown that election campaigns, which have

typically been studied in the existing literature, is a quite different context than routine times. One

way to achieve further variation in the political context is to focus on cross-national studies.

Schönbach et al (2001) found considerable variation in their study of election campaigns in

Germany and the Netherlands and linking the discussion much more to the rising literature on

media systems (e.g. Esser & Umbrich 2013) is a way to explore the importance of the political

context much further.

28

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Appendix

Government From Incumbents Government support

Alternative government

Alternative government support

Incumbency bonus*

Alternative operational-ization**

N

Schlüter I 01.01.1984 (10.09.1982) Con, Lib, CD, CPP SocLib, ProgP SocDem SPP, LS 41.3 % 42.7 % 6454

Schlüter II 10.09.1987 Con, Lib, CD, CPP SocLib, ProgP SocDem SPP 36.3 % 37.0 % 1315

Schlüter III 03.06.1988 Con, Lib, SocLib ProgP, CD, CPP SocDem SPP 45.9 % 47.7 % 4232

Schlüter IV 18.12.1990 Con, Lib SocLib, ProgP, CD, CPP SocDem SPP 34.6 % 41.3 % 3662

Nyrup I 25.01.1993 SocDem, SocLib, CD, CPP SPP, Lib, Con ProgP 52.3 % 55.1 % 2968

Nyrup II 27.09.1994 SocDem, SocLib, CD SPP, RGA Lib, Con DPP, ProgP 53.1 % 55.9 % 3384

Nyrup III 30.12.1996 SocDem, SocLib SPP, RGA, CD Lib, Con DPP, ProgP 46.6 % 54.2 % 1838

Nyrup IV 23.03.1998 SocDem, SocLib SPP, RGA, CD Lib, Con DPP, ProgP 44.9 % 52.6 % 4631

Fogh I 27.11.2001 Lib, Con DPP SocDem, SocLib SPP, RGA 47.4 % 47.3 % 2519

Total

44.6 % 48.1 % 31003

Parties: Con = Conservative Party, Lib = Liberal Party, CD= Center Democrats, CPP = Christian’s People Party, SocLib = Social Liberal Party, SocDem = Social Democrats, ProgP = Progress party, RGA = Red Green Alliance, DPP = Danish People’s Party, LS = Left Socialists.