Abstract
In this impressive study of news production, content, and reception in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain, four distinguished scholars forge new paths for comparative political communication research and present a number of surprising, if sometimes provocative, findings about how political journalism can best serve democracy.
The research design alone provides ample cause for celebration. Albæk, van Dalen, Jebril, and de Vreese succeed as few others have before them in bridging the gap between media sociology (production and content) and political communication (effects) research. In highly original and systematic fashion, they combine cross-sectional surveys of journalists, framing analysis of popular/tabloid and elite press and commercial and public service broadcasting, and panel surveys of audiences (linking public attitudes to exposure to specific media outlets and their particular patterns of framing).
The book is divided into three parts. The first part presents journalistic practices, operationalized as journalistic perceptions of political and commercial constraints and role perceptions. The second part examines news content, focusing on three fundamental oppositions characterizing political journalistic style (pragmatic vs. sacerdotal, impartial vs. partisan, and information vs. entertainment) and linking these content styles to journalistic practices. The third part analyzes how different mixes of practices and content produce different types of aggregate national and individual level audience effects (public knowledge, cynicism, and overall satisfaction with the media).
Albæk and colleagues are engaged in a project both relativist (mostly at the descriptive level) and universalist (at the causal and normative level). The relativist project is consistent with Hallin and Mancini’s tripartite typology of media systems, and the book extends this institutional analysis by testing and ultimately demonstrating consistent, if not always expected, differences in news content and audience effects between the liberal (United Kingdom), democratic corporatist (Germany, Denmark), and polarized pluralist (Spain) models. Their evidence strongly refutes claims of uniform levels and types of mediatization in perceived production environment and actual content and audience effects. In general, they find more consistent and substantial cross-national than cross-outlet differences, demonstrating the ultimately decisive shaping power of national journalistic fields.
Spanish journalists are the most likely to complain of all types of pressures, especially political, but also commercial (budget, advertising, audiences, and competition), and Danish the least. Spanish journalists are also most sacerdotal (operationalized as inclination to fully report on national politics even if the public is not interested) and partisan; U.K. journalists are most likely to see their role as providing entertainment over information. Surveys also examined journalists’ attitudes toward politicians and spin doctors and found that Spanish journalists were the most cynical.
These perceptions are then linked to news content. Although the cross-national differences vary somewhat depending on medium, the authors find that a sacerdotal role conception (especially in Spain) increases the overall focus on political news and decreases the use of the conflict, game, and human-interest frames. Spain’s partisan role conceptions are linked to the most partisan biased tone (high political parallelism) while the United Kingdom’s dominant entertainment role conceptions correlate with the greatest focus on scandals and politicians’ private lives.
The book stumbles when it presents surveyed journalists’ perceptions of pressures as firm evidence of actual pressures, which may be quite different. Cross-national differences in both journalist and audience perceptions could be accounted for in part by national economic or culture influenced propensities for optimism, satisfaction, or reflexivity (e.g., as noted below, is the Spanish public really less satisfied with its journalism than is the Danish public, or are Spanish citizens in general more restrained in their expressions of satisfaction?). In general, the reliance on conscious self-perceptions is problematic in that it provides a limited account of human action, ignoring its often taken-for-granted habitual character.
Be that as it may, this oversight may not matter that much if the authors can show a link between journalists’ “perceived” pressures, their level of cynicism toward politics, news content, and ultimately audience cynicism and other attitudes. In this complex, fine-tuned analysis with universalist aspirations, the authors largely succeed at the causal level but draw some debatable normative conclusions.
Comparing knowledge about U.S. politics before and after exposure to U.S. election news coverage in Denmark, Britain, and Spain, the authors show that exposure to conflict and human-interest framing increases political knowledge, especially for those with low political interest.
In their analysis of the effects of infotainment on public cynicism, the authors usefully distinguish two types of infotainment: “privatization” (focus on scandals or politicians’ private lives) and “personalization” (presence of a “human example or human face” or any reference to emotions). Content analysis once again places Spain as the outlier, with less personalization and privatization than Denmark and Britain. Across the three countries, personalized news decreases cynicism for citizens with low political interest whereas privatized news increases cynicism for all citizens, thus demonstrating that infotainment’s effects differ depending on the specific type and the specific audience.
Finally, the book compares the extent to which audiences are more or less satisfied with the news, proceeding from the premise that media satisfaction is linked to trust in government and thus necessary for the optimal functioning of democracy. The authors show that perceptions that the news media adhere to the watchdog ideal (objectivity, factuality, and critical coverage) substantially increase levels of public satisfaction; overall, watchdog perceptions and satisfaction are lowest in Spain.
Throughout the book, the authors position themselves as optimistic contrarians. Against the widespread pessimism about the supposedly destructive effects of political journalism, they show that things are not so bad (at least in northern Europe; the United States, they concede, might be a different story). And, yet, their hopeful findings are often based on the small positive effects they find for citizens with low political interest. Generally downplayed by the authors are the negative effects on citizens with high levels of political interest, whose cynicism, for example, is increased by both privatized and personalized news: Can a healthy democracy afford to write these citizens off?
The book concludes with a strongly stated normative prescription: The single best “right mix” for political journalism is “a high degree of professionalism in journalism, a low degree of political parallelism, a strong public broadcasting system, and moderate degrees of commercialism and competition” (p. 170). This prescription is mostly unobjectionable, but it is also unnecessarily modest. For Albæk et al., it is the right mix for a low-demanding procedural model of democracy, the kind that would make Schudson’s monitorial citizen happy.
I prefer to read this book in a more ambitious light. As the authors clearly state, “Differences in citizens’ perceptions and cognition in different countries can be partly explained by the different conditions under which journalists work and by the content they produce” (p. 179). In short, supply can shape demand. If this is true, one could be excused for positing that media that provide more structural context, more critical coverage of corporate power, more opportunities for reasoned deliberation, and more encouragement for collective action just might constitute more deeply informed, engaged, and yes, (productively) dissatisfied citizens. In any case, this indispensable book will provide the template to test these and a multitude of other hypotheses about the effects of political journalism on democracy.