No abstract

The role of the media in the creation of distrust is much debated in political communication. Will negative news, for example, relentless attacks on political authorities, result in political cynicism or in a stimulation effect? By and large the media may stimulate political participation, but it is less clear when negative news will nullify this effect. Negative news may not only have short-term behavioral effects but also effects on underlying attitudes such as trust in politicians, which may produce their "sleeper effect" on political behavior only in the long run. This article addresses two related research questions. Will negative news discourage trust in political leaders? Will trust have a sleeper effect for future party choice and future turnout within the months to come? The 2002 Dutch election campaign,being an unprecedented negative campaign as compared to other Dutch campaigns, provides a good case to investigate these questions. On the basis of a biweekly seven-wave panel survey study and a daily content analysis of television news and newspapers,negative news was found to have a significant effect on trust in party leaders in addition to prior vote preference and education.The distrust in party leaders also had a significant sleeper effect in the long run on turnout and on the actual vote in addition to previous intentions.In general,these findings support the malaise theory. They are helpful to explain why the Christian-Democrats could win the elections in defiance of the polls.Trust refers to a high estimation of the competence, honesty, or reliability of the one who is trusted, according to the expectations or norms of the beholder. Trust in government has decreased in recent decades, particularly in the United States (Chanley et al.2000;Hetherington 1998;Nye 1997). A decrease in political trust and a negative evaluation of government performance have been observed in European countries as well, albeit at a more moderate level than in 86 Press/Politics 11(2):86-104

Different “paradigmatic” approaches to explain news effects on voting may supplement each other, because their starting points are based on different news types in political campaign news: news on issue positions of parties, news on real‐world developments, news on support or criticism for parties, and news on success and failure of parties. Daily content analysis data and a weekly multiwave panel survey from the 2003 election campaign in the Netherlands are used for a simultaneous test. A logistic regression analysis demonstrates that the paradigmatic approaches supplement each other. The data reveal a huge impact of the news from a campaigner’s point of view in spite of a huge variety in responses to the news at the level of individual respondents.

The media logic thesis holds that the content of political news is the product of news values and format requirements that media make use of to attract news consumers. This study tests whether three content characteristics – personalized, contest and negative coverage – manifest a single media logic by analysing whether they co-vary over time. It also tests the implicit assumption underlying the media logic thesis that media adhere to a single media logic as one institution. A semantic network analysis measured the degree to which television and newspaper coverage of five Dutch national election campaigns (1998–2010) contained the three content characteristics. The study shows that personalized, contest and negative coverage form three indicators of a single logic that is shared by different media. Since the turn of the century, Dutch political news has simultaneously become decreasingly personalized, less focused on the contest and less negative.

This study examines 'participatory journalism' from the perspective of participants. Through a series of in-depth interviews with 32 participants from two different participatory journalistic environments set up by professional news organizations, we investigated how participants view and evaluate their participation in journalism. We propose that participants views progress through a series of four stages: anticipation, participation, evaluation and reconsideration. A clear breach is observed between the stage of anticipation and evaluation. We propose that this breach could be couched in terms of both a need and a wish for reciprocity, but also a lack of it. The term 'reciprocity' is inspired by Lewis et al.'s notion of 'reciprocal journalism' and Loosen and Schmidt's conceptualization of journalism as a 'social system'. Implications for the study of participatory journalism and journalism practitioners are discussed.