Content Analysis in the Research Field of Political Coverage

Abstract

Political knowledge is widely viewed as a foundation for democracy. Scholars of political communication have long argued that how citizens gain political information can only be understood by studying the media. After all, most countries have a representational form of democracy, meaning that citizens hardly interact with politics and politicians themselves, but learn about politics and its politicians through the media. The coverage of politics, and more specifically policies or political issues, in news media has been particularly and abundantly studied by scholars of agenda setting, an approach which will be the focus of this chapter.