Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Walgrave, Stefaan; Lefevere, Jonas; Nuytemans, Michiel

doi:10.1080/10584600902850718

Cited by 123 publications

(154 citation statements)

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“…Yet, even though our rich data set allows us to test our hypotheses in a real-life setting, we do acknowledge the difficulty of isolating the independent impact of the separate content characteristics with observational data. For instance, issue performance in the media is also part of evaluative news (Walgrave et al, 2009). Accordingly, there might be some overlap between our operationalization of evaluative news and issue news, causing the effect of issue news to be somewhat underestimated.…”

Section: The Impact Of Issues Party Visibility and Evaluations On Vmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A study on the sources of issue ownership showed that while party programs affect long-term perceptions of issue ownership, media coverage has a more immediate effect on issue ownership perception (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007). In addition, recent experimental research (Bos, Lefevere, Thijssen, & Sheets, 2016;Dahlberg & Martinsson, 2015;Tresch, Lefevere, & Walgrave, 2015;Walgrave et al, 2009) has shown that news messages can affect issue ownership perceptions and vote preferences on the short term. These findings are confirmed by a longitudinal study of the Dutch 2010 election campaign, which shows that "issue ownership is rather unstable at the individual level, due to news attention peaks for specific issues" (Kleinnijenhuis & Walter, 2014, p. 241).…”

Section: Issue News and Vote Switchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theoretically, we expect issue news to be related to electoral volatility based on recent research showing that issue ownership also has a volatile component (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007;Walgrave, Lefevere, & Nuytemans, 2009;Walgrave, Lefevere, & Tresch, 2014). The stable component comes from parties' distinctive constituencies (Stubager & Slothuus, 2012).…”

Section: Issue News and Vote Switchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the current study we test our model at the micro level to understand the effect of issue news on individual-level vote change, explained by issue ownership theory. We test agenda setting and priming implicitly by examining whether media attention for owned issues induces vote switching.Theoretically, we expect issue news to be related to electoral volatility based on recent research showing that issue ownership also has a volatile component (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007;Walgrave, Lefevere, & Nuytemans, 2009;Walgrave, Lefevere, & Tresch, 2014). The stable component comes from parties' distinctive constituencies (Stubager & Slothuus, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Geers¹,

Bos

2016

Political Communication

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Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors-such as the media's coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign-have become more important for voters' decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Building on theories of agenda setting, (affective) priming, and issue ownership, the current study aims to explain why certain news aspects lead voters to switch their vote choice. We theorize it is the visibility of a party, the evaluation of a party, and the attention for issues owned by a party that primes voters to switch to a certain party. We use national panel survey data (N = 765) and link this to an extensive content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers in the run up to the 2012 Dutch national elections. The results show that issue news leads to vote change in the direction of the party that owns the issue. Even stronger is the effect of party visibility on vote switching. Our results, however, find the strongest support for the effect of party evaluations on vote change: More favorable news about a party increases switching to that party. Keywords campaign news, content analysis, media effects, panel data, voting behaviorIn the past three decades the number of floating voters in Western democracies has increased considerably. The linkages between parties and citizens are of declining importance (Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000) and voters make more independent political choices instead of relying on traditional loyalties (Van der Meer, Van Elsas, Lubbe, & Van der Brug, 2013). As a consequence, citizens switch more often between parties than they did before, not only between elections, but also during election campaigns. With the decline in voter loyalty, sociological determinants have lost much of their predictive power (Dalton, 2013 Marks, 1999; Van der Meer et al., 2013) and results are scattered. Some report positive correlations between media use and volatility (Baker et al., 2006;Forrest & Marks, 1999), while others find a negative relationship (e.g., Bybee et al., 1981) and some find no effect (Dassonneville, 2011). Although these studies give insight into the effect of media use, the effect of media coverage is understudied.More recent studies have investigated whether different types of campaign coverage, most notably issue news and contest or strategic news, have an effect on individual-level vote switching (Adriaansen, Van Praag, & De Vreese, 2012;Takens, 2013). Adriaansen and colleagues (2012) found that issue news can induce voter uncertainty, whereas strategic news decreases voter uncertainty. This voter uncertainty would subsequently spark electoral volatility. In contrast, the study by Takens (2013) showed that voters become volatile in response to contest news, while issue news leads to stability in vote preferences. In this stud...

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Section: The Impact Of Issues Party Visibility and Evaluations On Vmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Issue News and Vote Switchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Issue News and Vote Switchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Geers¹,

Bos

2016

Political Communication

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“…Existing research has made clear that the public often perceives differences between political parties (and their members) when it comes to the ability to address specific issues, handle specific problems, or embody specific traits (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1994;Belanger 2003;Budge and Farlie 1983;Doherty 2008;Dulio and Trumbore 2009;Goble and Holm 2009;Hayes 2005;Holian 2004;Petrocik 1996;Petrocik, Benoit, and Hansen 2003;Pope and Woon 2009;Stubager and Slothuus 2013;Walgrave, Lefevere, and Nuytemans 2009;Walgrave, Lefevere, and Tresch 2012). This concept is referred to in the literature as issue ownership.…”

Section: Issue Ownership and Why Latino Candidates Might Own Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Owning Immigration: Messenger Ethnicity, Issue Ownership, and Support for Latino Candidates

Shortle

Johnson

2017

J. Race Ethnicity Politics

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Abstract:The public opinion literature stresses the importance of source cues in determining which types of messages affect attitudes and which types do not. Building upon such research, we seek to determine if messenger ethnicity influences how individuals evaluate candidates speaking on immigration in the context of a campaign. Do Americans (and Anglo Americans in particular) view Latino candidates as more experienced, stronger leaders, more trustworthy, and more qualified on immigration than Anglo candidates? Moreover, do such relationships hold regardless of the valence of the message itself ? Through an original survey experiment presenting subjects with immigration talk on the campaign trail, we find Latino candidates are reviewed more positively than Anglo candidates when it comes to the immigration messages they speak (especially when it comes to pro-immigration messages). Such findings give us insight into whether or not Latino candidates have the potential to "own" the issue of immigration, as well as offering another path by which Latino candidates can gain a strong foothold with the public in the context of a campaign.

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The Policy Agendas of Liberal and Illiberal Democracy (1990–2018)

Pokornyi

Sághy

2021

Policy Agendas in Autocracy, and Hybrid Regimes

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Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Cited by 123 publications

References 20 publications

Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Priming Issues, Party Visibility, and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Owning Immigration: Messenger Ethnicity, Issue Ownership, and Support for Latino Candidates

The Policy Agendas of Liberal and Illiberal Democracy (1990–2018)

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