Communicating politics. A study on the representations of the 2008 electoral campaign in the Italian daily press

Abstract

This study draws on the tradition of Social Representations theory (SRs), and is attentive to the interplay of media communication and cultural systems. Under the hypothesis of a return to videocracy and unidirectional communication marginalizing citizens, we explored representations of the 2008 election campaign in the Italian press. We selected three newspapers diversified by ideological orientations and analysed news headlines and content. The grid of content analysis focused on variables like: the extent of news mediatization, leaderization processes, politics vs. policies, and use of political polls, among others, with all variables referred to left, centre and right parties. Data were processed using SPAD-T for both descriptive and differential analysis, with the latter identifying elements characterizing each newspaper (VOSPEC). Results confirm the primacy of television and a shift of attention to leaders of all opposing forces, with the left associated with politics and the right with policies. Moreover, we found a coverage bias favouring centre-right exposition and sidelining citizens. © Springer-Verlag 2013.