Research strategies of election campaign communication research
[1] A further goal refers to examining if and how country-specific context variables (e.g. history, political system) affect election campaign communication.
[5] In contrast to party-controlled messages, media coverage of election campaigns – whether in newspapers, on television or online – is party-uncontrolled.
[7] Research on party-uncontrolled, journalist-controlled newspapers articles and television reports about an election may detect journalistic interventionism, which affects – whether intended or not – the electorate.
Joseph Trenaman and Denis McQuail, e.g., conducted a non-comparative, case study concerning the effects of television on political images in the British parliamentary election in 1959.
[12] A temporal analysis examining German newspaper coverage of election campaigns from 1949 to 1998, e.g., was conducted by Jürgen Wilke and Carsten Reinemann in 2001.
An example of a most similar systems-design is Jesper Strömbäck and Toril Aalberg's study on the news coverage of elections in the democratic corporatist countries Sweden and Norway.
[25] In an emic approach data collection measurements are developed culture-specifically, thus, e.g. creating a slightly adapted questionnaire for each considered country with regard to its systemic context.
[27] Focusing on party-uncontrolled media coverage of election campaigns single news articles or reports (newspaper/television/online) function as unit of analysis.
An example of a study on party-uncontrolled communication is Frank Esser's research on the usage of sound and image bites within political news culture in France, (Germany), Great Britain and the United States.
In 1994 Christina Holtz-Bacha, Lynda Lee Kaid, and Anne Johnston, e.g., conducted a comparative study about election campaign television advertising in the western democracies (Germany), France and United States making use of content analysis as research method.
High costs of manual coding arise partly due to the fact that coders must be trained to assure inter-coder reliability.
Further challenges when using survey research refer to the statistical assessment and interpretation of answers to open-ended questions as well as the translation and phrasing of questionnaires.
By exposing subjects to particular election spots and varying specific details in the ad, the variables causing an effect can be revealed.
[40] June Woong Rhee, e.g., makes use of two kinds of experiments in his study on framing effects in election campaign news coverage.
Afterwards the participants were confronted with print and broadcast news stories about the 1991 Philadelphia mayoral election campaign, which were created using a strategy or an issue frame and simulating the actual coverage.
[43] After the five days of exposure to the manipulated news, the participants met with the experimenter and, as a posttest, had to "write a letter about the Philadelphia mayoral campaign".
The study revealed that "both strategy-framed and issue-framed print news stories are effective in influencing campaign interpretation".
A network analysis of weblogs connected to campaigning in the German federal election 2005 was, e.g., conducted by Steffen Albrecht, Maren Lübcke and Rasco Hartig-Perschke.
317 campaign weblogs by politicians and non-political actors were examined along three dimensions of analysis: activity, interactivity, and connectedness.
The cross-national research is conducted by a team from one country or one cultural background and thus avoiding complexity and theoretical alternatives.
[62] When the subject of study is approached in a metatheoretical way by an international research team a variety of theoretical backgrounds is used to analyze the data.
Comparisons of election campaign communication can either be conducted by one team looking at different countries (leading to theoretical diversity) or by scholars compiling case studies and drawing conclusions from them.
[66] Nevertheless, the validity of cross-national conclusions remains comprised, since no aggregate data set, derived from identical research conduction, exists.
To conduct comparative research, the regarded objects, e.g. newspaper reports on election campaigning, have to be at least equivalent in their functionality.
Holtz-Bacha, Christina (2004), "Political campaign communication: conditional convergence of modern media elections", in Esser, Frank; Pfetsch, Barbara (eds.
"Political television advertising in western democracies: A comparison of campaign broadcasts in the United States, Germany and France".
), Comparatively speaking: communication and culture across space and time, Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, pp.
Swanson, David L. (1992), "Managing theoretical diversity in cross-national studies of political communication", in Blumler, Jay G.; McLeod, Jack M.; Rosengren, Karl Erik (eds.
), Comparatively speaking: communication and culture across space and time, Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, pp.
Wirth, Werner; Kolb, Steffen (2004), "Designs and methods of comparative political communication research", in Esser, Frank; Pfetsch, Barbara (eds.
