1 Anti-immigration parties on TV: An insight in the personalisation and
media visibility of the PVV Christiaan Poolen
10001099 Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s programme Communication Science: Track Political Communication Supervisor: K. Gattermann
2 Abstract
The Dutch political landscape has changed in the last 15 years due to the rise of
anti-immigration parties and the PVV being the biggest parties in the Dutch polls at the moment. Although a lot of research has been done on these parties, the scientific information on their appearances on TV is still scarce. It is known, through previous studies, that personalisation and media visibility can play a role in the success of a political party, but it’s unknown is these factors are more present on television. This study gives an insight in the extend that increased personalisation and media visibility do occur when it comes to anti-immigration in the Netherlands. It also will give an insight in the ownership of the immigration and refugee issue by the PVV. With a content analysis of the two most watched daily Dutch news broadcasts, the data was gathered. The data showed that a higher rate of personalisation and media visibility isn’t applicable for the PVV. While the focus on the party leader was higher for the PVV, the general individualisation wasn’t higher for the PVV. The results also showed that media visibility for the government parties was actually significantly higher than the media visibility of the PVV. The PVV did had a significantly higher association with topics on immigration and refugees. In the discussion the results are explained and suggestions are made for future research.
3 Introduction
In the past years the political landscape in the Netherlands changed since the rise of anti-immigration parties. In the past these kind of parties weren’t very successful but since 2002 this has changed. With the rise of Pim Fortuyn and his party, a change in the Dutch political landscape began (Koopmans & Muis, 2009). After the death of Pim Fortuyn and his party failing to stay in government, another anti-immigration party was founded and is still in parliament today. This party, the PVV (Freedom Party) of Geert Wilders, is not only still in parliament but also achieved several electoral successes and is currently the biggest party in the Dutch polls (www.tns-nipo.com, 2016). Over the past years many factors that could contribute to this success have been examined. This also includes the role of the media in how they report on the PVV. The role of the media is studied intensively regarding newspapers, but this doesn’t give an image of the role of television. Being that television is still the most used medium in the Netherlands regarding political news, there is almost no insight in the role of television with regards to coverage on the PVV on Dutch TV. This is strange taking into account the fact that the two biggest news broadcasts in the Netherlands have a daily audience of approximately 3,000,000 viewers (www.kijkonderzoek.nl, 2016). The amount of
personalisation and the amount of media visibility are shown to have a positive effect on the party’s success, as shown in previous literature (Bos et al, 2010; Vliegenthart, 2012). These variables were mostly tested in the context of newspaper articles, but not in the context of Dutch news broadcasts on television. Being that this is the case, a research question was formulated with the intention to get a clearer view on the contribution of news broadcasts in the Netherlands regarding these factors. The following research question will be answered: To what extend does the amount of personalised TV and media visibility differ between the PVV and other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands?
4 By answering this question, the gap in the theoretical knowledge will be filled regarding the coverage of Dutch news broadcasts on anti-immigration parties in the Netherlands. The role of newspapers on the coverage of anti-immigration parties is well known (Vliegenthart et al, 2012). This gap in the theoretical knowledge is applicable for the media visibility of the PVV and their politician and for the amount of individual personalisation. Also the amount of immigration cues will be measured, being that previous research showed that there might be a correlation between the amount of immigration cues and voter behaviour regarding anti-immigration parties.
There are two main theories that also explain why these mentioned variables are interesting to research. First of all, the agenda-setting theory is of an importance to answer the research question. As said by McCombs and Shaw (1972), media not only shape people’s political reality, but also influences people’s perspective on how important a certain issue is. By increasing the media attention of a certain topic, the topic will become more important in people’s perspective. Only increasing the amount of attention a certain topic gets is called first level agenda-setting. It was also shown that the amount of coverage affects the public salience (Kiousis & McCombs, 2004). Salience can be described as the accessibility level of certain thought or consideration (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Media not only have influence on the importance of a topic but also on the way people think about a certain topic. By giving certain attributes more attention, the media is able to adjust or image on a certain topic (McCombs et al, 1997). This kind of agenda-setting is called second level agenda-setting (Scheufele & Tewskbury. 2007). When focussing on an individual, this could alter one’s perception on this individual. The article of Bos et al (2010) explain the importance of the prominence of the party leader of right-wing populist parties in the Netherlands (including the PVV). It also showed that these right-wing populist parties with a higher level of prominence of the party leader were more successful in elections.
5 This research will have several societal benefits. First of all, this study will give an insight to what extend the amount of personalisation and media visibility is different between the PVV and other parties. This might give some tools to predict the success of anti-immigration parties. Especially for professionals (e.g.: pollsters, politicians and political marketing consultants), this can be interesting information on the role of television. Also it will give an insight in how good the media is giving as all sides of the story regarding political news. It is known that the pressure in the news rooms is increasing (Beam et al, 2009), but the balance in the reportage of journalists on television is still unclear. For society it would be interesting to see how balanced our biggest news broadcasters are in their reportage on political news. Theoretical Framework
Journalistic Incentives
To answer the research question it must be clear why the journalist chooses to report more on certain news. Journalists tend to base choice on the what he or she finds newsworthy (Helfer & Van Aelst, 2016). Whilst one can say that newsworthiness is related to the ‘gut’ feeling of a journalist (Schultz, 2007), one can state that there are several factors that are able to influence this feeling, causing some news to be more newsworthy than other news according to the journalist (O’Neill & Harcup, 2009) Examples these factors that make news more
newsworthy are: the power elite (stories concerning powerful individuals, entertainment, bad news (such as tragedies and conflicts) and relevance (e.g. stories on specific issues). In the article of Beam et al (2009) the modern role of journalist was examined and discussed it was found that the beliefs on the professional role of the journalist shifted. Journalists have put more emphasis on the analysis of problems in the society. It was also found that journalists tend to take on the role of an adversary of public officials. Next to that the workloads of journalists are higher than before, making them less investigative and making them rely more on the perceived newsworthiness of news. Sheafer and Wolfsfeld (2004) gave an insight in
6 why a certain legislator would be more newsworthy for journalists than others. It was found the political standing plays an important role in the decision of the journalists. The more prominent a politician is, the more likely that he will be considered more newsworthy by the journalist. Less prominent legislators have to battle more with the other non-prominent politician making it harder for them to be more newsworthy for a journalist. Also the charismatic communication skills of a legislator are of an influence on the perceived
newsworthiness by the journalist. The better these skills are, the more newsworthy a legislator will be to a journalist. Vliegenthart et al (2011) also found that conflicts seemed to be more newsworthy for political journalists. Journalists will perceive news with higher levels of conflict, more newsworthy.
Personalisation
Personalisation or individualization of politicians means that the media attention shifts from institutions, like political parties, to the individuals. Van Aelst et al (2012) makes the
distinction between general visibility and concentrated visibility. With the general visibility of the individuals the focus is on the person of the politician in. With the concentrated visibility, the focus is more on the party leaders. So with personalized TV, the TV broadcast is more focussed on the individual politicians and party leaders. In the article of Kaase (1994) it is also stated that the medium television makes the fact that coverage regarding politics is more personalized, taken in account the fact the television is more focussed on individuals. Blumler and Kavanagh (1996) stated that the increased amount of personalisation in TV news
broadcasts is caused by the format that was introduced by this medium. The format made it able to make news more personal, which seemed newsworthy for the journalists. According to Kaase (1994), this has his effect on the political process and therefore election results. A good example is the research of Campus (2010). He made the comparison between France and Italy due to the big increase of the amount of personalisation during the periods of Sarkozy and
7 Berlusconi. The study again showed the influence of television on the amount of
personalisation regarding politics. This was already concluded by Swanson and Mancini (1996) due to the current media age. With the coming of television, the focus on the individual in the media increased. This is something we see in several parts of society, including politics. Oegema and Kleinnijenhuis (2000) examined the Dutch case and there finding was also that there is an increased focus on the individual in (political) news
broadcasts. The first hypothesis that is tested is focussed on the general visibility. Rahat and Shafar (2007) called this concept individualization, the increased focus on the individual person. Kriesi (2012) is helpful in constructing an argument for personalisation in Dutch politics. The results on personalisation aren’t always consistent when discussing the increase of personalisation. For instance, the article of Wilke and Reinneman (2001) stressed that there is no clear trend in personalisation. The article of Kreisi (2012) showed that there is an
increase of personalisation in political communication in the Netherlands. The difference between the two articles is the fact that Wilke and Reinnemann (2001) did a study on the German case. Boumans et al (2013) make the comparison between personalisation between the UK and the Netherlands. The finding that is interesting for my study is the focus on non-prominent politicians. This shows that in newspapers in the Netherlands the general visibility is present in the newspapers, which also might be indication for more general visibility in the Dutch news broadcasts on TV. Vos (2014) conducted a meta-analysis focussed on the news coverage of individual politicians. This meta-analysis tries to explain the different factors in coverage and their effects. It also shows that the focus on individual politician is on a rise and also the support from the citizens on this subject. The article of Kreisi (2012) showed that the increase of the amount of personalisation is a phenomenon that is only applicable for the last decade. Also the article of Bos et al (2010) showed that the general visibility for right-wing populist parties (including the PVV) tends to be higher than for other parties. Taking in
8 account that the PVV is the only Dutch anti-immigration party at the moment, the first
hypothesis is:
H1: The focus on individual politicians is higher for the PVV than other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands.
Concentrated visibility
The second hypothesis is focussed on the concentrated visibility. As described in the article of Sheafer and Wolfsfeld (2004) the political standing of a politician is important for journalists to decide if news is more newsworthy. More prominent politicians will be more newsworthy due to the fact that they have less politicians to compete with in being newsworthy for a journalist. The article of Helfer and Van Aelst (2016) showed that the level of prominence is as important for every country but in the Netherlands the level of prominence has a significant effect on the level of newsworthiness of a certain politician. Davies and Mian (2010) show that the reputation of the party leader has a big correlation with the reputation of the party being led. This direct connection between the reputation of the party leader and the party’s reputation, shows the importance of also testing concentrated visibility Garzia (2011) also showed the increase of the focus on party leaders in campaigns. In the last years the
concentrated visibility showed an increase in the United States. Also the expectations of the voters regarding the information provided in election periods changed, with an increased favour for more news focussed on the party leader of the political party. Balmas and Shaefer (2013) show that not only the personalisation in media is applicable for national politicians, but it’s even applicable for foreign political leaders. In the article of Bos (2010) it was shown that this concentrated visibility for right wing populist parties (as the PVV) was higher than for other parties. Taking this in mind the next hypothesis is tested:
9 H2: The focus on the party leader is higher for the PVV than other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands.
Media Visibility
According to Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) the political news nowadays tends to be more anti-elitist. The article of Beam et al (2009) also showed that journalists tend to be more of an adversary of public figures. Vliegenthart et al (2011) said that news that contains a higher level of conflict is perceived more newsworthy. According to Vossen (2010) the PVV is a party that contains elements which match the mentioned news values. This can explain why the level of media visibility of the PVV could be higher than other parties. There are different definitions of media visibility, but it this article it simply means the amount of mentions the politicians of a certain party has. The comparison between the Netherlands and other countries, regarding the findings on media visibility were made in different studies.
Akkerman (2011) also made the comparison between the UK and The Netherlands. He found that both countries showed that reporting on right-wing populist parties (including the PVV) was higher. This was found for English right-wing populist parties and Dutch right-wing populist parties. Vliegenthart et al (2012) looked at the comparison between media visibility of anti-immigration parties over time. They did this for Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany. They also showed that the media visibility for the anti-immigration parties increased over time. Due to these findings regarding media visibility. The following hypothesis was constructed:
H3: The amount of media visibility is higher for politicians of the PVV than other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands
10 Taking in regard the fact that journalists will most likely report on the things that they find most newsworthy, it’s most likely that they will report on hot topics like the refugee crisis and immigration. With regards to the increasing workload (Beam et al, 2009) for the journalists, they will try to find easy accessible and highly newsworthy information and will focus on easy accessible and highly newsworthy politicians (with regards to political news) (Vos, 2014). The PVV has the tendency to be more conflict seeking in its statements and is always focussed on immigration issues. This is convenient for the journalists when making reports on immigration and refugees. Therefore, it can be expected that there is a higher level of
association between the amount of coverage on immigration and the media visibility for the PVV than other parties in the Netherlands. Therefore, the next hypothesis is:
H4: The media visibility in the coverage on immigration and refugees is higher for politicians of the PVV in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands.
Methods
The unit of sampling will be the daily most watched news broadcasts of the two main
broadcasters, the NOS and RTL. The 8.00 pm news broadcast of the NOS is the most watched in the Netherlands with an average rating of approximately 1,800,000 people watching every day. The second most watched broadcast is the 7.30 pm news broadcast of RTL with a rating of approximately 1,200,000 people watching daily (www.kijkonderzoek.nl, 2016). The first reason to choose for these two broadcasters, is the fact that they are the two most watched in the Netherlands on a daily basis. Secondly, the NOS is a public broadcaster and RTL is a commercial broadcaster, which will make the results more reliable. And to make the research more feasible only these two broadcasts were chosen, taken in account that these broadcasts are most of the times a summary of most of the items in the other news broadcasts made by that broadcaster on that same day. The sample size of this research will be 56 broadcasts. A broadcasts of the NOS is generally between 15 and 25 minutes and the broadcasts of RTL are
11 approximately 25 minutes. We want to work in constructed weeks (Riffe et al, 1993). This means we take a randomly selected article of every day of the week (e.g. a randomly selected broadcast of a Monday broadcast, a randomly selected broadcast of a Tuesday broadcast etc.). This way one constructs a randomly selected week. To make the sample representative, there will be four constructed weeks coded for both of the news broadcasts. For two broadcasts this means 28 broadcasts should be coded. For this research we want to look at the broadcasts of the last year (25/05/2015 till 24/05/16), which means four constructed weeks per year. This will make it a total of 56 broadcasts, making this sample feasible to be coded for this research. The broadcasts will be randomly selected from the archives on the website for missed
broadcasts on the public channels (www.npo.nl/gemist) and the website to watch missed broadcasts of RTL (www.rtlxl.nl). Through the website www.random.org, it was fairly easy to make constructed weeks. The period of time can be chosen and the kind of day and how many dates you want. After that the website automatically gives you a number of randomly selected dates. For every day of the week this was done which made four constructed weeks in total for one broadcasts. This was done for the RTL and the NOS broadcast separately to not make the constructed weeks the same for the two broadcast.
For the coding the codebook in Appendix A was used to gather the data for the research. This made into a Qualtrics survey which the coder filled in. For an example of the Qualtrics survey see appendix C. For the determination whether a politician was a party leader or not, there was looked at who was mentioned as the party leader on the website of each party. For the PvdA an adjustment was made in who was defined the party leader. Officially this is the fraction leader Diederik Samson. The problem is, that there’s also a vice prime minister named Lodewijk Asscher, which is the most prominent politician of the PvdA and therefore is expected to be more prominently mentioned in the news (Sheafer & Wolfsfeld, 2004).
12 variable less internally valid, it was chosen to code Asscher as the party leader. Before the results of the different hypotheses are shown, the results of the inter coding reliability test will be shown. For this test I asked a fellow student to code 3 randomly assigned news broadcasts of the 8.00 pm broadcast of the NOS and 3 randomly assigned news broadcasts of the 7.30 pm broadcast of RTL Nieuws. These broadcasts were 6 broadcasts out of the 56 that were coded in total. In Appendix B the table with the results of the reliability test can be seen. By
comparing the Kappa, Krippendorf’s alpha and the percentage of agreement, one can state that the inter coding was very reliable in this reliability test. The reason to state this is the fact that the coding that has been done for this test completely matched and both the Kappa and Krippendorf’s alpha are 1.00. The reason for the high scores on the reliability tests, was that the coding instructions and questions were fairly easy.
For the analysis a few variables were recoded. The variables were recoded to dichotomous variables for the analysis. The political party variable was recoded that one means the PVV and zero all other. The concentrated visibility, general visibility and immigration issue variable were also recoded to dichotomous variables. Zero means no (e.g. no concentrated visibility) and one means yes (e.g. yes there is concentrated visibility). For the first, second and fourth hypothesis two dichotomous variables were compared with each other. When two dichotomous variables are compared a Fisher exact’s test should be executed as in the case for these hypotheses. For the first two hypotheses there was also a lambda calculated to look at the asymmetrical association. For the fourth hypothesis there was a Cramer’s V calculated to show the symmetrical association between the two variables. The reason that for the last variable a symmetrical association was measured, is because of the fact that one can’t say that the presence of a politician of a certain party explicitly causes the issue to be on immigration or the other way around. With regards to the third hypothesis there was a frequency table made and there was chi-square test executed. For all variables of every hypothesis there was
13 also a frequency table made with a percentage of the frequency in regards to the total coding done for that particular party (media visibility).
Results
From the total sample of 56 news broadcasts there were a total of 143 politicians coded. The amount of politicians mentioned in every episode ranged between 0 and 5. A total of 64 (44,8%) politicians were coded in the RTL broadcasts and 79 (55,2%) were coded in the NOS broadcasts. In the following table the one can see the media visibility for the political parties that were coded.
Table 1
Frequency table Media visibility
Political Party Frequency Percentage
VVD 36 25,2 PvdA 83 58 GroenLinks 4 2,8 PVV 7 4,9 SP 3 2,1 50plus 1 0,7 D66 3 2,1 CDA 6 4,2 Total 143
As shown in the table the percentage of the government parties (VVD and PvdA) are higher than all the other parties combined. In 83,2% of the times a politician was shown, he or she was a member of one of the government parties. For the PVV this was only 4,9% of the times. Between the NOS and RTL broadcasts there were no noticeable differences between the media visibility of the government parties. This also goes for the PVV, because the NOS
14 mentioned a politician of the PVV five times and RTL two times. In the case of the PVV 100% of the politicians coded was Geert Wilders. In the case of the VVD only 27,8% of the politicians coded was Mark Rutte, but 94,4% of the coded politicians were (prime) ministers or state secretaries. For the PvdA this was 86,2% and Lodewijk Asscher was mentioned 18,1%.
When looking at the general visibility the following table was made to give an overview. Table 2
Frequency table General visibility
Political Party Frequency Percent
VVD 10 15,8% PvdA 39 61,9% GroenLinks 2 3,2% PVV 5 7,9% SP 1 1,6% 50plus 1 1,6% D66 2 3,2% CDA 3 4,8% Total 63
As can been seen, there aren’t many big differences between the parties regarding the general visibility. What can be noticed is the fact that in most of the cases the party name is
mentioned with regards to the mentioned politicians. Again there weren’t noticeable differences between the RTL and the NOS broadcasts.
The concentrated visibility had more variation between the political parties as can be seen in the following table.
15 Table 3
Frequency table Concentrated visibility
Political Party Frequency Percentage
VVD 10 23,3% PvdA 15 34,9% GroenLinks 2 4,7% PVV 7 16,3% SP 2 4,7% 50plus 1 2,3% D66 3 6,9% CDA 3 6,9% Total 43
For the governmental parties the percentages for the concentrated visibility is much higher, but as mentioned before, the more prominent politicians (the prime minister, ministers and state secretaries) covered most of the mentioned politicians. Again there aren’t noticeable difference between the NOS and the RTL broadcasts.
The last variable is the immigration issue variable. This one also showed some differences between the different political parties as shown in the next table.
16 Table 4
Frequency table Immigration issue
Political Party Frequency Percentage
VVD 8 36,3% PvdA 3 13,7% GroenLinks 0 - PVV 6 27,3% SP 1 4,5% 50plus 0 - D66 2 9,1% CDA 2 9.1% Total 22
Again one can clearly see that there are high differences between the percentage of coded politicians were coded in an item that was on immigration or refugees. The PVV had a low amount of media visibility, but 6 out of the 7 mentions were still related to immigration and/or refugees.
For the first hypothesis it was tested if the focus on individual politicians was higher for politicians of the PVV than other Dutch political parties. To measure this, there was looked at the party name that was mentioned in regard to that politician. The focus on the individual politician wasn’t significantly higher (M=0.44, SD=0.49). In table 2 the results of the Fisher’s Exact test are shown.
17 Table 5
Fisher’s Exact Test Hypothesis 1: Media visibility * General Visibility
Fisher’s Exact test 0,711
Df 1
Asymptotic significance (two-sided) 0,399
According to the results presented in this table there is not a significant difference due to the fact that p=0.399. Also it must be mentioned that the Fisher’s Exact test had more than 50% of the expected values below 5. Next to these results the Lambda had a value of 0.00,
meaning that the media visibility and the general visibility showed no association at all. Due to these results it can be stated that the first hypothesis is rejected.
The second hypothesis looked at the fact if the focus on the party leader differed between the PVV and other Dutch political parties. This was measured by looking at the fact if the
mentioned politician was the leader of the political party that he represented. According to the second hypothesis it was expected that the focus on the party leader would be higher for the PVV than other political parties. In general, the focus on the party leader was quite low (M= 0.32, SD=0.469). In the next table the results of the Fisher’s Exact test will be shown. Table 6
Fisher’s Exact Test Hypothesis 2: Media visibility * Concentrated Visibility
Fisher’s Exact test 15,412
Df 1
Asymptotic significance (two-sided) 0,00* *p<0,001
18 The results show that there is a significant difference between the focus on the party leader for the PVV (where 100% of the coded politicians where the party leader, Geert Wilders) and the other parties (where only 28,5% of the coded politicians where the party leader). The focus on the party leader was therefore higher much higher for the PVV. The Lambda had a value of 0,152 meaning that there was a weak association between the media visibility and the general visibility. Although the association was weak, one can still state that the second hypothesis is confirmed according to the results.
For third hypothesis the focus was more on frequencies than associations between different variables. The third hypothesis looked at media visibility as shown in Table 1. For this
variable there was looked at the frequencies of how many times politicians of certain political parties were shown in the total sample. It stated that the media visibility is higher for the PVV than the other political parties. To give an insight in the differences in frequencies, a
frequency table was made.
A square test of the frequencies of this variable was done to test the hypothesis. A chi-square of 321,615 (df=7) and this led to a p<0,001. This showed that there was a significant difference between the frequencies of the media visibility of the different parties. Whilst the difference was significant, the frequency of the PVV was significantly lower, only covering 4,9% of the all the politicians showed whilst the government parties respectively had 58% (PvdA) and 25,2% (VVD). These results do not support the third hypothesis.
The last hypothesis regarded the variable immigration issue and the media visibility of the PVV. In the fourth hypothesis it was stated that the media visibility in the coverage on immigration and refugees is higher for politicians of the PVV. In total the amount of politicians that were shown in items regarding immigration or refugees was low (M=0,15, SD=0,355). The results of the Fisher’s Exact test regarding this hypothesis is shown in the next table.
19 Table 7
Fisher’s Exact Test Hypothesis 4: Media visibility * Immigration issue
Fisher’s Exact test 42,760
Df 1
Asymptotic significance (two-sided) 0,00* *p<0,001
In the table it’s visible that there is a significant association between the fact that a politician was representative of the PVV and the fact that the item where the was shown was on immigration or refugees. This was shown by the Fisher Exact test which with a value of 42,760 had a p<0,001. To look at the strength of the association a Cramer’s V was calculated. The Cramer’s V had a value of 0,547. This means that there’s a strong association between the media visibility and the if the item was on immigration and/or refugees. Due to these facts it can be stated that the fourth hypothesis is supported.
Conclusion and discussion
In the introduction of this research the following research question was mentioned: To what extend does the amount of personalized TV and media visibility differ between the PVV and other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands? After testing the hypotheses, there can be an answer given to this question. The first hypothesis was as
followed: The focus on individual politicians is higher for the PVV than other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands. The results showed that this hypothesis wasn’t confirmed. In the data there were no significant differences found in the general visibility of the politicians of the PVV and the other political parties. Not only that, but only in 44% of the politicians coded this form of personalisation was occurring while in the other the political party name was mentioned or shown in some form. The second hypothesis was
20 also on the concentrated visibility. The hypothesis was: The focus on the party leader is higher for the PVV than other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the
Netherlands. The Fisher Exact test in this case showed that this hypothesis was confirmed, meaning that there is a significant difference between the amount of concentrated visibility of the PVV and the other parties. And it showed that the concentrated visibility was significantly higher for the PVV than for the other parties. An association between the two variables was found, but it was shown that this association was weak. The third hypothesis was on media visibility. The third hypothesis was: The amount of media visibility is higher for politicians of the PVV than other Dutch political parties in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands. The chi-square test showed that this hypothesis wasn’t confirmed. The results even showed the
opposite of the expectation and that was that the media visibility for the other parties was higher (especially for the government parties). The fourth hypothesis was there to give more of an insight on the relation between the subject and the mentioned parties. In the case of the PVV it was most likely that a relation would be found with items on the topic immigration and/or refugees. The fourth hypothesis was: The media visibility in the coverage on
immigration and refugees is higher for politicians of the PVV in TV news broadcasts in the Netherlands. The results showed that the hypothesis was confirmed. The politicians of the PVV were associated significantly more often with items regarding immigration or refugees than the other parties. With these results combined one can give an answer to the research question. Regarding the personalisation in general there can state that in light of the results of this research, this doesn’t differ significantly between the PVV and the other parties. The name of the political party isn’t mentioned significantly less in combination with the politician regarding the PVV and therefore there’s no significant difference. This research clearly showed that also in general the party name is mentioned a majority of the time in combination with the politician that was showed in the item; an interesting finding when
21 taking into account the previous research that showed an increase in the focus on the
individual. Although television, due to its format, immediately gives an image of the
politicians (Swanson & Mancini, 1996), this doesn’t mean that the news broadcasts only focus on the individual and forget the political party. This research helps to question the expected increase of personalisation as stated in (Bos et al, 2010; Blumler Kavanagh, 1999; Swanson & Mancini, 1996). On the other hand, the concentrated visibility, where there was more focus on the party leader, was significantly higher for the PVV. Al the mentions of politicians for the PVV were of Geert Wilders, the party leader of the PVV. Regarding the media visibility, it was clear that the media visibility of the PVV wasn’t significantly higher. It did differ in the fact that it was lower than the media visibility of the governmental parties. In fact, it was shown that mostly the more prominent (ministers and state secretaries) had the highest level of media visibility. These findings contradict the previous research on anti-immigration parties, which showed that the amount of personalisation and amount of media visibility seemed to be higher for these kinds of parties (Bos et al, 2010; Vliegenthart et al 2012; Akkerman, 2011). On the other hand, it confirmed Vos’ (2014) finding that the results on this topic varies a lot. It was also an interesting finding that most of the coded politicians were the prime minister, ministers or state secretaries. This confirmed the finding of Sheafer and Wolfsfeld (2004) where it was shown that more prominent in the Netherlands seemed to get more attention. This research confirmed that finding in the way that only the most prominent national politicians seemed to get media attention. In this case, this research was able to give an insight regarding the media visibility of politicians of an anti-immigration party in the Netherlands. The general consensus may be that the PVV would get more media attention in TV broadcasts that has a few million viewers, especially when looking at the increasing support for this party, but that consensus wasn’t supported. On the other hand, there are the governmental parties that better represented in these TV news broadcasts, but also are the
22 parties that lost a part of their electorate since is the start of this government. This research therefore paid a contribution to the discussion on the role of media visibility. While media visibility in earlier research was claimed to be beneficial for a party’s electoral support, this can be questioned after the results of this research and therefore emphasises a gap in our theoretical knowledge on this subject. This would be an interesting subject to study in future research. The higher concentration of the party leaders wasn’t the case for the government parties. For the government parties this differed due to the fact that the other ministers related to the parties were also newsworthy for journalists. Also this finding was in line with the expectations of Sheafer and Wolfsfeld (2004). But it can also give an insight in the working routine of the (political) journalists. In the findings of Beam et al (2009) the workload of the journalists nowadays was questioned, being that the research of journalist would be less extensive. This research showed that also in political journalism, the journalists tend to look for the easier sources (more minister president, ministers and state secretaries) for their
information. This research therefore also contributes to the discussion of the role of journalists in the Netherlands. The lack of voices that are heard in political items make the role that these journalists actually play questionable, especially the role to be the of the voice of the public. These last findings show the societal relevance of this.
This research also has a few limitations that can be kept in mind for future research. First of all, the period of time chosen for the sample was chosen because of its feasibility rather than a more scientifically funded reason. There is no comparison with other years, taking in mind that the PVV is around for more than ten years at this moment. Also there is no comparison with other anti-immigration parties. It’s true that there is only one anti-immigration party at the moment on a national level, but as was stated in the introduction, the success of the anti-immigration parties in the Netherlands date back to 2002. Secondly, there’s a lack of
23 that a mentioned last or a politician was shown. Maybe the times a politician of the PVV was shown, it was for a significantly longer period of time than the politicians of the other parties. There is also no information on the way the politicians were presented. It could be possible that some politicians tend to be more charismatic and professional in front of the camera than other politicians which would make a journalist want to show this politician more often in the news broadcast. Lastly, the coding can be done slightly broader regarding the politicians that are coded and the amount of news broadcasts are coded. There are several other broadcasters with a fair amount of viewers that can be included to give a better image of the total media coverage of politicians.
This also would be the first recommendation for further research. As stated before, there is still a theoretical knowledge gap regarding the topic of anti-immigration parties on the TV. Where many research has been done on printed media, our knowledge on this area regarding television isn’t conclusive enough. More extensive research, taking in mind a longer period of time, more anti-immigration parties, a broader use of broadcasters and the length and content of the broadcast when a politician is mentioned.
Interestingly enough the level of personalisation wasn’t as high as expected. According to the past literature (Blumer & Kavanagh, 1999; Van Aelst et al, 2012) it was expected that the reporting on politicians would be more focussed on the person. Regarding the general visibility: this isn’t found in the results of this research. One can ask if the focus on the individual politician is actually higher on television. If the definition for personalisation is the same as used of general visibility, there can’t be said that personalisation is significantly higher on television. An in-depth research on this topic regarding political news would be highly interesting, giving more insight on this topic. It also is important that a good definition for personalisation in political news on TV is made.
24 The last suggestion for future research would regard the role of the journalist. In the results it was very clear that most of the politicians coded were the more prominent politicians. Hardly any normal MP’s were coded, confirming the article of Sheafer and Wolfsfeld (2004). Besides more extensive research on this topic, that can give us more of an insight in the coverage of politicians than we already have, the behaviour of the journalists can also be interesting. The suggestion for further research is to do a survey under Dutch political journalists and an observational research in the news rooms of the broadcasters. As stated in the article of Beam et al (2009), the workload for journalist has become much higher over the past years. This made journalists less in-depth regarding their research. If this is true, this could mean that journalists choose to cover a certain politician. This is based on the fact that it is easier to get a newsworthy story regarding a very prominent politician and it is harder to find a more newsworthy story regarding a less prominent politician like an MP. This can be interesting in finding out more on the journalistic incentives to cover a certain politician and it also gives more of an insight in the objectivity of the journalists in their reporting. When only the side of the story of the more prominent (and therefore mostly the governmental parties) is shown, this could make the reporting of the political journalists biased and made their role to be the voice of the public questionable.
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28 Appendix A
Codebook
This codebook is meant to help coding for this research on Dutch news broadcasts and their use of personalisation in their broadcasts on Dutch politicians and political parties. For this research two kind of TV news broadcasts are selected: the 8.00 pm news broadcast of the NOS and the 7.30 pm news broadcast of RTL. The broadcasts are from the period 24/05/2016 till 24/05/2016.
Broadcast: NOS 8.00 pm broadcast or RTL 7.30 pm broadcast
Politician: The name of the politician
Note: Only code a politician if he’s an MP, state secretary, minister or prime minister.
Political party: The kind of political party of the politician
Please enter the name of the political party of the mentioned politician Concetrated_Visibility: The politician is a party leader
Note: This means that in the news broadcast a party leader is shown, a party leader speaks, a party leader is mentioned in a text or a reporter mentions a party leader or is quoted in the item. This maybe a full name, first name or surname.
General_Visibility: The name of the politician is mentioned, but the name of the party isn’t
mentioned.
Note: This means the full name or an abbreviation of the party is not mentioned by the reporter or shown in the text of the item and there is no party logo visible in the item. This also means that the name of the politician is mentioned by the reporter or shown in the text of the item. This maybe a full name, first name or surname.
29 Immigration_Issue: The topic of the item in the news broadcast is on immigration or on
refugees
30 Appendix B
Table 1
Intercoder Reliability
Variable name % agreement Kappa Krippendorf’s
Alpha Name of Politician 100% 1.00 1.00 Party of Politician 100% 1.00 1.00 General visibility 100% 1.00 1.00 Concentrated visibility 100% 1.00 1.00 Immigration issue 100% 1.00 1.00
31 Appendix C
Which news broadcast where you watching?
NOS 8.00 PM Broadcast
RTL Nieuws 7.30 PM Broadcast
What is the name of the Dutch politician?
Of which political party is he/she a member?
VVD PvdA GroenLinks PVV SP SGP ChristenUnie
DENK (Kuzu/ Ozturk
VNL (Bontes/ Van Klaveren)
50plus
Partij van de Dieren
D66
CDA
Other
Is the politician a party leader?
Yes
No
Is the party of the politcian mentioned in the item?
Yes
No
Is the subject of the item about or related to immigration or refugees?
Yes
No
