The rise of the populist radical right in Hungary
– Issue ownership, media attention and the
popularity of Jobbik
Daniel Szabo
10831711
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master Programme Erasmus Mundus Journalism, Media and Globalisation
University of Amsterdam
Supervisor: Marjolein Moorman
20/09/2015
2 Abstract
This longitudinal study focuses on the role of news media in the formulation and maintenance of the issue ownership of Jobbik, the Hungarian populist radical right party. Based on Róna’s findings Jobbik has four main issues: Gypsy crime, political corruption, transborder
Hungarians and fight on banks. The party emphasized these themes in its external
communication to become the owner of these issues and thereby increase its voter base. But whether these attempts are successful is largely dependent on the media that conveys these messages to the electorate. For Jobbik, online news media is the most important, as the majority of its voters use the internet as their primary source of information. Therefore this study analyses the news coverage of the biggest Hungarian news site, index.hu over five years. Throughout the analysis the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the coverage, the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership and the valence of the issue coverage is examined. The results indicate that the Gypsy crime and political corruption issues received extensive amount of coverage, and Jobbik is the exclusive owner of these issues. However, the valence of the issue coverage of index.hu is negative for all issues with regards to Jobbik, which does not help the formulation of this ownership. A tentative bivariate analysis between the
prominence variable and Jobbik’s favorability ratings over time shows a statistically significant correlation for the Gypsy crime issue, suggesting that the more coverage this Jobbik issue received, the more popular the party became.
3
Introduction
Over the past decades we have witnessed the rise of populist parties throughout Europe from both sides of the political spectrum: from the Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece on the left, to the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the PVV in the Netherlands, or Jobbik in Hungary on the right (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004; Róna, 2014). A common characteristic of populist parties is that they appeal to ‘the people’ with an anti-establishment attitude, and that they go against some of the accepted and dominant values of society (Canovan, 1999).
Many of these, like Jobbik, seem to have established their place on the political map of Europe following their fast rise from obscurity. The Hungarian right-wing populist party was only established in 2003 and in the beginning of 2009 its favorability ratings were below 1% (Róna, 2014). By 2014, Jobbik has become the second biggest political entity in the country after the governing party, Fidesz. In the 2014 parliamentary election Jobbik received 20,22% of the total vote (National Election Office, 2014a), and 14,67% in the European Parliamentary election the same year (National Election Office, 2014b). Hungary also held municipal
elections in 2014, where Jobbik managed to secure all their previous positions and became the second biggest political power in all county assemblies except one (National Election Office, 2014c).
After this successful year, the president of the party, Gábor Vona positioned Jobbik as the main challenger of Fidesz in the following 2018 election (“Vona: a Jobbik lesz”, 2014). The recent rise of Jobbik, and the rise of populist parties in general received considerable scholarly attention from the field of both political and media science. What is behind their success? What makes them popular?
The answer might be lying in the capability of these parties to tap into political issues that are untouched by mainstream parties, or by conveying new types of messages (Betz, 2003) with a different tone (Canovan, 1999) and positioning themselves as the actors who
4 have actual solutions to the given problems as opposed to the other political parties (Carter, 2005; Givens, 2005). It is essential for these mostly newer, challenging parties to find an issue that helps them to get noticed by the electorate at large (Ellinas, 2010). Once they find an issue like this, they try to claim “ownership” over it by emphasizing it on their agenda and prioritizing it in their external communication across various platforms (e.g. live appearances, speeches, manifestos, party programs, etc.) (Petrocik, 1996). Being the owner of important issues in the public eye is important because the theory of issue ownership posits that voters identify political issues with political parties, and that they are likely to vote for a party that is the owner of issues that are the most important for them at the time of the election (Petrocik, Benoit, & Hansen, 2003).
Although issue ownership depends a lot on the party’s own efforts and external communication, it is the media that conveys these efforts to the electorate, thereby playing an essential role in the formulation of issue ownership (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007). All speeches, advertisements, party programs and manifestos reach the majority of voters via the mass media, therefore the analysis of the media coverage forms a significant part of this research on issue ownership.
This paper is built on the assumption that it is the media aspect of issue ownership of which challenging, newer populist parties can benefit more than mainstream parties, since the commercially driven media is paying more and more attention to their often newsworthy messages (Mazzoleni, 2008b), and thereby probably to their issues as well (Bos, Lefevere, Thijssen, & Sheets, 2014). By covering these parties’ issues, media helps populist parties in two ways: a) extensive issue coverage prompts voters to regard their issues important (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004), b) by covering their issues, media contributes to the formulation of these parties’ issue ownership (Walgrave, Lefevere, & Tresch, 2012).
5 Based on the theory of issue ownership, of which media attention is an important element (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007), the main focus of this research is to identify the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the news coverage. If the party’s issues received
considerable amount of coverage compared to other issues, then the news media might have contributed to their electoral success (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007).
Second, since issue ownership is not necessarily exclusive because more parties can compete for an issue, the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership will be examined by analyzing which parties are mentioned in the articles that contain the particular issue. This step is required to identify the strength of Jobbik’s issue ownership, since issue ownership is more powerful when it is exclusive (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004).
Third, since issue ownership can be based either on the mere association of the party with the given issues (associative ownership) or on the voters’ belief that the party is the most competent in handling the given issue (competence ownership) (Walgrave, Lefevere, & Nuytemans, 2009), the valence of the articles that mention Jobbik will be analyzed. The goal of this analysis is to find out whether Jobbik is portrayed as a competent actor or not by the news media, thereby either contributing to or challenging the formulation of the party’s competence ownership.
By analyzing these three areas – prominence, exclusivity and valence – this paper is aimed at providing a complex picture about the manifestation of Jobbik’s issue ownership in the news media. To be able to highlight trends in the news coverage and see how Jobbik’s issue ownership formulated over time, a period of five years will be analyzed from 2009 to 2014.
The scientific relevance of this study lies in the fact that it complements Róna’s study on Jobbik’s issues (2014) which is based on the party’s external communication (party manifestos and parliamentary speeches) but does not include the analysis of the media
6 coverage, an element that plays an important role in the formulation of issue ownership. Such a detailed analysis of the media coverage with regards to issue ownership that deals with the prominence of issues, and the exclusivity and valence of issue ownership at the same time is a unique method that cannot be found in the extant literature.
On a more general level, this thesis is aimed at providing an added value to the academic corpus on the rise of Jobbik in Hungary, a highly researched yet never fully explained phenomenon. Overall, this research conducted in an Eastern European context is a contribution to the primarily Western Europe- and North America-focused issue ownership literature.
In the following chapters, an in-depth overview of the extant research on issue ownership will be provided before the introduction of the research design and the layout of the results. The thesis then concludes with a discussion on and the implications of the findings, along with future research opportunities and the limitations of the current research.
The theory of issue ownership
According to Petrocik, issue ownership is “the ability to resolve a problem of concern to voters. It is a reputation for policy and program interests, produced by a history of attention, initiative, and innovation toward these problems” (Petrocik 1996, p. 826). The theory of issue ownership posits that voters form a perception regarding almost all political issues about which party is the most capable of handling the given issue (Budge & Farlie 1983, Petrocik 1996). This is important for parties because they are competing in an environment in which voters increasingly base their voting decisions on political issues instead of party
identification or ideological affiliation (Dalton, 1996, as cited in Walgrave & De Swert, 2007). This environment urges parties to become the “owner” of important issues in the public eye in the hope of electoral success. But how can they achieve this?
7 A party can become an issue owner in the public eye if it devotes considerable
attention to the given policy area by making proposals, emphasizing it in party manifestos or rallies, talking about it in the Parliament, or to put it bluntly, to give the issue a high priority on its political agenda. Consequently, the public starts to recognize the party as the owner of that issue. Issue ownership therefore consists of the party’s effort to emphasize the given issue and public recognition of this effort as well (Petrocik, 1996).
Political issues, in this sense, are an integral part of both party competition (Dolezal, Ensser-Jedenastik, Müller, & Winkler, 2013; Geys, 2012; Green-Pedersen & Stubager, 2010) and voter behavior (Bélanger & Meguid, 2008). The importance of it lies in the fact that parties compete for issue ownership because voters tend to support parties that own prominent issues (e.g. Petrocik, 1996; Stubager, 2013). If a party can play an active role in the political discourse by owning important political issues and/or bringing new ones in, then it can certainly become a viable option for voters (Mazzoleni, 2003). Budge and Farlie (1983, as cited in Walgrave & De Swert, 2007) empirically proved that parties won elections when their issues were placed high on the public’s agenda.
Before thinking about winning elections, for the challenging, newer parties (like Podemos, Vlaams Belang, Jobbik, etc.) it is essential to have a core issue that makes them recognizable among the public. For most right-wing populist parties in Western Europe for example, the most common issue where they managed to achieve public recognition and claim ownership was immigration (Mudde, 2007; Walgrave & De Swert, 2004). Many of them focused almost exclusively on this topic, and by now are considered to be owners of this issue by the electorate (Walgrave et al., 2012).
For the right-wing populist Jobbik in Hungary the core issue was different as
immigration was not a prominent issue in the country up until 2015. Jobbik’s core issue that helped them grow their voter base was “Gypsy crime” (Krekó & Juhász, 2011; Kovács,
8 2013). The issue refers to the assumption that people from the Roma minority tend to commit crime to a higher extent than members from the rest of the society. Apart from causing tension among party lines and the electorate with this controversial assumption, the issue functioned as the immigration topic did for Western European right-wing populist parties: Jobbik gained attention and managed to garner electoral support (Bernáth, Juhász, Krekó, & Molnár, 2013). After consolidating itself in the political sphere, the party started to focus on other issues to attract new voters (Róna, 2014).
As of 2010, Róna (2014) have identified four main issues that Jobbik emphasized the most in their external communication, based on the analysis of parliamentary speeches by party members and party manifestos. These issues are; a) Gypsy crime, Jobbik’s core issue, b) political corruption and clientelism, a theme emphasized by Jobbik to blame other parties and highlight the inner malfunction of the whole political system, c) fight on banks and helping foreign currency borrowers in Hungary, an issue that came up as a reaction to the economic crisis, d) the issue of transborder Hungarians1, a nationalistic topic that is usually placed high
on the agenda of Hungarian political parties. In line with Róna’s findings (2014), these four issues provide the basis of my research.
Although these issues are often linked to Jobbik, it does not automatically mean that the party is also considered the best in handling the issue by the general public. As in the example of the Belgian right-wing populist party, Vlaams Belang, immigration was a topic highly emphasized by the party and it managed to frame the political discussion around it. As Vlaams Belang had the most distinguishable (and newsworthy) opinion about immigration, the party was evidently overexposed in the news coverage of the topic (Walgrave et al., 2012). Although the issue of immigration was spontaneously identified with Vlaams Belang
1 Due to historical reasons thera are approximately 3 million Hungarians living in the neighbouring countries. As
the whole population of the country is less than 10 million, parties have always placed the issue of these people high on their political agenda, especially the right-wing parties (Grajczár & Tóth, 2011).
9 by the majority of respondents, the party was not considered the most competent in dealing with the issue by the same group of people (Walgrave et al., 2012).
This difference is reflected in the analytical differentiation of two dimensions of issue ownership: the associative and the competence dimension (Walgrave et al., 2009). The associative dimension means that when people hear or think about an issue, they
automatically associate that with a party. When voters hear about immigration in Belgium, Vlaams Belang is definitely the party that comes to their mind first (Walgrave et al., 2012). The competence dimension on the other hand regards whether the voters think that the party is the best to deal with the given issue and if the party is competent enough to take the right policy measures (Walgrave et al., 2012). Despite the possible differences between the two dimensions of issue ownership, both have an impact on voting decisions if the given issue is considered important by the voter (Walgrave et al., 2009). Competence ownership has a direct impact on vote choice, as the direct recognition of the most competent party should be a good reason to actually vote for that party (Lachat, 2013).
Associative ownership on the other hand means a mere identification of the party with a given issue, a dimension that does not necessarily come with a positive evaluation
(Walgrave et al. 2012) and therefore does not have such a direct effect (Lachat, 2013). Since Róna (2014) has not included electoral survey and opinion poll data that contains the
evaluation of Jobbik’s performance concerning the four issues, the nature of Jobbik’s issue ownership cannot be determined at this point.
The media aspect of issue ownership and its relevance for populist
parties
In order to become an issue owner, the party’s mere efforts are not sufficient without the help of news media, through which voters inform themselves about both the issues and the parties (Mazzoleni, 2008b). Consequently, media plays an essential role in the formulation of
10 issue ownership by publicizing about the issues and the parties’ messages regarding these issues (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004, 2007). As many scholars from the field of media studies point it out, the more attention a party gets in the news media, the better chances it has to increase its voter base (e. g. Dearing & Rogers, 1996; Hopmann, Vliegenthart, De Vreese, & Albæk, 2010; Petrocik, 1996; Petrocik et al., 2003; Walgrave & De Swert, 2007).
This research argues, that media benefits challenging, newer populist parties more in the formulation of their issue ownership by giving these parties and their issues more attention than traditional, older mainstream parties. Before justifying this assumption, the conceptual definition of populist parties need to be provided for terminological clarity. Populism is a widely used, although elusive and slippery concept (Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2014) as it can be attached to many ideological positions (Taggart, 2004).
When talking about contemporary populism in Europe, the majority of studies only focus on right wing populism, but it can appear on both sides of the political spectrum
(Taggart, 2004). For the modern populist parties of Europe, like Podemos, Syriza or Jobbik, I use Canovan’s definition (1999) which eliminates this shortcoming and is universally
applicable for all these parties: “Populism in modern democracies is best seen as an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society. [... ] They involve some kind of revolt against the established structure of power in the name of the people” (Canovan, 1999, p.3). Although this definition was made before the foundation of Podemos, Syriza or Jobbik, it does not restrict populism to the right wing only, and manages to capture the common characteristics of these parties.
As these populist parties often “defy the existing order”, use “abrasive language” in their communication, organize protests and touch upon “emotive issues” (Mazzoleni, 2003), they can draw more media attention by providing newsworthy material than mainstream parties. As Mazzoleni (2008a, as cited in Bos et al., 2014) argues, media, driven by
11 commercialization, becomes more and more open to populist messages since it has proven to be an effective way of growing their audience. This phenomenon, called ‘media populism’ by Mazzoleni (2008a) means that the media provides fertile ground for populist parties “by engaging with people’s moods, catering to their entertainment needs, and harping on negative stories that might spread social and political malaise, and […] likely to be exploited by populist leaders” (Stewart, Mazzoleni, & Horsfield, 2003, as cited in Mazzoleni, 2008a). These populist parties benefit even more from the media than their mainstream counterparts, as it does not only publicize about them, but it might also “confer legitimacy and authority” (Ellinas, 2010, p. 210, as cited in Bos et al., 2014) by presenting them as politically viable alternatives.
A possible form of this media attention comes through attention to political issues that are then connected to parties in the news coverage. Media attention to these issues increases the perceived importance of the given issue among the electorate (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004). When their issues become important, Mudde (2013) has found that populist parties managed to increase their favorability by emphasizing a clear and distinguishable position on these themes over an extended time period. Building on these findings, the primary research interest of this thesis is to find whether the issues of the Hungarian right-wing populist party Jobbik was reflected in the media coverage. The focus of this research is on the online news media, since two thirds of Jobbik voters’ main source of information is the internet (Döme & Hajdú, 2009). Therefore online media presumably has a bigger influence on people who sympathize with the party than print media or television.
The first step to examine how Jobbik’s issue ownership was reflected in the online media coverage is the analysis of the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in it, since the more prominent a party’s issues are, the better chances it has during elections (e.g., Budge & Farlie, 1983; Petrocik, 1996). By ‘prominence’ I refer to the number of articles that contain each of
12 Jobbik’s issues compared to total number of articles in the news coverage. Based on this, my primary research question is the following:
RQ 1: What is the relative prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the coverage of Hungarian online news media over time?
Mere prominence however is not sufficient for a party to gain electoral success. It is possible that Jobbik is not a single issue owner but there are other parties mentioned in relation to the issue in the news coverage. Based on Walgrave and De Swert’s similar research (2004), I use the following categorization of issue ownership: a) exclusive issue ownership, when Jobbik has a dominant position in comparison to other parties in the news coverage of the given topic b) shared issue ownership, when other parties are also frequently mentioned in the coverage of the issue. This matters since exclusive issue ownership means more influence for the party compared to shared issue ownership where there are more potential issue owners (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004). By the term ‘exclusivity’ I refer to the degree to which Jobbik is present in the issue coverage compared to other parties. Since this paper is interested in the media’s role in the formulation of Jobbik’s issue ownership, my secondary research question is the following:
RQ 2: Does Jobbik has exclusive issue ownership over the issues Gypsy crime, transborder Hungarians, political corruption and fight on banks, based on the news coverage of Hungarian online media?
On top of exploring the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership, it is important to gather information about the valence of the news coverage to find out whether media indeed confers legitimacy to Jobbik by portraying them in a favorable way. If so, then the news media might contribute to the formulation of Jobbik’s competence issue-ownership because this way it can cue voters to think about Jobbik as a competent actor with regards to the particular issue (Walgrave et al., 2009). If a party becomes a competent actor in the voters’
13 mind that can handle political issues well, then it has better chances of being successful at elections (Petrocik, 1996).
This analysis will regard those articles that cover the issues of Gypsy crime,
transborder Hungarians, political corruption or fight on banks, and also mention Jobbik. The tertiary research question of my thesis is the following:
RQ 3: What is the valence of the news coverage of Jobbik’s issues with regards to the party in the Hungarian online news media?
These are the three main questions this paper intends to answer, and thereby explore Jobbik’s issue ownership in the online news media. A next step in this research would be to prove the relationship between media coverage and Jobbik’s electoral success but it is beyond the limits of this thesis as it would require survey data that tracks media consumption, as well as longitudinal analysis of other media (television, radio, and other online news outlets) (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004).
Since this data is not available, only a comparison between the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the media coverage and its electoral growth over time can be made to find out if there is a correlation between the two variables. Similarly, the degree of the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership will be compared to the favorability ratings of the party over time. (The valence of Jobbik’s issue ownership will not be compared to the favorability ratings as it would make no statistical sense. See Methodology for explanation.) In order to find this correlation, my tentative research question is the following:
RQ 4: Does the prominence of Jobbik’s issues and the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issues ownership correlate with the favorability ratings of the party over time?
This research question is only a tentative one since proving the relationship between the variables is not possible with the available data sets. However, by answering the first three research questions, a complex picture of the manifestation of Jobbik’s issue ownership in the
14 online news media can be provided which then gives room for grounded assumptions about its possible contribution to the establishment of this ownership. At the same time it can also be a strong basis for future research.
Methodology
Research design and selection of research unit
To study Jobbik’s issue ownership in the media coverage, a content analysis was carried out on the news coverage of the biggest online news site in Hungary, called index.hu. The period of the analysis is from 2009, the last year when Jobbik’s favorability was below 1% according to pollsters (Róna, 2014) until 2014, the year of the election when Jobbik managed to become the second biggest party in Hungary in terms of electoral support.
For the research design of the paper I opted for this longitudinal design to be able to show trends in how Jobbik’s issue ownership changed in the media coverage. Furthermore, for the comparison of the prominence of Jobbik’s issues and the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership with the favorability ratings of the party over time only a time series analysis and multiple comparisons make it possible to analyze the possible association between these variables (based on Walgrave & De Swert, 2004).
The analysis of the total coverage of five years however is not possible due to time and financial constraints. To make the analysis feasible, only the coverage of one randomly
selected quarter per each year between 2009 and 2014 was analyzed, meaning that the coverage of four consecutive months was coded per each year.
The selection of an online news outlet as the research unit is based on findings of extant research on the demographics and media consumption habits of Jobbik voters. Sőrés and Róna (2012) found that two thirds of the party’s voters are under 40, and more than one third is under 30. The main source of information for these voter groups is self reportedly the
15 internet (Döme & Hajdú, 2009). In light of this finding it is assumed that online media has a bigger impact on voters of Jobbik than print media or television.
Since online media is the primary source of information for the majority of Jobbik voters, the biggest online news outlet, index.hu has been selected as the research unit of this thesis. According to the latest available data from 2014 February, the number of daily unique viewers of index.hu was 579,213 (“A legnézettebb hazai weboldalak,” 2014). Moreover, index.hu is the second most popular news outlet of Jobbik voters after kurucinfo.hu, a radical right-wing news site closely associated with the party (Róna, 2014). Kurucinfo.hu however has significantly lower amount of readers, and it has a clear bias towards Jobbik. I only analyzed index.hu due to time and financial constraints of this research, as the analysis of the coverage of more than one outlet over five years would have surpassed the boundaries of this thesis.
Four steps of analysis
The analysis has four main steps which are also followed in the outline of the
methodology. The first variable to identify was the prominence of Jobbik’s issues, the second was the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership, and the third was the valence of the issue coverage with regards to Jobbik. Out of these, the first two variables were then compared to the favorability ratings of Jobbik, and a bivariate correlation was calculated between them. The valence variable was excluded here because it represents a different level of the analysis, as it is derived from the exclusivity variable.
Prominence of Jobbik’s issues
The first step of the analysis is to examine the degree of the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the news coverage of index.hu. As there are no previously set values in the extant literature to determine what degree of prominence can be considered substantial, this research
16 looked at the relative prominence of the coverage by comparing the issue prominence of Jobbik’s issues with each other, and also with two other issues, crime and immigration.
These two other issues were chosen because they are the most frequent issues in the issue ownership literature that deals with right-wing populist parties (see, among many others, Mudde, 2007; Walgrave & De Swert, 2004, 2007). The comparison of the prominence of these issues in the news coverage with the prominence of Jobbik’s issues is for illustrative reasons and to put the results in perspective.
To identify these issues I searched for specific search terms related to each issue on the website (See Appendix for these terms). The data collection was straightforward due to the fact that index.hu has archives of all the articles published on the site with a searchable database. With the advanced search option it is also possible to look for articles published on a given day, month or year.
The results were checked if they indeed contain the particular issue. In the end, the final number of articles for each month of the analyzed quarter from 2009 to 2014 that dealt with the given issue was divided by the number of total articles for the corresponding month and the percentages were calculated.
Exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership
With the degree of prominence of each issue at hand, the second stage of the research was the analysis of the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership. This step regarded only those articles that contained the given issue (See Appendix for the number of articles per issue). A quantitative content analysis was conducted on the relevant articles to find the parties that are mentioned in each of them. I manually looked for the name of the biggest parties in Hungary in terms of electoral support: Fidesz, Jobbik, MSZP, LMP and DK. In the end, the number of articles that contained the name of each of these parties was divided by the number of all articles that contained the issue. Those articles that contained the name of more than one party
17 were counted for all the parties that it mentioned. This way, the degree of the issue ownership for each party is shown, and the comparison of these results highlight the party competition for issue ownership.
This stage of the research also operates with relative values, and only the comparison of these can provide guidance in the evaluation of which party can be considered the issue owner, in the lack of set values with regards to this decision in extant literature.
Valence of Jobbik’s issue ownership
The third stage of the analysis regarded only those articles that contained the given issue and also mentioned Jobbik (See Appendix for the number of articles per issue). These articles were be subject to content analysis and were coded for their valence with regards to Jobbik to see how the party was portrayed in the coverage. The three possible valence scores were positive, negative and neutral, and the articles were coded based on a valence codebook specifically prepared for this research (See Appendix).
The analysis considered all references to Jobbik, and as I was interested in the overall valence of the articles, the aggregation of these references decided whether the article was coded negative, positive or neutral. The articles were coded for each month of the randomly selected quarters. Then the articles for each valence category (negative, positive, neutral) were added up for all the four issues and divided by the total number of articles that mentioned Jobbik.
Comparison of prominence and exclusivity with the favorability ratings of Jobbik The final phase of this research was the comparison of the prominence of Jobbik’s issues and the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership with the favorability ratings of the party over time. For the favorability ratings I used opinion poll data on voting intentions. The database of the biggest pollsters in Hungary (Tárki, Medián, Századvég, Ipsos) are available online and all datasets are easily accessible. All four pollsters conduct polls each month which
18 perfectly matches the frequency of the media analysis. I calculated monthly averages of their results between 2009 February and 2014 March (2014 April was the month of the election) to show how Jobbik’s favorability changed over time2. (See Appendix for the results presented in Table 3.)
Establishing a causal relationship between the independent variables (prominence of Jobbik’s issues and exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership) and the dependent variable (Jobbik’s favorability) is beyond the possibilities of this research as it would require
longitudinal data about the coverage of more outlets, as well as longitudinal data about media consumption habits of the electorate (based on Walgrave & De Swert, 2004) which is not available. What can be achieved with the data at hand is find out if there is an association between the variables
In order to accomplish this, a simple bivariate analysis was conducted between the issue prominence of Gypsy crime, transborder Hungarians, political corruption and fight on banks on one hand - each of them being separate variables - and the favorability ratings of Jobbik in the time period 2009-2014 first. Then the same simple bivariate analysis was conducted between the exclusivity of each issue and the favorability ratings of Jobbik. Both analyses were based on 18 observation points.
These comparisons were made for one quarter (4 months) per each year, with the corresponding months being compared (E.g. prominence of Gypsy crime in 2010 October with Jobbik’s favorability rating in 2010 October and so on.) In case of an existing correlation between the variables, index.hu might have indeed played a role in the rise of Jobbik by covering their issues based on the findings of the similar research of Walgrave and De Swert conducted on the Belgian Vlaams Belang (2004).
2 All four pollsters measured Jobbik’s popularity among committed voters, referring to voters who a) have a
19
Results
The results will be presented in accordance with the previously introduced four steps of the research. First, the degree of publicity of Jobbik’s four issues over time, compared to two other, usually prominent political issues (crime and immigration) will be outlined. Second, the exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership over the four issues will be presented, along with the scores of the other parties. Third, the results of the valence analysis with regards to Jobbik will be shown. Finally, I present the results of the simple bivariate analysis between the prominence and the favorability ratings, and the exclusivity and the favorability ratings for all the four issues.
Prominence of Jobbik’s issues
The media analysis of Jobbik’s core issue, Gypsy crime showed that the amount of coverage from July 2009 to March 2010 increased by 80%, from 2,6% to 4,7% of the total coverage of index.hu. After reaching this level, the coverage of Gypsy crime remained relatively stable until the final period of the analysis. In 2014 March it added up to 4,2%. The values in Figure 1 were calculated from the number of articles containing each issue divided by the total number of articles for each month of the analyzed quarters between 2009 and 2014.
Compared to Gypsy crime, the issue of transborder Hungarians was less prominent, constituting 3% on average of the total coverage. The amount of media attention to the issue decreased from 3,5% in 2012 to 2,3% in 2013. This value then stabilized until the election in April 2014.
The prominence of the fight on banks issue showed more fluctuation than the previous issues, adding up to 4,1% percent of the total coverage at the starting period of the analysis to then gradually decrease to 2,4% within two months. This pattern was then repeated again as the prominence of the issue first rose to 4,2%, then dropped to 2,4%. Between 2013 and 2014
20 it increased again to 3,7%, only to drop right before the elections, this time to 2,9%. As the prominence of this issue fluctuated this much, a general trend about the prominence of the fight on banks issue is not apparent.
The only issue that showed the clear upward trend between 2009 and 2014 was political corruption. The prominence of this issue rose steadily and received 60% more coverage in March 2014 (9,9%) than in the first observation point in the analysis, July 2009 (6,1%). The results mean that right before the election in April 2014, almost every 10th article covered political corruption, making it by far the most prominent Jobbik issue in the news coverage.
Figure 1. Prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the coverage of index.hu (2009-2014)
To put the results in perspective, I first calculated the averages of the prominence values for each issue for the total period of the analysis (Figure 2). This means for example that the issue of the Gypsy crime accounted for 4% of the total coverage of index.hu on average between 2009 and 2014, based on the analysis of one quarter of coverage per each year. The comparison of these average values for Jobbik’s four issues clearly show that political corruption was the most prominent issue, adding up to 6,9% of the total coverage. The Gypsy crime comes second, with 4% of the coverage, followed by fight on banks with
2,6% 4,2% 2,8% 2,4% 6,1% 9,9% 4,1% 2,9% 0,0% 2,0% 4,0% 6,0% 8,0% 10,0% 12,0% Ju ly A u gu st Se p te mb er Jan u ar y Fe b ru ary Mar ch A p ri l May Jun e Ju ly A u gu st Se p te mb er Ju ly A u gu st Se p te mb er Jan u ary Fe b ru ary Mar ch 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Prominence of Jobbik's issues in the coverage of index.hu (2009-2014)
21 3,3% and transborder Hungarians with 2,9%. If we add these values up the result shows that Jobbik’s issues ran to more than 17% of the total coverage of index.hu over a period of five years.
But what do these numbers mean compared to the prominence of other issues? Crime, which is usually a prominent issue in all news media, received 11,8% of the coverage on average, outnumbering the prominence of Jobbik’s issues by far. However, crime is a much broader issue then the more specific fight on banks or transborder Hungarians themes, therefore the more attention to it is understandable. Additionally, Gypsy crime is a sub-issue of crime, meaning that one third of the crime coverage was actually the coverage of Gypsy crime.
Another issue for comparison was immigration, a topic that usually receives
substantial coverage in Western European media. However, according to the analysis of the news coverage of index.hu, this was not the case in Hungary, at least between 2009 and 2014. In this period it received only 0,4% of the total coverage. The prominence of immigration was significantly lower than the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the period of the analysis.
Figure 2. Average prominence of Jobbik's issues compared to prominence of "Crime" and "Immigration" (2009-2014) 11,8% 0,4% 4,0% 2,9% 6,9% 3,3% 0,0% 1,0% 2,0% 3,0% 4,0% 5,0% 6,0% 7,0% 8,0% 9,0% 10,0% 11,0% 12,0% 13,0%
Crime Immigration Gypsy crime Transborder
Hungarians
Political corruption
Fight on banks
Average prominence of Jobbik's issues compared to prominence of "Crime" and "Immigration" (2009-2014)
22
Exclusivity of Jobbik’s issue ownership
With the data for the prominence at hand, I had the set of articles that contained each issue. The content analysis of these articles then revealed which parties were present in the issue coverage (Figure 3). For Gypsy crime, which is the core issue of Jobbik, the issue ownership of the party was beyond question: 68% of the articles that contained the issue mentioned Jobbik, which is three times the number of articles that mentioned Fidesz (22%), the second party on this list. In total, 739 articles contained the Gypsy crime issue, out of which 503 mentioned Jobbik and 163 mentioned Fidesz. When compared to other parties, Jobbik was evidently the exclusive issue owner of the Gypsy crime issue.
The analysis showed different results for the transborder Hungarians issue. Here Jobbik and the other right wing party, Fidesz were almost head-to-head with Jobbik at 45% and Fidesz at 43% of the total transborder Hungarians coverage mentioning them. Out of the total 536 articles on the issue, 241 mentioned Jobbik and 230 mentioned Fidesz. Therefore, these two parties share the ownership of this issue.
The analysis of the news coverage of political corruption showed Jobbik as the
exclusive issue owner, with 45% of the articles mentioning the party, which is almost as much as the second (MSZP 23%) and third (Fidesz 23%) parties’ scores combined. Out of the total 1275 articles on political corruption, Jobbik, MSZP and Fidesz were mentioned in 574, 295 and 292 articles, respectively.
The party competition for issue ownership was the fiercest for the fight on banks theme. Jobbik was the most frequently in this issue coverage as well, but only by a slight margin. The radical right party was mentioned in 30% of the articles (183/610 in total), while the same figure for Fidesz was 28% (171/610 in total) and 20% for MSZP (140/610 in total). Based on the analysis, the ownership of the fight on banks issue is shared between these three parties.
23
Figure 3. Exclusivity of Jobbik's issue ownership compared to other parties (2009-2014)
Valence of Jobbik’s issue ownership
The third step of the research was the content analysis to examine the valence of Jobbik’s issue ownership regarding the four issues. According to the results, the valence of the four independent issues showed a unique consistency with around two thirds of the coverage being negative with regards to Jobbik and one third being positive. In the Gypsy crime issue coverage 503 articles mentioned Jobbik, out of which 60% (302 articles) had a negative and 29% (146 articles) a positive tone with regards to the party. The results for political corruption were similar: Out of the total 574 articles 59% (338 articles) had a negative and 37% (212 articles) a positive valence. The trend was almost the same for the other two issues, transborder Hungarians and fight on banks, where Jobbik only had a shared ownership.
Figure 4. Average valence of Jobbik's issue ownership based on the coverage of index.hu (2009-2014)
68% 45% 45% 30% 22% 43% 23% 28% 19% 13% 23% 20% 8% 3% 22% 10% 8% 7% 7% 8% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Gypsy crime Transborder Hungarians Political corruption Fight on banks
Exclusivity of Jobbik's issue ownership compared to other parties based on the coverage of index.hu (2009-2014)
Jobbik Fidesz MSZP LMP DK 60% 66% 59% 62% 29% 30% 37% 33% 11% 4% 4% 5% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Gypsy crime Transborder Hungarians Political corruption Fight on banks
Average valence of Jobbik's issue ownership based on the coverage of index.hu (2009-2014)
24
Comparison with favorability ratings
The simple bivariate analysis to examine whether there is a statistical relationship between the prominence of Jobbik’s issues in the news coverage (independent variable) and the favorability ratings (dependent variable). The time series analysis showed that only the Gypsy crime issue was statistically significant. According to the results, there is a strong positive relationship between the prominence of the Gypsy crime issue and Jobbik’s favorability ratings which suggests that the more prominent the issue was in the news coverage, the more favorable Jobbik became in the polls.
The bivariate analysis for the exclusivity variable and the favorability ratings showed negative and statistically non-significant correlations for all issues except the fight on banks theme. The exclusivity of this issue has a statistically significant positive relationship with the favorability ratings of Jobbik over time, suggesting that the more exclusive Jobbik’s issue ownership was, the more favorable the party became for voters. This finding however loses its significance when considering that two other parties (Fidesz and MSZP) were also owners of the fight on banks issue, therefore the impact of this relationship might have not only worked in the favor of Jobbik, but also of these other parties.
Table 1
Simple bivariate Pearson correlation between prominence of Jobbik's issues and Jobbik's favorability ratings between 2009-2014 (n=18)
Favorability ratings
Prominence Gypsy crime
Pearson Correlation 0,671**
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,002
Prominence Transborder Hungarians
Pearson Correlation 0,035
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,891
Prominence Political corruption
Pearson Correlation 0,356
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,147
Prominence Fight on banks
Pearson Correlation -0,224
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,371
25 Table 2
Simple bivariate Pearson correlation between exclusivity of Jobbik's issue ownership over four issues and Jobbik's favorability ratings between 2009-2014 (n=18)
Favorability ratings
Exclusivity Gypsy crime Pearson Correlation -0,025
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,922
Exclusivity Transborder Hungarians Pearson Correlation -0,171
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,497
Exclusivity Political corruption Pearson Correlation -0,158
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,53
Exclusivity Fight on banks Pearson Correlation 0,663**
Sig. (2-tailed) 0,003
Note 1: **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
In conclusion, the two most relevant issues after analysis turned out to be Gypsy crime and political corruption. These issues were the most prominent in the news coverage and both are the exclusive property of Jobbik. The transborder Hungarians and fight on banks issues received less media attention and were are not exclusively owned by Jobbik either. The comparison of the prominence and exclusivity variables with Jobbik’s favorability ratings suggest that only the prominence of the Gypsy crime issue can be associated with the electoral growth of Jobbik.
Conclusion & discussion
This research set the goal of providing a complex picture about the manifestation of Jobbik’s issue ownership in the online media. It did so because extant research have found that media plays an essential role in the formulation and maintenance of issue ownership (Walgrave & De Swert, 2007). Parallel to this goal, this thesis was also aimed at
complementing Róna’s (2014) study that identified four main issues that Jobbik emphasized in its external communication, by analyzing whether these efforts were reflected in the issue coverage of online news media.
26 I first examined the degree of the prominence of these four issues in the news
coverage of index.hu between 2009 and 2014. The results showed that political corruption was an extensively covered issue, especially so one month before the 2014 parliamentary election. This is not an unexpected result considering that it is usually a prominent topicality in the news media in any multi-party system. A more striking finding is that such a narrow topic as Gypsy crime added up to 4% of the total news coverage of the biggest online news site in Hungary. The consequences of this might be even bigger when considering that Jobbik is the only party that emphasizes this issue on its agenda (Róna, 2014) which then gained so much attention that every 25th article in the news coverage of the biggest online outlet mentioned it. The Gypsy crime issue visibly climbed up the news agenda, receiving 60% more coverage before the April 2014 election then in 2009, the starting period of the analysis.
To conclude the first part of the analysis, two out of Jobbik’s four most important issues received extensive coverage in the online media over a period of five years, meaning that it might have contributed to the formulation of the party’s issue ownership. This finding however brings up a serious limitation of this research: the analysis of the prominence of Jobbik’s issues doesn’t consider the possible impact of real world events that might as well influence the news coverage. Without the inclusion of this variable the reasons behind the growing coverage of the Gypsy crime issue remain unexplored. Was it because Jobbik emphasized the issue more or because an increasing number of newsworthy events related to Gypsy crime took place in Hungary so index.hu decided to give the issue more publicity?
This limitation can only be overcome by including real world indicators in a future analysis. This way the data from the real world, about the media coverage and Jobbik’s favorability ratings could be compared via a multivariate linear regression model to find out
27 the direction of the causal arrow between the variables (based on Walgrave & De Swert, 2004).
The second part of the analysis dealt with the exclusivity of Jobbik’s ownership and found that the party only had exclusive ownership over the political corruption and the Gypsy crime issues. The latter result was expectable, as it is Jobbik’s core issue (Róna & Sőrés, 2012). The ownership of the political corruption theme on the other hand might have given more influence to Jobbik, since it is a broader issue that can be of importance for more voters than the narrow and specific Gypsy crime theme.
With regards to the other two issues, transborder Hungarians and fight on banks, Jobbik shares the ownership with other parties meaning that their issue ownership is weaker (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004). The transborder Hungarians theme is traditionally a right-wing issue (Grajczár & Tóth, 2011) that is also confirmed by the findings that showed a shared ownership between Jobbik and the other right-wing party, Fidesz. Almost the same number of articles mention these two parties which can be interpreted as an achievement for Jobbik considering that Fidesz as a governing party had a lot more opportunity to take real policy measures on the issue than Jobbik.
The third part of the analysis examined the valence of the issue coverage with regards to Jobbik and thereby took a further step in the media analysis of issue ownership, since extant literature so far only analyzed the prominence of political issues in the media. This step was made on the assumption that extensive media attention to issues in general (regardless of valence) can enhance the associative dimension of issue ownership. It does so by simply
28 mentioning the party in the news coverage and thereby prompting voters to think about that party when reading about the issue.
It is the prominence dimension of issue ownership where the valence of the coverage has a presumable impact: When voters read negative information about the party in relation to a given issue, it will probably harm the party’s efforts to be perceived as best placed in
handling the issue. Following the same logic, positive coverage enhances competence ownership.
Based on this, the valence analysis found that coverage of index.hu did not help Jobbik’s competence ownership, as approximately two thirds of the coverage of all issues was negative with regards to Jobbik. Index.hu did not portray Jobbik as a competent actor in the issues of Gypsy crime, anti-corruption, transborder Hungarians or fight on banks. On the other hand, Jobbik was the most frequently mentioned party in the issue coverage of all the examined issues, thereby contributing to its possible associative ownership.
The fourth part of the research posed a tentative research question about whether there is a correlation between the prominence and exclusivity variables and Jobbik’s favorability ratings over time. The bivariate analysis showed a significant positive correlation only between the prominence of the Gypsy crime issue and the favorability ratings over time, a finding that suggests that the more coverage the issue received, the more popular the party became. This finding is only a preliminary step towards the ultimate goal of any research on issue ownership that examines the news coverage: Establishing a relationship between the media coverage and the electoral performance of a party.
29 Achieving this goal would require another data set that deals with the perceptions of the electorate of Jobbik’s issue ownership. After all, it is the voters who decide which party they consider the owner of certain issues. This research only examined the issue ownership of Jobbik in the online media, but cannot tell if the voters considered Jobbik the issue owner of the analyzed four issues on an associative and a competence level. The inclusion of electoral survey data should be included in a future research also to find out whether voters regard these issues important since it is also a requirement of electoral success, based on the theory of issue ownership (Petrocik et al., 2003).
In conclusion, this thesis managed to answer all the research questions posed and thereby explored the online media coverage regarding Jobbik’s most important issues. This way it complemented Róna’s findings that showed the party’s own communication efforts to establish the issue ownership. With this research, the online media aspect of the formulation of this ownership is covered. Now it is only the electoral survey data that is missing to be able to complete the puzzle and prove it empirically that issue ownership indeed contributed to the success of the populist radical right in Hungary.
30
References
A legnézettebb hazai weboldalak rangsora [Rankings of the most popular domestic websites]. (2014, February). Retrieved from
http://ite.hu/legnezettebb-hazai-weboldalok-rangsora/
Bélanger, É., & Meguid, B. M. (2008). Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice. Electoral Studies, 27(3), 477–491. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2008.01.001 Bernát, A., Juhász, A., Krekó, P., & Molnár, Cs. (2013). A radikalizmus és cigányellenesség
gyökerei a szélsőjobboldal szimpatizánsai körében. In Kolosi T., & Tóth, I. Gy. (Eds.), Társadalmi riport 2012 (pp. 355-376). Budapest: Tárki.
Betz, H.-G. (2003). The Growing Threat of the Radical Right. In: P. H. Merkl & L. Weinberg (Eds.), Right-Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century. London: Frank Cass, 74– 93.
Bos, L., Lefevere, J., Thijssen, R., & Sheets, P. H., (2014). The impact of media coverage on right-wing populist parties: the role of issue ownership. Paper prepared for
presentation at the ECPR General Conference 2014, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR).
Budge, I., & Farlie, D. J. (1983). Explaining and predicting elections: issue effects and party strategies in 23 democracies. London: Allen & Unwin.
Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy. Political Studies, 47:1, 2–16
Carter, E. (2005). The Extreme Right in Western Europe: Success or Failure? Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dalton, J.R. (1996). Political Cleavages, Issues and Electoral Change. In LeDuc, L., Niemi, R., & Norris, P. (Eds.), Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dearing, J. W., & Rogers, E. M. (1996). Agenda-setting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dolezal, M., Ensser-Jedenastik, L., Müller, W. C., & Winkler, A. K. (2013). How parties
compete for votes: A test of saliency theory. European Journal of Political Research. Döme, Zs., & Hajdú, A. (2009). A politikai tájékozódás új formáinak jelentősége az
egyetemisták körében. Paper prepared for the National Conference of Student’s
31 Ellinas, A. A. (2010). The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe: Playing the
Nationalist Card. Cambridge University Press.
Geys, B. (2012). Success and failure in electoral competition: Selective issue emphasis under incomplete issue ownership. Electoral Studies, 31 (2), 406-412.
Givens, T. (2005). Voting Radical Right in Western Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Grajczjár, I., & Tóth, A. (2011). Válság, radikalizálódás és az újjászületés ígérete: a Jobbik útja a parlamentbe. In Zs. Enyedi, A. Szabó & R. Tardos (Eds.), Új képlet. Választások Magyarországon. Budapest: Demokrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Alapítvány, 57-92.
Green-Pedersen, C., & Stubager, R. (2010). The Political Conditionality of Mass Media Influence. When do Parties Follow Mass Media Attention?. British Journal of Political Science, 40 (3), 663-677
Hopmann, D. N., Vliegenthart, R., De Vreese, C. H., & Albæk, E. (2010). Effects of Election News Coverage: How Visibility and Tone Influence Party Choice. Political
Communication, Forthcoming.
Kovács, A. (2013). The Post-Communist Extreme Right: The Jobbik party in Hungary. In Wodak R., Khosravi Nik, M., Mral, B. (Eds), Right-Wing Populism in Europe. Politcs and Discourse (pp. 223-235). London: Bloomsbury.
Krekó, P., & Juhász, A. (2011). Honnan jönnek, hányan vannak, mit csináljunk velük? In Simonovics-Sík (Ed.), Abena, Sára, Chen és Ali esélyei Magyarországon (pp. 6-31). Budapest:Tárki.
Lachat, R. (2013). Issue ownership and the vote: salience or competence? Presented at the Workshop Issues, Parties, and the Public. How the public links parties to issues and how it matters, Antwerp, Belgium.
Mazzoleni, G. (2003). The media and the growth of neo-populism in contemporary
democracies. In G. Mazzoleni, J. Stewart, & B. Horsfield (Eds.), The media and neo-populism: A contemporary comparative analysis. Westport, Conn: Praeger.
Mazzoleni, G. (2008a). Mediated Populism. In D. Wolfgang (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Blackwell Publishing.
Mazzoleni, G. (2008b). Populism and the Media. In D. Albertazzi & D. McDonnell (Eds.), Twenty-first century populism: the spectre of Western European democracy (pp. 49– 66). Palgrave Macmillan.
32 Mudde, C. (2013). Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So
what? European Journal of Political Research, 52(1), 1–19. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02065.x
National Election Office (2014a). Parliamentary election - The results of the parties, national minority groups and independent candidates aggregated at country level. Retrieved from http://valasztas.hu//en/ogyv2014/416/416_0_index.html
National Election Office (2014b). The aggregated results of the Elections of the European Parliament. Retrieved from http://valasztas.hu//en/ep2014/422/422_0_index.html National Election Office (2014c). Municipal elections - Informative data on the results of
capital city compensatory list and county assembly elections. Retrieved from http://valasztas.hu//en/onkval2014/443/443_0_index.html
Róna, D., & Sőrés, A. (2012). A kuruc.info nemzedék. Miért népszerű a Jobbik a fiatalok között? In A. Szabó (Ed.), Racionálisan lázadó hallgatók. Radikalizmus,
posztamterializmus, apátia a magyar egyetemisták és főiskolások körében. Szeged: Belvedere, 113-157.
Róna, D. (2014). Jobbik-jelenség. A Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom népszerűségének okai. Budapest: Corvinus University of Budapest Doctoral School of Political Science. Petrocik, J. R. (1996). Issue ownership in presidential elections, with a 1980 case study.
American Journal of Political Science, 40(3), 825–850.
Petrocik, J. R., Benoit, W. L., & Hansen, G. (2003). Issue Ownership and Presidential Campaigning, 1952-2000. Political Science Quarterly, 118 (4), 599-626.
Stavrakakis, Y., & Katsambekis, G. (2014). Left-wing populism in the European periphery: the case of SYRIZA. Journal of Political Ideologies, 19:2, 119-142, DOI:
10.1080/13569317.2014.909266
Stewart, J., Mazzoleni, G., & Horsfield, B. (2003). Conclusion: Power to the media managers. In G. Mazzoleni, J. Stewart, & B. Horsfield (Eds.), The media and neo-populism: A contemporary comparative analysis. Westport, Conn: Praeger.
Stubager, R. (2014). The meaning of issue ownership. Experimenting with measures and meaning. Aarhus University, Department of Political Science.
Taggart, P. (2004). Populism and representative politics in contemporary Europe. Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(3), 269–288.
Vona: A Jobbik lesz a Fidesz kihívója 2018-ban [Vona: Jobbik is going to be the challenger of Fidesz in 2018]. (2014, June 3). Retrieved from
33 http://mandiner.hu/nyomtatas/20141012_vona_a_jobbik_lesz_a_fidesz_kihivoja_2018 _ban
Walgrave, S., & De Swert, K. (2007). Where Does Issue Ownership Come From? From the Party or from the Media? Issue-party Identifications in Belgium, 1991-2005.
Press/Politics, 12 (1), 37-67.
Walgrave, S., & De Swert, K. (2004.) The Making of the (Issues of the) Vlaams Blok. Political Communication, 21:4, 479-500, DOI: 10.1080/10584600490522743 Walgrave, S., Lefevre, J., & Nuytemans, M. (2009). Issue Ownership Stability and Change:
How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances. Political Communication, 26 (2), 153-172.
Walgrave, S., Lefevere, J., & Tresch, A. (2012). The Associative Dimension of Issue Ownership. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(4), 771–782. doi:10.1093/poq/nfs023
34
Appendix A
A1. Table 1: Search terms to identify articles containing the issues in the news coverage of index.hu
Issue Search terms (In English)
Gypsy crime
Gypsy crime; Roma crime; Gypsy question; Roma question; Gypsy criminal; Roma criminal
Political corruption
Political corruption; corruption+politics; corrupt+politician; clientelism, anti-corruption
Fight on banks
help+borrowers; compensation+borrowers; foreign currency loan; fight+banks; fight+bank system
Transborder
Hungarians Transborder Hungarians; Hungarians abroad; Trianon
A2. Table 2: Number of articles that contain the given issue
Issue n Gypsy crime 739 Transborder Hungarians 536 Political corruption 1275 Fight on banks 610 Total 3160
A3. Table 3: Jobbik’s favorability among committed voters (2009-2014)
6% 11% 12% 14% 19% 20% 16% 15% 18% 0,0% 5,0% 10,0% 15,0% 20,0% 25,0%
Jobbik's favorability among committed voters (2009-2014)
Average of Tárki, Medián, Századvég and Ipsos results35
Appendix B
B1. Codebook for valence of Jobbik’s issue ownership
Codebook
The units of analysis were the distinct articles that contained each of the four previously analyzed issues (Gypsy crime, political corruption, transborder Hungarians or fight on banks) and also mentioned Jobbik.
The number of coded articles per issue: Gypsy crime: n=503
Political corruption: n=241 Transborder Hungarians: n=574 Fight on banks: n=183
All these articles were listed per issue and were given a number (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.) to be able to keep track of them during the coding procedure. The articles’ publishing date was also stored for later identification. These articles were then coded for their valence with regards to Jobbik. An inter-coder reliability test was not necessary as I was the only person coding the articles.
Coding instructions
1. Double checking that the article mentions Jobbik
In order to determine the valence, the articles should be carefully read, and first the references for Jobbik need to be identified. These references should be identified on the basis of
explicitly mentioning Jobbik, or referring to the party in any way (e.g. “the far-right party”, “Vona’s party”, “the extremist party” etc.)
2. Coding the valence of an article with regards to Jobbik
When a reference(s) to Jobbik is (are) identified, the next step is to determine the valence of the article with regards to Jobbik. The valence can be neutral (0), positive (1) or negative (-1). An article is coded neutral (0) is it does not contain a value judgement about Jobbik. A neutral article contains only factual information, e.g. information about an event of the party,
36 the position of a party member, etc. An example of a neutral article is one that informs about the nomination of the new vice president of Jobbik without further commentary.
An article is coded positive (1) if it refers to Jobbik's action that contribute to the solution of the issue or highlights the capabilities of Jobbik in handling the given issue. E.g. Jobbik drafted a proposal for more transparency on MP-s salaries or Jobbik organized a rally for the equal treatment of Hungarians in Romania or Jobbik developed a Roma strategy and the article highlights the constructive elements of it, etc.
An article is coded negative (-1) if it mentions Jobbik in a connotation that suggest the party's amiss or mistake regarding the given issue. An example: Jobbik organized a rally to address the Gypsy question and the speaker used racist comments when referring to the Roma minority or Jobbik’s financial plan to help foreign currency borrowers would seriously
jeopardize the annual budget, etc. 3. Assessment
When all the articles in the sample are coded for their valence, the number of articles per each topic should be assessed based on their valence the following way:
Number of neutral/positive/negative articles
Gypsy crime x/y/z
Political corruption x/y/z Transborder Hungarians x/y/z
Fight on banks x/y/z
