Abstract
This chapter focuses on the media appearances of interest groups in two of the main Portuguese newspapers between 1990 and 2019. It identifies the types of groups and particular organizations that are more frequently mentioned in the press, their longitudinal evolution and diversity, the policy domains in which organizations are involved and their potential relationships with other political organizations, while drawing some conclusions about the mobilization strategies that are mentioned in the media. In findings similar to those observed in other European countries, we observe increasing media appearances of public interest groups over time, partly at the expense of business groups and trade unions. Groups are mostly involved in articles relating to health, education and justice policy areas, yet shying away from a more active involvement in electoral disputes. In addition, mobilization strategies still attract attention, particularly protests and demonstrations. Altogether, the results suggest that those groups with greater resources and access to other political (or administrative) arenas make more appearances.
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Notes
- 1.
It thus results in a total of 9669 entries in our database, 596 of which correspond to editions with no interest group appearances.
- 2.
The coding of the policy area follows the criteria of the Comparative Agendas Project (available at https://www.comparativeagendas.net/pages/master-codebook; see Bevan, 2019).
- 3.
Such as elections, court cases, state budgets, party congresses or elections, and internal disputes or elections within the interest group.
- 4.
Namely EU authorities, ministers and state secretaries, political parties and national public entities.
- 5.
The coding of the group type follows the seven-categories operationalization used by Binderkrantz et al. (2017): trade unions, business groups, professional groups, institutional groups, leisure groups, identity groups, and public interest groups. Among the last categories, particularly, it is worth noting the less clear-cut nature of the distinction between identity and public interest groups. In this sense, we considered the public interest groups as a broad category of citizen groups oriented toward public and societal causes and goods (e.g. Berry, 1999, p. 190); the identity groups, in turn, refer to organizations with a more circumscribed and self-referential scope of action and set of members.
- 6.
This issue is particularly relevant in the case of Público: the ‘Politics’ section tended to be quite small in the 1990s, compared to the same section in the last decade or to the equivalent sections ‘National’ and ‘Portugal’ in the 2000s. Thus, interest group appearances could be found in other sections that at the time were thematically and editorially autonomous (e.g. ‘Society’, ‘Education’). In the 1990s, 634 articles were coded in Público as containing interest group appearances (vs. 1560 and 1791 in the two following decades). For Expresso, the values are 443, 760 and 691, respectively.
- 7.
This category includes, among many others, news on intergovernmental relations, local government issues and political appointments.
- 8.
Interest group appearances were also found in articles on Domestic Commerce (4.2%), Social Welfare (3.3%), Civil Rights (3.1%), Environment (2.8%), Macroeconomics (2.5%), Transportation (2.5%), Defense (1.9%), Culture (1.9%), International Affairs (1.8%), Agriculture (1.7%) and Public Lands (1.2%).
- 9.
Nine legislative elections (1991, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2019), six presidential elections (1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016), seven local elections (1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2017) and six European elections (1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019).
- 10.
The operationalization of this non-electoral period follows that employed by Binderkrantz (2008), despite slight differences in its duration—the author operationalizes the election and non-election period with a duration of three weeks.
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Loureiro, J., Silva, J.G.e. (2023). Interest Groups in the Media. In: Lisi, M. (eds) Interest Groups and Political Representation in Portugal and Beyond. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32585-4_7
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