Coverage of the Campaigns in the Media

Abstract

Mass-media coverage is important for both citizens and political actors: Citizens use the media as their main source of information for opinion formation. ‘Some minimal level of information facilitates the exercise of citizenship’ (Bennett and Iyengar 2008: 717). Political actors aim at influencing the judgement and voting decisions of citizens, but most of them have very limited resources (e.g. financial resources) to get into contact with their target audience by their own organizational channels (e.g. party newsletters, etc.) or by paid media (e.g. political advertising). Thus, getting access to the editorial content of mass media by means of political public relations messages (earned media) is a crucial strategy to convey campaign messages to the citizens. The success of this strategy heavily depends on the way the media treat political public relations messages, and on the degree of professionalization of PR in political organizations.