
Abstract
This study investigated the interplay of politicians’ perceptions regarding the political influence of leading newspapers and the mass media’s general impact on democracy. The scope of the study was restricted to democratic-corporatist media systems. We used comparative data of political elites (N = 392; countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland) and assessed direct and indirect effects of their perceptions about national broadsheets’ political influence on the mass media’s perceived general impact on democracy. As expected, we found a positive direct effect regarding perceptions of the media’s role in democracy that corresponds with theories stressing the ‘guard-dog role’ of the quality press for political elites. However, we also found a negative indirect effect of perceived newspaper influence through perceptions of the media’s agenda-setting and career-controlling power. We argue that this effect can be explained by feelings of disempowerment among politicians. Arguably, perceived disempowerment causes criticism from political actors towards the media inasmuch as they feel constrained in the full exercise of their democratic functions.
Item Type: | Journal article |
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Keywords: | perceptions; quality newspapers; politicians; democracy; media influence; media power |
Faculties: | Social Sciences > Communication |
Subjects: | 300 Social sciences > 320 Political science |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-42561-5 |
ISSN: | 1613-4087 ; 0341-2059 |
Alliance/National Licence: | This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively. |
Language: | English |
Item ID: | 42561 |
Date Deposited: | 09. Mar 2018, 14:09 |
Last Modified: | 04. Nov 2020, 13:18 |