1. The media as political agenda-setters:
Journalists’ perceptions of media power in
eight West European countries
ArjenVan Dalen (University of Southern Denmark)
Peter van Aelst (University of Antwerp/Leiden University)

2. Van Dalen, Arjen andVan Aelst, Peter (2014). The media as
political agenda-setters: Journalists’ perceptions of media power
in eight West European countries. West European Politics, 37(1):
42-64.
2

3. Contextualizing agenda-setting
 Political agendas ’hypercompetitive environments’
 Important role of the media in first phase of policy process
 Previous research:
- support for agenda setting role of media
- increasing importance of the media
- focus on contingencies (issues, political actors, coverage)
But how does the agenda-setting power of the media vary
cross-nationally?
Influence of media system and the political system
3

4. Political agenda setting: power balance
 Political agenda setting conceptually related to public agenda-
setting, but different mechanisms:
-Politicians are strategic actors
-Agenda setting reciprocal process
 Power balance perspective
-Weight relative strength of media system and political system
-Autonomy of media system vs. concentration of political
power
-Example UK vs US (Semetko et al., 1991)

5. Hypotheses
Autonomous position of mass
media
Dependent on:
-Audience reach
-Political control over content
Concentration of political power
Dependent on:
- Number of parties
- Concentration of executive power
Agenda setting power of newspaper and television

6. Method: journalists as experts
 Surveys among political journalists to estimate agenda-setting
power of the media
 Insiders with a good eye for subtile mechanisms
 Closed ended questions about power in general
 Interested in the relative influence of different actors and
differences between countries
 Emerging research tradition (Stromback and Nord, 2006;
Davis, 2007;Walgrave, 2008;Van Aelst et al. 2008)
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7. Cases: Eight parliamentary democracies
Belgium Netherl
ands
Norway Sweden Denmark United
Kingdom
Spain Germany
Political
control*
4 7 3 5 4 8 14 6
Newspaper
reach**
39 64 - 77 64 41 26 64
Television
reach**
81 85 - 85 88 85 87 84
# Effective
parties in
parliament
5 5 4 4 5 2 3 3
# Parties in
Government
3 3 3 4 2 (3) 1 1 2
* Scale from 0 low to 20 high; Source: freedomhouse.org
**Percentage using medium every day (Eurobarometer, 2010)

8. Results I:Agenda setting power of
audiovisual media and print
 Large cross-national differences, especially for audiovisual
media
 Cross-national differences in agenda-setting power of print
not related to political control or audience reach
 Audiovisual media most influential in Norway, least influential
in Spain
-reflects political control over content
-not related to audience reach
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9. Results II:Actors with most influence on
the political agenda
Norway Sweden Netherlands Denmark United
Kingdom
Belgium Germany Spain
1 PM a
PM b
Ministers a
PM b
PM b
PM b
PM b
PM b
2 Media a
Media a
PM a
Ministers a
Ministers b
Ministers b
Ministers b
Parties b
3 Ministers a
Ministers a
Media a
Media a
Media a
Parties a
Parties b
Ministers
b
4 Interest
groups
c
Parties a
MPs c
Parties c
Parties a
Media a
Media a
MPs a
5 Parties c
Interest
groups c
Interest
groups c
Mps c
MPs c
Interest
groups c
Interest
groups c
Media a
6 MPs c
MPs c
Parties c
Interest
groups c
Interest
groups c
MPs c
MPs c
Interest
groups c
Columnwise: different subscripts differ significantly at p<.05

10. Results III:Agenda setting power of
media and political actors
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11. Discussion
Media most influential in Norway and Sweden, least in Spain
 Political control and concentration of political power most
important explanations
 Agenda-setting power of media not related to audience reach
-Newspapers relatively strong in Germany, Spain and UK
-Possibly due to role in inter-elite debate
-Media more than just proxy for public debate?