1. Different roles, different content?
A four-country comparison of the role
conceptions and reporting style of
political journalists
Arjen Van Dalen (Centre for journalism, SDU)
Claes de Vreese (ASCoR, UvA)
Erik Albæk (Centre for journalism, SDU)

2. Van Dalen, Arjen, De Vreese, Claes and Albaek, Erik
(2012). Different roles, different content?: A four-country
comparison of the role conceptions and reporting style of
political journalists. Journalism, Theory, Practice and
Criticism 13(7): 901-20.
2

3. Rationale
 Comparative research into journalistic cultures generally
takes one of two approaches
 Either studying role conceptions or news content
 Often refer to each other, but relation not tested
 Relation between roles of individual journalists and news
content is often assumed, but empirical support is weak
 Our argument: relation between roles of political
journalists and content more likely to be found on
system-level
3

4. Roles and content: different levels
 Individual level?
 Limited autonomy and news room socialization
 News organization?
 Transorganizational agreement of news processes
and content
 Pack journalism among beat reporters
 Zhu et al. 1997
Hypothesis: Role conceptions of political journalists
vary more across countries than within countries
4

5. Three dimensions
-pragmatic-sacerdotal
-impartial-partisan
-information-entertainment
5

6. Hypotheses
 In countries where journalists have a sacerdotal role
conception, national politics will be more visible, and will
feature less strategy framing (H2)
 In countries where journalists have a partisan role
conception, news about national politics has a partisan
bias in tone towards politicians (H3)
 In countries where journalists find entertainment more
important, political news is more often focus on scandals
and the private life of politicians (H4)

7. Methods: survey and content
analysis
Survey
 Target population: press galleries and political journalism unions
 Internet and paper
 Respondents: DK: 71 DE: 204, UK: 89, ES: 66
 Response rate between 32 and 74% (representativity checks)
Content analysis of newspaper coverage
 Left and right leaning broadsheet for each country
 1035 articles about politics (no opinion pieces or editorials)
 Two constructed weeks
 Trainer-coder tests plus intercoder reliability tests per country

8. Results 1: survey
 Individual characteristics unimportant, medium type
relevant,
media system most important
 Print journalists
-Denmark and Spain most sacerdotal
-Danish and British journalists prefer agenda setting
-Spain most partisan
8

9. Survey: Pragmatic-sacerdotal
9
0% 50% 100%
Spain
United Kingdom
Germany
Denmark
pragmatic middle sacerdotal

10. Results: Roles and content
 Pragmatic-sacerdotal
Roles: Denmark and Spain most sacerdotal
Content: Spain most sacerdotal
Hypothesis 2 partially supported

11. Survey: neutral-partisan
11
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Spain
United Kingdom
Germany
Denmark
neutral middle partisan

12. JyllandsPosten
Politiken
EkstraBladet
DR1 TV-Avisen
TV2 Nyhederne
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Bild
ARD Tagesschau
RTL Aktuell
The Daily Telegraph
The Guardian
The Sun
BBC News
ITV Nightly News
ABC
El Mundo
El Pais
TVE Telediario 2
Antena 3 Noticias
Informativos Telecinco -1
-0,84
-0,6
0,06
-0,61
-0,71
-0,67
-0,63
-0,65
-0,41
-0,56
-1
-1
-0,33
-0,04
-0,45
-1
-1
-1
0
-0,43
-0,71
0,29
-0,84
-0,78
0,21
0,14
-1
-1
-0,5
-0,75
-0,25
-1
-1
-0,08
-0,32
-0,78
-1
-1
-1
-0,65
-0,81
rightwing party left-wing party

13. Results: Roles and content
 Pragmatic-sacerdotal
Roles: Denmark and Spain most sacerdotal
Content: Spain most sacerdotal
Hypothesis 2 partially supported
 Impartial-partisan
Roles: Spain most partisan
Content: in Spain directional bias in tone towards different parties
Hypothesis 3 supported

14. Survey: inform-entertain
14
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Spain
United Kingdom
Germany
Denmark
information middle entertain

15. Coverage of scandals (black) and
the private life of politicians (grey)
15
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Percentageofarticles

16. Results: Roles and content
 Pragmatic-sacerdotal
Roles: Denmark and Spain most sacerdotal
Content: Spain most sacerdotal
Hypothesis 2 partially supported
 Impartial-partisan
Roles: Spain most partisan
Content: in Spain directional bias in tone towards different parties
Hypothesis 3 supported
 Information-entertainment
Roles: Spain most information, United Kingdom most entertainment
Content: Spain most information, United Kingdom most
entertainment
Hypothesis 4 supported

17. Conclusion and discussion
 Both role conceptions and news content vary more
across countries than within countries
 Distinct role conceptions of Spanish newspaper
journalists were reflected in content
 For other countries patterns were less clear
-Similarities between journalistic roles in Northern
Europe
-Indirect measures in content analysis
-Other country characteristics matter too (political
system…)
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18. Need for more comparative studies linking role conceptions
and content
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19. Need for more comparative studies linking role conceptions
and content
Proof of the pudding in comparative journalism research
19