How parties are able to set the media agenda is a frequent topic of interest in political science research. In most of this research, emphasis has been on the extent to which specific topics are covered by the media. We argue this picture neglects that parties may have multiple ways to influence the agenda and – depending on their ideology and their inclusion in government – incentives to influence the agenda in certain ways differ. We draw on the case of the immigration issue, to distinguish three ways how parties’ issue-emphasis strategies may influence the media agenda: driving the salience of an issue, affecting how an issue is talked about (framing), and making it to the headlines.
We use a combination of text-as-data methods in order to acquire fine-grained over time measures of party and media salience and framing of the immigration issue, which we combine with social media data. Our study focuses on the years 2013 to 2017 in Switzerland and Germany, a period of heightened attention which includes the so-called refugee crisis. Furthermore, our data structure allows for comparing ‘normal’ times with election campaigns, which we expect to differ in their interaction-logic.
By showing diverse incentives and paths of agenda influence, our findings contribute to scholars’ understanding of party-media interactions as well as the role of challenger parties in modern democracies. Our work also speaks to the importance of studying parties’ immigration rhetoric in more detail.