In modern information societies the mass media fundamentally affect how people perceive themselves and the surrounding world, how key societal institutions function and how democracy works. This project investigates the dominating form and content of the news stories on immigration in the mass media. It explores all the main phases related to the mediatization of migration: The information strategies and production processes behind the news; news form and content; as well as the effect of the media coverage on the audience in general and on political and administrative institutions governing the field of immigration in particular. By investigating how news on migration are produced, with emphasis on the contests between journalistic practices and strategic stakeholders, the project describes the long-neglected, but critical mechanisms behind the public discourse on migration. It further examines the role of the news media in the loops of information on migration from Diasporas in Norway, to sending countries of emigrants. Finally, it compares the key characteristics of the Norwegian mediated discourse on migration with news discourses on migration in other western countries with both similar and contrasting immigration histories. Together these tightly related research questions illuminate the following overarching research question: How are the dominating accounts of migrations in the news framed, by whom and to what effect?
Collaborators: Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud, Espen Ytreberg, Øyvind Ihlen, Tine Ustad Figenschou, Audun Beyer, Knut Lundby, Tore Slaatta, Kristin Skare Orgeret, Espen Gran, Toril Aalberg, Rodney Benson, Jörg Matthes
Time-period: Spring 2011 -
Financial source: Research council of Norway, Rådet for annvendt
medieforskning and others.
Media System, Political Culture and Informed Citizenship:A Comparative Study
This is a comparative project that will investigate how the basis for a variety of expressions and an informed citizenry may change if a country experience important changes to their media system. In a comparative perspective, does for example the Norwegian media system with its strong focus on newspapers and public service broadcasting, create the ideal environment for diversity of expressions and citizens knowledge of political views, events and actors? What are likely to happen if the number of privately owned television channels increase, the requirements on commercial channels is reduced and the public broadcaster are weakened? Will it reduce the diversity of expressions in the news and the informed citizenry? In brief, this study will seek to investigate what affects the supply of news, on the one hand, and, attentiveness to the news on the other, in order to investigate the conditions that contribute to informed citizenship. This will be accomplished through a broad cooperative research effort driven by leading media and political communication academics in Europe, America and Asia.
Collaborators: James Curran, Shanto Iyengar, Sharon Coen, Toril Aalberg, Stuart Soroka, Sergio Splendore, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Pradeep Krishnatray, Kaori Hayashi, Paul Jones, Rod Tiffen, David Rowe, Andrew Blake, Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, June Woong Rhee, Hernando Rojas
Time-period: Winter 2010 -
Financial source: Various.
Evaluations of Immigrants and Policy Preferences. A Cross-National Experiment
This project is based on a novel experimental design, and examines cross-national differences in the relationship between public opinion toward the issue of immigration and evaluations of individual applicants for citizenship. Previous research has demonstrated that support for immigration decreases when immigrant groups are perceived as culturally dissimilar to the dominant group in the host nation. However, there is no research to date on the relationship between policy opinions and impressions of individual immigrants. In this study, we manipulate various attributes of immigrants making them appear more or less “qualified” to assimilate in and contribute to the host nation. We also vary the individuals’ race by making them appear more or less Afrocentric. By coupling the level of visual Afrocentrism with substantive “credentials” such as education and occupation, we are able to assess the level of implicit racial bias in public opinion toward immigrants and the consequences of this bias, if any, for policy preferences on immigration.
Collaborators: Shanto Iyengar,Toril Aalberg, Ray Duch, Stuart Soroka, Kees Aarts and others
Time-period: Winter 2009 -
Financial source: Various.
Network of European Political Communication Scholars
The Network of European Political Communication Scholars is a network for furthering research and teaching in systematic social scientific political communication research. Based on collaboration, comparison, cumulatively and conceptualization. Network members plan and carry out joint research and publications.
Collaborators: Frank Esser, Jesper Strömbäck, Claes de Vreese, Toril Aalberg, Peter van Aelst, Rosa Berganza, Guido Legnante, Günther Lengauer, Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, Cartsten Reineman, Susana Salgadon, Tamir Scheafer and James Stanyer
Time-period: Winter 2008 -
Financial source: Various.
Media systems, news content and public perception of political reality.
Public opinion constitutes one of the cornerstones of democracy. Citizens are assumed to hold preferences for particular polices, know where parties and candidates for offices are located on the relevant policy dimensions, and cast their votes accordingly. In other words: Democracy functions best when its citizens are politically informed. In order to express attitudes and act according to their self interest, citizens need relevant and up to date information about current affairs. This holds regardless of whether one considers the competence of individual citizens or the competence of the public as an aggregate. In many respects political relevant information is more widely available now then at any time in history. However, several scholars have questioned the quality and the form of information provided by the news media. A central hypothesis in this project is that media systems matter for the information available to the public. How commercial and public broadcasting is organised within a country, or the relative importance of newspapers to television, are all factors that can influence the information provided by the news media, and thus the potential effect on the public.
The overall aim of this project is to study the information given by the news media to the public, and how this information influences the public’s knowledge and perception of political reality. The proposed research will contribute to the research agenda in two areas: (i) One important goal is to investigate how the information given by the news media varies across different media systems and types of media within these systems. Does news content vary across media systems in that the amount of information, the focus of information and the use of news frames varies significantly, or is there no significant difference in the information provided by the different news media in different media systems? (ii) A second goal is to study how between and/or within system variations in news content may influence political knowledge and public perception of political reality.
Collaborators:
Toril Aalberg, Shanto Iyengar, James Curran, Jesper Strömbäck, Kees Aarts, Holli
A. Semetko, Peter van Aelst.
Time-period: Autumn 2007 - 2011
Financial source: Research council of Norway, NTNU, Stanford University,
Goldsmiths University of London.
The relationship between media and politics. A comparative perspective.
An international trend within political communication seem to be that control over the political media content gradually have shifted from being run by the parties to being controlled by the media themselves. Today leading journalist in many countries declare that they should have the power to control which issues to discuss when and who should be invited to participate in these discussions. At the same time politicians have become more dependent on the media in their communication with the electorate, due to increased volatility and electoral de-alignment. There seem however to be significant differences between countries in how the communication between journalists and politicians occur. When the international literature shows that political sources are more powerful then journalists, perhaps this is because the research is conducted in the US or Britain. A main hypothesis in this project is that different countries may have different standards when it comes to the relationship between political sources and journalist. The project has conducted a survey that is being sent out to political journalists and members of parliament in various countries. The project started in Belgium in 2006. Since then the survey has been conducted in the Netherlands and Norway in 2007. Sweden and Denmark is joining the project and will carry out identical surveys in 2007 or 2008.
Collaborators:
Michiel Nuytemans, Peter van Aelst, Jonas Lefevere, Stefaan Walgrave,
Claes .H. de Vreese, Toril Aalberg, Ann Iren
Jamtøy & Jesper Strömback,
Time-period: Autumn 2006 -
Financial source: Various
Political Communication in the Nordic Countries
In cooperation with Nordicom (Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research) this project sets out to publish a book which should be of interest to foreign researcher and master students without previous knowledge on neither the political system nor the media system.
The book will consist of two parts, besides the overall introduction and conclusion. The first part will include one system-oriented chapter per Nordic country. The idea is to give a good insight into the current situation as well as the most important changes and growths. These chapters include
- Description of electoral system and party system, including tendencies in political behaviour such as party identification, political confidence and efficacy as well as political interests.
- Description of the media system, including the importance of broadcasting vs print media vs the internet. Moreover a discussion of the importance of the national media vs local media should be included. Media use and attitudes towards the media should also be included in this section.
- A short background who describes how the current system occurred.
- A short description of important laws and regulations that influence the political communication and the Medias activities.
- An analyses of the interaction between media and politics on a system level including the degree of political parallelism,
The second part of the book will include a set of empirical case studies.
Collaborators:
Jesper Strömback, Toril Aalberg & Mark Ørsten (eds.)
Time-period:
Spring 2006 - Autumn 2007.
Financial source: Various
Comparing Election Coverage in Different Countries.
The histories of political communication research and election research have been closely intertwined ever since the end of World War II and the expansion of empirical scholarship. However, there is still an apparent lack of comparative research in general, and with regards to the news coverage of national elections in particular. The purpose of this project is to compare the news coverage of national elections in different countries. So far countries includes Sweden, The United States, United Kindom, Spain and Norway.
Collaborators: Jesper
Strömback, Daniela Dimitrova, Adam Shehata,
Óscar G Luengo & Toril Aalberg
Time-period: Spring 2006 - Autumn 2007.
Financial source: Various
Den subtile valgkampen. Fungerer valgkampene slik de skal?
Valgene spiller både en praktisk og en legitimerende rolle i det demokratiske systemet. Valgene er prosedyre for utvelgelse av dem som skal bekle posisjoner i det representative systemet. Valgene er også selve grunnsteinen i begrunnelsen for det demokratiske systemet. Uten frie og rettferdige valg mister politiske institusjoner og politiske eliter legitimitet og dermed handlekraft. Frie og rettferdige valg forutsetter frie og rettferdige valgkamper.
Gjennom ulike internasjonal fora følger representanter for de veletablerte demokratiene de unge demokratienes valg og valgkamper med årvåkenhet. Trakassering av politiske motstandere, misbruk av mediene og politisk ensretting påtales. Diskusjonen om kvaliteten på valgkampene i de etablerte demokratiene har vært mindre intens. Det betyr nette at alle valgkamper er like gode, men det kan bety at bevisstheten om hva som er en god valkamp i et velutviklet demokrati er lite utviklet. Det synes likevel ukontroversielt å hevde at valgkamper bør være både informative og engasjerende om de skal fylle sin funksjon. Dette prosjektet søker å studere hvorvidt dette er tilfelle.
Sentrale problemstillinger er: Hvilke krav kan stilles til moderne valgkamper og inneholder disse tilstrekkelig med beslutningsrelevant informasjon? Hvilke mekanismer påviker kvaliteten på dagens valgkamper?
Det empiriske grunnlaget for denne studiene er representative spørreundersøkelser, kvalitative intervjuer med politikere og journalister samt innholdsanalyser av mediene.
Collaborators: Anders Todal Jenssen, Toril
Aalberg, Ann Iren Jamtøy, Ingunn Hagen, Sara Brinch, Eiri Elvestad, Hanne
Merethe Hestvik, Tone Sofie Aglen & Astrid Elisabeth
Moen.
Time-period: January
2005 - September 2007
Financial source: Department of Sociology and
Political Science, NTNU
Velgere i massemedienes vold? En eksperimentell studie av
partiledereffekter, aggeda-setting,
priming og framing
ved stortingsvalget 2001
To hovedproblemstillinger står sentralt i dette prosjektet. For det første; Har populære partiledere en positiv innvirkning på måten partiets budskap blir oppfattet på, og dermed partiets oppslutningen ved valg? Er måten medietbudskapet blir presenter på, av betydning, ved at den eventuelle partileder effekten blir sterkere via fjernsynsmediet sammenlignet med andre og mindre visuelle medier? Det andre hovedspørsmålet er hvorvidt og på hvilken måte de fjernsynsoverførte "folkemøtene" og paneldebattene påvirker folks oppfatning av relevante politiske spørsmål.Det synes å ha blitt common sense at valgutfall og svingninger på partibarometrene kan forklares som et resultat av partilederes medietekke, uheldige medieutspill og partienes "synlighet" i det såkalte mediebildet. Mange argumenter synes å underbygge dette synet. Velgerne er mer rotløse enn før, de stemmer mindre ut fra sosiale bindinger. Skiftene i velgermassene kommer hurtigere enn før og synes å speile såkalte mediebegivenheter. Mediekonsumet er høyt og økende, særlig fjernsynseksponeringen. Forskning fra særlig USA, synes også å underbygge forestillingen om medienes betydelige opinionsmakt. Til tross for dette har norske samfunnsforskerne vært tilbakeholdne med å utrope mediene til allmektige i norsk velgerpolitikk. Dette henger dels sammen med at medieeffekter bare oppfattes som en av flere viktige effekter i studiet av politisk atferd, dels henger det sammen med at medieeffekter ikke uten videre lar seg studere ved hjelp av det metoderepertoaret norske statsvitere vanligvis behersker. Spørsmålet om medienes opinionsmakt har imidlertid – av grunner vi skal komme tilbake til - blitt et påtrengende spørsmål for norsk samfunnsforskning. Vi tror at eksperimentelle tilnærminger vil sette oss i stand til å teste kausalhypoteser om medienes opinionspåvirkning og hypoteser om betydningen av personfokuseringen i massemedienes dekning av norsk politikk og dermed bringe norsk opinionsforskning et steg videre.
Collaborators: Toril
Aalberg & Anders Todal Jenssen
Time-period: June
2001 - June - 2005
Financial source:
Norwegian Research Council. (NFR)
Comparative Public Opinion
on Distributive Justice;
Ideals, Perceptions and
Policy Attitudes
Various attempts have
been made to explain attitudinal variations in public beliefs on income
distribution and
government redistribution.
Some argue that differences are caused by a general political culture in
the country. Others
stress that the public
is affected by the political regime and adopt or revolt against the values
and policy choices of the
political leaders.
And finally, some studies have argued that attitudes towards distribution
justice are caused by the
social and economic
structure within the society. Our study will systematically explore if
any of these explanations
can account for cross-national
variations in (i) public priorities towards distributive principles, and
beliefs about
(ii) income distribution
in general, (iii) wage inequalities, (iv) taxation and (v) government responsibilities.
Moreover, our study
try to make a clearer distinction between basic values, principles and
ideals of distributive
justice, perceptions
of achieved justice in society and attitudes toward current policies. Finally,
we investigate the
interaction between
distributive ideals, publics perception of reality and their attitudes
toward current distributive
policies.
Collaborators: Toril
Aalberg
Time-period: September
1996 - September - 2000
Financial source:
Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management, NTNU
This research is a
cross national experimental study of distributive justice norms concerning
income distribution. A
set of three experiments
is used to determine what allocation principle individuals choose when
judging the fairness of
income distributions
and what factors determine their choice. The experimental design draws
on both normative and
empirical research.
Traditionally, the preferred allocation principle is said to vary according
to the characteristics of
the good being distributed,
the individuals to whom it is distributed and the individual making the
choice. We explore
the preferences between
four major allocation principles, merit, equality, need and efficiency.
The choice of
allocation principle
is studied by manipulating variables in the experimental design. Distributive
justice norms and
judgements are analyzed
both cross-nationally, and across internal socio-demographic factors.
Collaborators: Ola
Listhaug, Toril Aalberg, Richard Matland, John Scott & Brian
Time-period: January
1998 - Desember 2000
Financial source:
Norwegian Science Foundation & National Science Foundation (USA)
Crossnational Variations
in Distributive Justice Perception Project
(CVDJP)
The project -- which now encompasses research collaborators in New Zealand, Australia, the United States,
English and French Canada, England, Ireland, France, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, Japan, Israel,
Jamaica, and South Africa -- is based on an extensive questionnaire designed to operationalize, explore, and
compare aspects of the (complex, multi-dimensional)`cognitive maps' used by citizens of modern democracies in
their thinking about distributive fairness relationships among different groups, classes, and interests. The
questionnaire has now been translated into eight languages. The survey instrument measures attitudes towards the
programs and redistributive functions of the late twentieth century welfare state, the fairness of the
taxpayer-recipient- government relationship, and the perceived relative resource positions (contributions to
society, rewards from society) of 50 different types of social groupings within modern democracies.
The survey contains questions/scales measuring perceived intergroup and intergenerational equity,
stereotyping of underprivileged societal groups, political participation, party identification and voting, and
patterns of mass media usage. In addition, it includes measures of a number of psychological correlates of justice
perception whose relative effects have not previously been tested on an extensive cross-cultural basis -- self
concept, interpersonal trust, the NEO-Personality Inventory (which taps the `big five' factors of the normal human
personality), locus of control, affect intensity, control motivation (desirability of control), status anxiety,
attributional bias, tolerance-intolerance of ambiguity, SVO (social value orientation), and need satisfaction.
Also included, for purposes of testing the `American exceptionalism' hypothesis (vis-a-vis other comparable
democratic cultures), are measures of agreement with the `Lockean individualist' cluster of ideological premises
most frequently identified by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, etc. as central to the U.S. culture--viz
individual self-reliance, anti-statism, sanctity of private property, free enterprise, social Darwinism, the
Protestant work ethic, equal opportunity (vs results), achievement orientation, competition.
Collaborators: Lawrence Powell, Joe Atkinson, Raymond Hudon,
Bernard Fournier, Paul Nesbitt-Larking,
Toril Aalberg, Harm Hart, Wim Jansen, Anders Biel, Rez Shirazi, Janusz
Grezelak, Clara Sabbagh,
Jeremy Seekings, Ken Jubber, Valerie Bresnihan, Alan Aldridge, Ken
Levine, David Waller, Rob Irvine,
Charles Grenier, Leslie Leighninger,Wayne Parent, Toshiaki Doi &
Ian Boxill
Time-period: Spring 1996 -
Financial source: Various