Abstract
Documenting the coverage of the campaign in traditional and social media, this chapter provides a particular focus on Sinn Féin, which ran a vigorous social media campaign and provided the narrative of ‘change’ that dominated election messaging. This chapter demonstrates that Fine Gael received a disproportionate share of coverage in the traditional media relative to its vote share, a finding explained by the party’s central role in the outgoing government. Sinn Féin was the dominant actor in social media, with the party and its senior politicians generating a much more significant footprint on Twitter and Facebook than its rivals. Electioneering—which includes party politics, election strategy and campaigning—accounted for 51 per cent of all articles in news media, while housing and the pension age were the issues covered most prominently.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Niamh Kirk et al., Digital News Report Ireland 2019 (DCU FuJo & Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, 2019).
- 2.
See Doris A. Graber, ‘Making campaign news user friendly: the lessons of 1992 and beyond’, American Behavioral Scientist 37:2 (1993), pp. 328–36; Thomas E. Patterson, ‘The 1976 horserace’, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (1977), pp. 73–9; Shanto Iyengar, Helmut Norpoth, and Kyu S. Hahn, ‘Consumer demand for election news: the horserace sells’, The Journal of Politics 66: 1 (2004), pp. 157–75.
- 3.
Kathleen Jamieson and Joseph Cappella, ‘The effect of a strategy-based political news schema: a Markle Foundation Project Report’, paper delivered at the American Political Science Association Convention, Washington DC, 1993; Thomas E. Patterson, ‘Of polls, mountains: U.S. journalists and their use of election surveys’, The Public Opinion Quarterly 69:5 (2005), pp. 716–24.
- 4.
Heinz Brandenburg, ‘Political bias in the Irish media: a quantitative study of campaign coverage during the 2002 general election’, Irish Political Studies 20:3 (2005), pp. 297–322.
- 5.
Gerry Moriarty, ‘Old question of who pulls the strings comes back to haunt Sinn Féin’, The Irish Times 6 February 2020.
- 6.
Pat Leahy, ‘Campaign strategies: how the campaign was won and lost’, pp. 75–97 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2016: the election that nobody won (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 91.
- 7.
Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm’, Journal of Communication 43:4 (1993), pp. 51–8.
- 8.
William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, ‘Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: a constructionist approach’, American Journal of Sociology 95:1 (1989), pp. 1–37.
- 9.
The mainstream media percentages reported here include all topics for which we coded with the exception of electioneering. Thirty-six per cent of the articles addressed topics that were not covered in the exit poll and so the figures for mainstream media coverage total to 64. While this does not enable a direct comparison between the two sets of figures, it does allow us to see the degree of under- or over-representation among the topics reported.
- 10.
Miriam Lord, ‘The left woos Mary Lou as FG tries to keep Ireland’s nanas and granddads happy,’ Irish Times 22 January 2020.
- 11.
Kristoffer Holt et al., ‘Age and the effects of news media attention and social media use on political interest and participation: do social media function as leveller?’, European Journal of Communication 28:1 (2013), pp. 19–34.
- 12.
Gunn Sara Enli and Eli Skogerbø, ‘Personalized campaigns in party-centred politics’, Information, Communication & Society 16:5 (2013), pp. 757–74.
- 13.
Nicholas A. Valentino et al., ‘Election night’s alright for fighting: the role of emotions in political participation,’ The Journal of Politics 73:1 (2011), pp. 156–70.
- 14.
Michael B. MacKuen et al., ‘Affective signatures and attention: the persistent impact of emotional responses to the news’, paper delivered at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2013.
- 15.
Nicholas A. Valentino et al., ‘Is a worried citizen a good citizen? Emotions, political information seeking, and learning via the internet,’ Political Psychology 29:2 (2008), pp. 247–73.
- 16.
Jakob-Moritz Eberl et al., ‘Emotional reactions on Austrian parties’ Facebook pages during the 2017 Austrian parliamentary election’ (University of Vienna: Computational Communication Science Lab, 2017).
- 17.
Nikos Askitas, ‘Calling the Greek referendum on the nose with Google Trends’. Bonn: IZA Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA Discussion Paper No. 9569 (2015).
- 18.
See Theresa Reidy and Jane Suiter, ‘Who is the populist Irish voter?’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland 46 (2016–17) pp. 117–31, and Jane Suiter et al., ‘Hybrid media and populist currents in Ireland’s 2016 general election’, European Journal of Communication 33:4 (2018), pp. 396–412.
- 19.
Philip Ryan, ‘Mary Lou McDonald could well be the Irish version of Donald Trump’, Irish Independent 2 February 2020.
- 20.
Fiach Kelly et al., ‘Sinn Féin “will talk to all parties” on forming a government’, Irish Times 2 February 2020.
- 21.
Rónán Duffy, ‘Micheál Martin again rules out Sinn Féin coalition, saying party would “destroy enterprise”’, TheJournal.ie 3 February, 2020.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix: Coding categories for dominant topic
Appendix: Coding categories for dominant topic
1. Macro economics | 13. Defence |
2. Civil rights, freedoms | 14. Culture/Media |
3. Social affairs | 15. Foreign affairs |
4. Agriculture | 16. Democracy/Governance |
5. Employment | 17. Party politics/Election strategy/Campaigning |
6. Education | 18. Other |
7. Climate/Energy | 19. Emigration |
8. Immigration | 20. Opinion polls |
9. Traffic/Transport | 21. Brexit |
10. Justice/Crime | 22. Healthcare (added during recoding) |
11. Housing | 23. Pension age (added during recoding) |
12. Micro economics (Tax/Spending) | 24. Childcare (added during recoding) |
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Park, K., Suiter, J. (2021). Media and the Election: Social and Traditional Media Narratives in the Campaign. In: Gallagher, M., Marsh, M., Reidy, T. (eds) How Ireland Voted 2020. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66405-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66405-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-66404-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-66405-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)