How a New Issue Becomes an Owned Issue. Media Coverage and the Financial Crisis in Belgium (2008-2009)

Abstract

Classic issue ownership theory claims that voters link issues to political parties, andthat the party holding the best reputation on the most salient issue at the time ofelection has a large chance of gaining the public’s support (Budge & Farlie, 1983;Petrocik, 1996). But where does issue ownership come from?First, extant research showed that media coverage is a source for ownership overissues (Aalberg & Jenssen, 2007; Walgrave & De Swert, 2007). When parties get thechance to address issues in the media, and when journalists talk about specific partieswhen covering a particular issue, a link between the party and the issue gets estab-lished. Second, because of the stable nature of an already claimed ownership, studentsof issue ownership have argued that mostly new or free-floating issues are subject toclaiming by parties (Petrocik, 1996; Walgrave, Lefevere, & Nuytemans, 2009). Linkingboth arguments, we deal with the role of the mass media in establishing the ownershipover a newly emerging issue.We draw on the natural experiment offered by the recent financial crisis hitting theworld economy in 2008–2009. In many respects, this crisis was a new phenomenonwith banks on the edge of bankruptcy, the bailout of large corporations and banks,and the near collapse of entire countries. Some believe this crisis was of a nature wehave not seen since the Great Depression of the thirties. It was a crisis that, next tothe economy, affected every realm of the public sphere. The crisis was unexpected,and financial security, bailouts, and banking regulation were in most countries newissues that had not been on the political agenda in the preceding period. This researchnote examines the public’s perception of the ownership over the issue of the financialcrisis in Belgium (Flanders), compares it with issue ownership of other well-knownissues in Belgium, and with the coverage of these issues in the Belgian news media.