STRUCTURAL BIASES IN BRITISH AND SWEDISH ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE

Abstract

Election campaigns in advanced democracies are highly mediated events. Thus, the electorate has come to depend upon the media for information regarding the election, the parties and their policies. At the same time, research indicates that the news coverage of elections tends to be structurally biased, in the sense that the media coverage is episodic rather than thematic and that it is focused on the horse race and the political strategies of the competing parties rather than on the issues at stake. However, comparative studies of election news coverage in different countries are still somewhat lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare the election news coverage in Britain and Sweden, two countries that are part of different models of media and political systems. The study investigates the election news coverage in two major broadsheets and one major tabloid in each country, during the last three weeks before the Swedish Election in 2002 and the British Election in 2005. The results show several significant differences between the Swedish and the British election news coverage.