Winning without Victory? The Media Coverage of Minority Affairs in Swiss Direct Democratic Campaigns

Abstract

This article analyzes the function of referendum campaigns as a feature of agenda setting for minority issues. Theorists of direct democracy have often argued that people’s rights show indirect effects in addition to the mere results of popular votes. Thus, popular votes are not only decision-making processes, they also have indirect effects on the political system, most notably the activation of a public debate about social issues. The present study therefore investigates the agenda-setting function of referendums by examining the media coverage of minority interests in direct democratic campaigns. The methodological basis is a systematic and standardized content analysis of 1013 newspaper articles, which cover three popular votes on eased naturalization rules in Switzerland between 1983 and 2004. Thus the paper does not look at media effects on voting behaviour, but on minorities’ chances of articulating their interests and their mediation through public communication in referendum coverage, no matter what the outcome of the vote may be. Our results show that (1) the presentation of the pros and cons of referendums on minority issues favours the position of minorities, as the media show sympathy with their concerns and do not generate feelings of cultural separateness; (2) minority rights are still an issue primarily of the major political actors; (3) media coverage of referendums functions as a means of agenda setting for migrants and conveys their affairs in quite a positive way, even though the electorate ultimately decided against the minority position; (4) the mediation of minorities’ interests through public communication can be expected to be fair.KeywordsMedia CoverageAsylum SeekerAgenda SettingDirect DemocracyPublic CommunicationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.