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APSA Political Communication Pre-Conference, Wednesday 28th August 2013, University of Illinois at Chicago
Nick Anstead
Research questions
How does the content of the Liberal Democrat manifesto relate to the way that the party tried to present itself in the media? How does it relate to the way they were actually presented in the media? Normatively, what ramifications does this have for the traditional idea of the party platform?
Method
Dataset:
Liberal Democrat manifesto text ; Liberal Democrat press releases; Nick Clegg press releases; and newspaper stories relating to Liberal Democrat policy, all for election campaign period.
Method:
Dictionary-based computer aided content analysis using Wordstat package (see final slides for additional details).
Preliminary findings
Preliminary findings
Preliminary findings
News coverage of the Liberal Democrats greatly overemphasised immigration, relative to manifesto content although this may be driven by a couple of publications (notably The Mail and Express).
Conclusions
Perhaps this goes someway towards explaining the anger directed at Clegg, and the failure of the manifesto-based defence employed by the Liberal Democrats More broadly, this difference in content between the manifesto and political communications challenges the institutional role of the manifesto in parliamentary democracies. This is especially true in plurality systems where formerly two-party systems are fragmenting and hung parliaments are increasingly likely.
Further work
In terms of this paper, data tidying is important and continuing to improve the dictionary. More data? Social media feeds? What would this show? Future research project? apply the concept of mediatized manifesto to classic questions of manifesto studies i.e. spatial arrangement of parties and legislative success.