Networking and Political Alignment as Strategies to Control the News

Abstract

Political coverage is strongly influenced by interactions between journalists and political actors. Especially for political actors, these interactions present an opportunity to increase their influence on the news. However, what strategies political actors use in their attempts to steer political journalists when exchanging with them has not been studied comprehensively and on a broad basis. Furthermore, some studies suggest that interactions are dominated by political actors, while others conclude that journalists are at least equally influential. Building on extant research, we first draw an inventory of strategies used by political actors in their exchanges with journalists and investigate their importance based on a mixed-methods study. Our study was conducted in Austria and included a full sample of N = 173 political journalists surveyed with a standardized instrument, and open interviews with 10 additional journalists and 10 political actors. Results show that politicians build political alliances, network with specific journalists, and use intimidation as strategies to control the interactions. In the survey, journalists mentioned basing exchanges on political alignment as the most important strategy. While this strategy indeed helps politicians to control coverage, networking strategies benefit journalists.