Do the candidates matter? Long-term trends of campaign coverage - A study of the German press since 1949

Scholars of political communication seem to agree that western democracies share some common long-term trends of election coverage. The authors raise the question whether this assumption really is supported by empirical data and illustrate this by using the USA and Germany as examples. They present results from a content analysis of the campaign coverage of four German quality papers in all previous national elections in Germany between 1949 and 1998. The focus was on investigating the amount, personalization, tone and interpreting character of campaign coverage in general and the portrayal of the candidates for the chancellorship in particular. The study found that: (1) there was no overall trend towards more or less campaign coverage; (2) there was no overall trend towards more personalization; (3) there was no overall trend towards negativism; (4) there was a trend towards more interpreting coverage. The article concludes with a discussion of possible reasons for these findings and the apparent differences between Germany and the USA.