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Press/Politics 11(3):44-66
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X06289188
© 2006 by the President and the Fellows of Harvard College
Framing the Press and Publicity Process
in U.S., British, and German
General Election Campaigns
A Comparative Study of Metacoverage
Frank Esser and Paul D’Angelo
This study compares metacoverage—news about the press and publicity
processes—in broadcast coverage of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the 2001
British general election, and the 2002 German general election. The authors
observed metacoverage topics separately from press and publicity frames. The
authors theorized that the presence of metacoverage topics in campaign news
reflects the influence of system-level factors on campaign communication and, fur-
thermore, that the use of press and publicity frames by journalists is influenced by
a country’s political communication culture. Press and publicity topics are particu-
larly more frequent in U.S. news than in British news, corroborating systemic dif-
ferences between the countries. However, press and publicity topics co-occur with,
and press and publicity frames contextualize, the same rank order of campaign
topics in all three countries, demonstrating convergence among political communi-
cation cultures in these three democracies.
Keywords: press framing; publicity framing; comparative research; political campaign
news; political communication culture
Election campaigns are a staple of modern democracies, and despite being
conducted within the context of varying media systems, political systems, and
political cultures, campaigns are being increasingly waged around the demands
and rhythms of the mass media, in particular, the news media. “To character-
ize politics as being mediatized goes beyond a mere description of system
requirements,” Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999: 250) stated. “Mediatized politics
has become dependent in its central functions on the mass media, and is con-
tinuously shaped by interactions with mass media.” Swanson and Mancini
(1996: 250) pointed out that electioneering in many democracies is characterized
by several mediatization trends: Candidates are selected on the basis of their
telegenic appeal, media professionals are hired to produce campaign materials
and to manage how the news media portray their candidate, and the mass
media are moving toward center stage in campaigns. “If political actors stage
an event in order to get media attention, or if they fashion an event in order to
fit to the media’s needs in timing, location, and the framing of the message,”
Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999: 251) stated, “then we can speak of a mediatiza-
tion of politics.”
Mediatization,which is related to what some American scholars call “media pol-
itics” (Arterton 1984; Esser and Spanier 2005), is not merely the hidden engine of
electioneering in modern democracies. Content analyses of U.S. presidential cam-
paigns show that, at times, news stories explicitly cover media politics, bringing to
light candidate-press interactions and candidate performances designed to attract
media attention. These studies use various terms to refer to this kind of news,
including self-referential process news (Kerbel 1998), media process news (Kerbel et al.
2000), stories about the media (Johnson and Boudreau 1996), and media stories
(Stempel and Windhauser 1991).We use the term metacoverage, which, according
to Esser and D’Angelo (2003), encompasses the two main types of news delin-
eated in content analysis categories, namely, news about candidates’ use of, and
interactions with, the news media, and news about publicity processes that may or
may not directly involve the news media. Esser et al. (2001) distinguished these
two types as “self-referential” and “process” metacoverage.
Normative assessments of metacoverage differ. Some observers feel that
metacoverage is mainly about news management on the part of candidates and
consultants; therefore, journalists, eager to cover the campaign as a “game”
(Patterson 1993), degrade the information environment because covering the
press and publicity process pulls them away from attending to candidates’ policy
issues (Kerbel 1997, 1998). Others feel that some metacoverage merely docu-
ments journalism’s role as a platform of candidates’ messages. If a candidate
communicates a message about a policy issue, and the metacoverage merely
signals that this message was communicated on a news program, for instance,
then the metacoverage seems to be neutral with respect to the cynical portrayal
of media politics inherent in strategy-oriented metacoverage (Johnson and
Boudreau 1996). Finally, other observers feel that some types of metacoverage
demystify the news management environment, holding candidates accountable
to higher principles of electioneering and giving audiences a constructive per-
spective on how campaign messages are crafted and communicated (see McNair
2000: 171; Sabato et al. 2000: 143–51; Sumpter and Tankard 1994).
We propose that metacoverage can serve all three of these functions. However,
following Esser and D’Angelo (2003), we feel that how metacoverage performs
these functions can be best explained via framing analysis.Their framing analysis
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 45
46 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
showed that three press frames and three publicity frames—called conduit,
strategy, and accountability for both types—permeate news stories in which
media politics is a topic and that each frame creates a different viewpoint about
media politics.The goal of this study is to extend Esser and D’Angelo’s framing
analysis of metacoverage in the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign by using their
frames as a basis to compare campaign news of recent national elections in
Germany (2002 election), Great Britain (2001 election), and the United States
(2000 election).The premise of our study is that, because metacoverage is mani-
festly about media politics, a comparative analysis can provide a unique vantage
point on how system-level and cultural-level processes shape campaign commu-
nication within each of these countries.
Following the direction of Gurevitch and Blumler (2004: 327–28), we set up
a design that “find[s] out how key characteristics of diverse political-media sys-
tems differently shape political communication processes within them.”
Moreover, our study takes up the call by Gurevitch and Blumler to use political
culture—in particular, the political communication culture (Pfetsch 2001)—as a
framework for comparative analysis.We hypothesized that the frequency of the
two kinds of metacoverage topics, press and publicity, will differ with respect to
system-level differences that shape media politics in the United States, Germany,
and Great Britain. Even more revealing, however, are comparisons of the fre-
quency of frames—conduit, strategy, and accountability—for stories with either
a press or a publicity topic. Observing differences with regard to press and pub-
licity frames will shed light on how the political communication cultures in
Germany, the United States, and Great Britain continue to differently shape the
media politics environment. Observing similarities with regard to combinations
of campaign topics and press and publicity frames will shed light on how their
political communication cultures are losing the power to distinctively shape the
media politics environment among these countries.
Metacoverage as Topic and Frame
The content analysis literature on metacoverage is based on the rudimentary
point that some campaign stories contain enough spoken, written, or visual refer-
ences to “journalists,” the “press,” “reporters,” “spin doctors,” and “media consul-
tants” to warrant the claim that either the press or publicity, or both, is a topic in
the story. Apparently, the use of different units of analysis leads to different find-
ings on the amount of metacoverage. For example, Kerbel (1998: 35–49) exam-
ined coverage of the 1992 presidential election on ABC’s World News Tonight and the
first thirty minutes of CNN’s Prime Time News from January 1 to November 3.
Using sentence-level utterances as the unit of analysis, he found that, for each net-
work, about 20 percent of the total of 10,329 utterances contained so-called “self-
referential process” news. Another content analysis, conducted by Johnson and
Boudreau (1996), examined “stories about the media” from January 1991 until
Election Day 1992 in print news (New York Times and Chicago Tribune) and on televi-
sion networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS). Using the story theme as the unit of analysis,
they found that “the press, the communication technology, or the campaign adver-
tisement was central to the story” (p. 660) in 441 cases, about 8 percent of the
4,700 stories they observed. Different still, Bennett (1992) claimed that almost
two-thirds of 1988 presidential election news was “coverage of coverage” (p. 35),
adding that “nearly every campaign story in 1990 made some sort of behind-the-
scenes reference to candidate strategy, polling, marketing, media manipulation
techniques, commercial advertising and the like” (p. 191).
Gitlin (1991) coined the term “metacoverage” in a critical assessment of
1988 U.S. presidential campaign news.
1
He argued that metacoverage is a
futile attempt on the part of campaign journalists to show that news is ideo-
logically “immune from the ministrations of campaign officials” (p. 121).
Similarly, Bennett (1992: 25–26) argued that news organizations “reflect on
their own role as never before, resulting in redundancy, self-referential logics,
and loss of context, [all of] which are the hallmarks of postmodern symbolics.”
Altheide and Snow (1991: x, 184–85) took an apocalyptic view, arguing that
“organized” journalism “is dead” because “the topics, organizations, and issues
journalists report about are themselves products of the media—journalistic
formats and criteria.” In the so-called “postjournalism era,” they contended,
useful information “drowns” in self-referential coverage (p. 191).
Framing analysis can help to tease out latent meanings of metacoverage. In
two analyses of coverage of the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign, Kerbel and his
colleagues (Kerbel 1998; Kerbel et al. 2000) argued that metacoverage displaces
coverage of policy issues and is strategy-inflected and cynical. The only other
framing study of metacoverage, conducted by Esser and D’Angelo (2003), chal-
lenged those assessments. It argued that coverage of the two main metacoverage
topics—press and publicity—occurs in conjunction with other story topics, such
as policy issues, character issues, and electioneering, rather than displacing cov-
erage of those topics. Esser and D’Angelo contended that the presence of press
and publicity topics reflects a professional norm on the part of campaign jour-
nalists to give a complete account of events (e.g., political conventions, campaign
ads) in the media politics environment. Moreover, journalists add an interpretive
overlay—their “own” frames—to the press and publicity propositions they fre-
quently encounter on the campaign trail (Esser and D’Angelo 2003).
Journalists’ unique contribution to framing the press and publicity process lies
in how they tell stories using press and/or publicity propositions. All framing
analysis involves inferring frames from the active structuring principles of com-
municators (Reese 2001). For press and publicity frames, the active structuring
principles are scripts that journalists have about the press and publicity processes
in political campaigns. Examining NBC and ABC coverage of Campaign 2000,
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 47
48 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
Esser and D’Angelo (2003) observed enough press and publicity propositions in
41 percent (116 out of 284) of stories to warrant the conclusion that those sto-
ries had a press or publicity topic. From there, they inferred how different
scripts gave rise to three different press and publicity frames. Some stories con-
tained propositions that told a story about tactical expertise involved in getting
publicity or about the journalists as embroiled in strategic scenarios of media
politics (Esser and D’Angelo 2003: 632).These stories were assigned a strategy
press frame or a strategy publicity frame because most, or all, of their press or
publicity propositions were inferred to be interpreted by journalists via scripts
that focused on news management. Other stories, however, mainly contained
propositions on the order of “candidate x appeared on Meet the Press yesterday to
discuss topic y.” Because this sort of proposition is about the connective function
of the news media, Esser and D’Angelo (2003) inferred that a journalist who
crafted this sort of story was thinking about the press as a platform for others’
ideas, giving rise to the conclusion that the story contained a conduit frame.
Finally, a proposition such as “newspaper editors say they are worried that too
much coverage of candidate x’s poor debating skills will turn off readers” is of the
sort that, if prevalent in a story, shows the operation of a script that frames the
press as being accountable to professional and democratic norms. Esser and
D’Angelo coded those sorts of stories as having an accountability frame.
Comparing Metacoverage:Theoretical
Perspectives and Research Questions
The point of transnational comparison is “to deliver findings about similari-
ties and differences at the macrolevel and about the influence of systemic vari-
ables, such as political culture or the media system, on political communication
processes” (Holtz-Bacha 2004: 219). We theorized that the presence of meta-
coverage topics, as well as the patterns of combinations between metacoverage
topics and campaign topics, will be sensitive to system-level conditions. Along
these lines, we expected metacoverage topics to be more voluminous in the
U.S. election news because the U.S. political system offers far more incentives
for strategies of media-driven forms of campaigning than the parliamentary sys-
tems of Germany and Britain.The U.S. presidential system enables candidates
to run campaigns independent of established party structures, also facilitating
greater use of external campaign professionals and political publicity experts.
In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a total of twenty-six and twenty-one
consultant firms worked for the Bush and Gore campaigns, respectively (Dulio
2003: 25), while the German campaigns of Stoiber and Schroeder and the
British campaigns of Hague and Blair employed a maximum of three external
agencies for advertising, polling, and media relations (Althaus and Cecere 2003;
Butler and Kavanagh 2002; D.K. Mueller 2002; M. Mueller 2002; Wring
2002).
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 49
There should also be more press and publicity topics in U.S. campaign news
because U.S. candidates made more use of “paid media” and “free media” than
their European counterparts. In terms of “free media,” the major U.S. candidates
held three televised debates in prime time, the German candidates two, and the
British none (Friedenberg 2002; Reinemann and Maurer 2005). U.S. presiden-
tial candidates appeared in various entertainment programs (e.g., Oprah
Winfrey, Rosie O’Donnell, Jay Leno, David Letterman) in an effort to bypass the
news media and connect more directly with audiences that otherwise would not
expose themselves to elections news (Paletz 2002: 225–26). In Germany and
Britain, none of the major candidates did so.
Finally, there should also be more press and publicity topics in U.S. campaign
news because, in terms of “paid media,” the U.S. presidential candidates, their par-
ties, and interest group allies paid for 302,450 TV spots in the year-long campaign
between January 1 and November 6, 2000 (Goldstein and Freedman 2002: 8).
In the two European countries, campaign regulations permit political advertising
in the final four weeks of the campaign only. In Britain, candidates are prohibited
from buying any advertising time on radio or television: parties are each allocated
unpaid Party Election Broadcast (PEB) time based on previous electoral support,
which in 2001 added up to a total of 100 PEB airings (Fisher 2001; Harrison
2002). Germany is one of the few Western European countries that have opened
up commercial TV channels for party spots, and it is estimated that a total of 650
political spots were aired on public and private TV channels in the 2002 campaign
(Holtz-Bacha 2005; D.K. Mueller 2002; M. Mueller 2002).This is a fraction com-
pared to the United States, where media-driven campaigns consume much larger
sums of money.The major U.S. candidates spent $607 million on political adver-
tising and publicity in the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign. In addition, the
Democratic and Republican parties spent another $692 million in hard money and
$498 million in soft money on behalf of their candidates on national, state, and
local levels (Nelson 2002: 24–25). Conversely, European parties’ expenditures on
publicity were limited to $54 million (£37 million) in the 2001 British campaign
(Electoral Commission 2002) and $82 million (81 million euro) in the 2002
German national election (Hartmann et al., 2003).
Still, several noteworthy changes in the German political communication
system heightened the mediatedness of that country’s 2002 campaign. In addi-
tion to the opportunity for German parties to buy airtime on commercial TV
channels, the major German candidates held U.S.-style TV debates for the first
time.Another innovation was the decision of a German national newspaper to
run a U.S.-style endorsement, triggering considerable media attention.
Although the foregoing system-level considerations point to differences in the
frequency of prominent metacoverage topics among the three countries, the fact
that no benchmark framing analyses of metacoverage compare topic coverage
over time requires a more cautious approach. Therefore, the following three
research questions are posed:
50 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
Research Question 1: Does the percentage of stories with a prominent metacoverage
topic differ in U.S., British, and German election news?
Research Question 2: Does the profile of campaign topics in U.S., British, and
German election news differ?
Research Question 3: What are the most common combinations of campaign topics
and metacoverage topics in U.S., British, and German election news?
We also theorized that the presence of metacoverage frames—press or
publicity—in campaign stories will be sensitive to variations in the political
communication cultures of the three countries under analysis.There is a budding
consensus among comparative theorists that “political [communication] culture
is central to understanding the construction and encoding of political messages”
(Gurevitch and Blumler 2004: 336). Political communication culture describes
“the interaction space at the interface between politics and the media in which
political communication actors move” and “plays a central role in how politics is
thematized” (Pfetsch 2004: 346). Moreover, it “shapes political rhetoric...and
ways of framing [emphasis added] political issues and controversies in the news”
(Gurevitch and Blumler 2004: 336).
Research has shown that specific political communication cultures have devel-
oped in Western democracies.According to Pfetsch (2001, 2004), structural con-
ditions of political and media systems are an important factor shaping a country’s
political communication culture. In addition to the importance of systemic fac-
tors, Pfetsch (2001, 2004) argued that normative orientations regulate role per-
ceptions between politicians and journalists, level of deference paid to each other,
journalists’ self-image, and norms of conflict management. She distinguishes a
“media-oriented” style of interaction in the United States from a “party-political”
style in Germany. In the United States, the role of the political parties is reduced
to electoral machines with few other basic functions; they have largely lost their
power to mobilize public opinion on particular issues. Consequently, U.S. candi-
dates are apt to use the channels of the news media instead of party channels to
reach voters, even though the media-oriented political communication culture
features a highly antagonistic news media—what Pfetsch (2004: 352–54) calls
“greater distance,” or combative tension, between politicians and journalists.
In contrast, Germany is still characterized by strong party organizations and
powerful party-political negotiation processes. Party politics reaches into media
organizations because they are often either controlled by party representatives
(in the case of the public broadcasting channels) or pursue politically motivated
editorial lines (in the case of national newspapers). As a result, Pfetsch (2001:
56, 64) argues, the political communication style in Germany has evolved
around a press-party parallelism. In that setting, there is comparatively “small
distance” (i.e., consensual symbiosis) between the news media and politicians.
The political communication culture of Great Britain seems to lie between that
of Germany and the United States (cf. Hallin and Mancini 2004: 69–71; for a
comparative discussion of British and U.S. media cultures, see Semetko et al.
1991; Semetko 2000; Blumler and Gurevitch 2001).
These culture-level variations point to potential differences in framing patterns
among Germany, the United States, and Britain. It is reasonable to posit that in
media-oriented political communication cultures, as opposed to those that are
party oriented, campaign journalists will be acculturated to interact with candi-
dates as antagonists and, hence, will be more apt to use strategy frames in cam-
paign stories (Patterson 1993: 96–97).Although political communication cultures
and news cultures in Britain and Germany appear to be undergoing change
toward being media oriented (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 216; Pfetsch 2001: 65),
previous studies of their election coverage found less reliance on strategic scenar-
ios than in the United States (cf. Semetko 2000: 372–73; Blumler and Gurevitch
2001: 389; Genz et al. 2001: 409;Wilke and Reinemann 2001: 309).
The legitimacy of the political communication culture in a particular coun-
try depends upon “widening and deepening the institutions of voice and
accountability” (Norris 2004: 116). In this regard, Mazzoleni and Schulz
(1999: 248) noted that journalists should be responsive to voices that urge
restraint and public accountability: An “absence of accountability can imply
serious risks for democracy, because it violates the classic rules of balances of
power in the democratic game, making the media an influential and uncon-
trollable force that is protected from the sanction of popular will.” Given the
“large distance” (Pfetsch 2004) between the news media and politicians, media-
oriented political communication cultures need accountability frames more so
than party-oriented political communication cultures (Esser and D’Angelo
2003; Fengler 2003; McNair 2000: chap 9). Because there are no benchmark
comparative analyses with which to predict the occurrence of press and pub-
licity frames among the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, the fol-
lowing research questions are posed:
Research Question 4: Which metacoverage frames occur most frequently in U.S.,
British, and German election news?
Research Question 5: What are the most common combinations of campaign topics
and metacoverage frames in U.S., British, and German election news?
Method
Sample
To answer the research questions, a content analysis of topics and frames was
conducted on election news from the flagship evening news programs of the two
most-watched U.S., German, and British television networks. All newscasts fol-
lowed similar formats, were anchored by prominent journalists, and lasted for
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 51
52 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
thirty minutes. In fact, the net news time of the privately owned stations ABC,
NBC, ITV, and RTL was several minutes shorter (due to commercial breaks) than
the license-fee-financed, public broadcasting stations of BBC and ARD.The coding
period was shorter for the British than for the German and U.S. election news
because the British general election phase lasts only four instead of eight weeks
(Butler and Kavanagh 2002: 92; Semetko 1996: 63; Semetko et al. 1991: 11).The
sample contained 284 stories from the United States, 231 stories from the United
Kingdom, and 174 stories from Germany.Table 1 gives details about the sample.
Using sampling procedures of Semetko’s (1996) benchmark study as a guide, all
stories that referred explicitly to the campaigns over these periods were analyzed.
The British sample does not include weekend bulletins but the samples of U.S. and
German news do. Similar to Semetko’s results, our data show that the smallest
amount of election news occurs on German newscasts.This can be partly explained
by a bulk of special programming outside regular news shows (which amounted to
1,165 minutes on ARD and 771 minutes on RTL) and by a “paternalistic stance” of
German news editors to sort out the “truly newsworthy” from the “same old thing”
(e.g., attacks or reiterations of party policy; see Semetko 1996: 61).
Measures
Coding procedures combined those used in the framing analysis of Kerbel
et al. (2000) and of Esser and D’Angelo (2003). The coding procedure was
conducted in three stages.
First, the prominence of eight campaign topics was measured in each story.
These topics were derived from programmatic research by Kerbel and his col-
leagues (2000).As noted, the eight topics were not treated as being frames, as
they are in Kerbel et al.
Following Kerbel et al. (2000), the eight campaign topics were categorized,
but unlike them, this analysis used three, not four, categories.The first category,
called Politics and Process, contains three topics: Electioneering/Campaigning,
Voters/Public Opinion, and Electoral/Political System.This category combined
two categories from Kerbel et al. We omitted the “horserace strategy”
topic/frame in Kerbel et al.’s Politics category to avoid the ambiguity of calling
“strategy” a topic when that term is used in the literature as a frame (e.g., Cappella
and Jamieson 1997). Instead, we used Electioneering/Campaigning to refer to
story topics roughly similar in content to Kerbel et al.’s “horserace/strategy”
frame.We also placed the topic of Electoral/Political System into this category.
Electioneering/Campaigning was found in stories with references to
campaign tactics, techniques, political marketing, targeting and maneuvering,
efforts of winning and risk of losing, traveling, and speeches. Voters/Public
Opinion was found in stories featuring polls, surveys, focus groups conducted
by media or campaign teams; references to public attitudes and public opinion;
and descriptions of voter segments and voter support. Electoral/Political
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 53
System was found in stories about political parties (fringe and mainstream)
and institutions (House of Representatives, House of Commons, Bundestag,
Electoral College), voting procedures and regulations, debate and commission
procedures, political culture, or of state of democracy.
The second campaign topic category, called Personalities, contains two
topics. Personal Character was found in stories that contain information about
a candidate’s personality traits (e.g., trustworthiness, integrity, and honesty).
Non-Issue, a variant of what Patterson (1980: 34–36) called “campaign issues,”
was found in stories that contain negative revelations about candidates, public
blunders, gaffes, exaggerations, character difficulties and youthful indiscre-
tions, or unsubstantiated rumors.
The third campaign topic category, called Policy Issues—Kerbel et al. (2000)
used the term “ideas”—contains three specific topics.The topic of Issues/Plans
was found in stories with information about public policy matters, programs,
platforms, issue stances, problems, and proposals for solutions. Prospective and
Retrospective Evaluations of candidates was found in stories about candidates’
past competence, former accomplishments, political track record and experience,
likely future actions, decisions, focus, and performance. The topic Ideology/
Political Worldview was found in stories that portrayed candidates in light of a
choice between different worldviews and ideological positions and different
political beliefs or philosophies.This study adapted the salience rules of Kerbel
et al. to measure the amount of coverage devoted to these eight campaign top-
ics in each story. Namely, a topic had primary presence if it occupied between
50 and 100 percent story content.A topic had secondary presence if it occupied
between 25 to 50 percent of story content. Finally, a topic had peripheral pres-
ence if it occupied less than 25 percent of story content.
Table 1
Content analysis design
U.S. Presidential Election, U.K. General Election, German General Election,
Polling Day: Nov. 7, 2000 Polling Day: June 7, 2001 Polling Day: Sept. 22, 2002
Coding period: 9/9-11/6 Coding period: 5/10-6/6 Coding period: 7/28-9/21
ABC World News Tonight BBC 10 O’Clock News ARD Tagesthemen
(145 items) (145 items) (103 items)
NBC Nightly News ITV News at Ten RTL Aktuell
(139 items) (86 items) (71 items)
Market share: Market share: Market share:
9 percent for 24 percent for each 12 percent (ARD) and
each newscast newscast 19 percent (RTL)
Total (8 weeks): Total (4 weeks): Total (8 weeks):
284 stories = 231 stories = 174 stories =
546 minutes 503 minutes 479 minutes
54 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
Second, after measuring the presence of campaign topics, coders observed
whether the topic of press or publicity (or both) was overlaid with other cam-
paign topics in each story. Each aspect of metacoverage as a story topic was
observed using the same salience rules as for campaign topics. For spoken
propositions, press and publicity propositions were observed when designated
key words—including but not limited to “press,” “news,” and “journalist” for the
press; and “staged appearance” and “media consultant” for publicity—occupied
any grammatical position in the syntax of a sentence.Visual propositions were
coded as metacoverage when particular shots—defined as taped visual mater-
ial that occupied the space between edits—were included in a campaign story
that depicted, for example, reporters or camera men present at a news scene.
In the subsequent analysis, a story was considered to have a salient campaign
topic or metacoverage topic when at least 25 percent of its propositional content
was devoted to the topic.This is an admittedly relaxed definition of salience.The
rationale for this decision was to avoid the possibility of losing important data
about each story’s topical structure.
In the third part of the analysis, coders followed the analysis of Esser and
D’Angelo (2003: 632) and observed press- or publicity-related script structures
in all stories.
2
Based on that analysis, each story was coded for the presence of
three press frames (news media as conduit of information, as autonomous actor
in a strategy-oriented game, or as accountable critic of the roles and standards of
the news media) and three publicity frames (mass media as conveyor of publicity
acts; the candidate as a strategy-oriented user of advertising, communication per-
sonnel, or image management strategies; or the news media as accountable forum
within which to discuss the democratic value of publicity efforts). Some stories
had more than one frame.
3
Using Kerbel’s et al. (2000) coding procedure as a guideline, two trained
coders simultaneously examined all stories. Agreement was required of both;
discrepancies were resolved through discussion. If despite repeated viewing no
agreement could be reached on a specific variable, that variable was not coded.
To test reliability, each coder independently observed the same 10 percent
subset of the sample. Intercoder reliability ranged from .80 to .84 (Scott’s pi)
for campaign story topics and for metacoverage topics and from .81 to .83 for
press and publicity frames.
Results
Topic Comparisons
We theorized that system-level differences in the three countries under
analysis will shape (1) the prominence of metacoverage topics in each country’s
campaign news, (2) the profiles of prominent campaign topics for each coun-
try’s news, and (3) story architecture in which prominent campaign topics are
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 55
combined with prominent metacoverage topics. In answer to Research
Question 1, metacoverage was most prominent in U.S. news.Table 2 shows that
41 percent of the U.S. stories, 38 percent of the German stories, and 14.5 per-
cent of the British stories had a primary or secondary presence of press or pub-
licity propositions.There was a marked difference between U.S. and British news
in number of stories with a prominent metacoverage topic (Cramer’s V = .29;
n = 515 stories), whereas the difference between U.S. and German news was
slight (Cramer’s V = .02; n = 458 stories).
The comparative prominence of metacoverage in U.S. campaign news is
mainly attributed to the frequency of publicity topics (see Table 2).Whereas this
finding supports our theoretical position that presence of metacoverage reflects
structural-level features of the surrounding political system, results for the
German news provide an interesting specification for this theoretical position.
For German news, the high level of press topics can be attributed to several
media-related structural innovations that journalists considered newsworthy.
Namely, the introduction of TV debates triggered many self-congratulating and
self-observing stories by television reporters on their own medium’s importance.
Also, the first publication of a newspaper endorsement and an unusually harsh
campaign by Germany’s increasingly proactive tabloid Bild led to further reports
on the growing influence of the press in election campaigns. By contrast, Britain,
which does not hold TV debates, outlaws paid TV ads, and leaves candidates with
the smallest campaign budgets, shows the lowest prominence of metacoverage
vis-à-vis both press and publicity topics.
To answer Research Question 2, all stories were examined for their primary
and secondary campaign topics (i.e., salient topics). Column totals in the
bottom row of Table 3 show that election stories in all three countries men-
tioned approximately 1.5 topics, attesting to the formal similarities in Western
TV news journalism. The topic profiles display a remarkably uniform pattern,
too. As the Overall column of Table 3 shows, coverage in all countries centered
mainly on four campaign topics: Electioneering/Campaigning, Issues/Plans,
Voters/Public Opinion, and Personal Character.
The U.S. topic profile displays the frequently criticized tendency in U.S.
news toward personalization, poll-driven dramatization, and discussions of
electioneering over substance (Patterson 1993; Kerbel 1998; Farnsworth and
Lichter 2003). Surprisingly, this reporting style—which is usually attributed
to the specific structural conditions of the U.S. campaign setting—also under-
lies British and German election coverage. In fact, the U.S. topic ranking cor-
relates highly with both German news (Spearman’s rho = .87) and British
news (Spearman’s rho = .93). Thus, these data do not support earlier indica-
tions that strong public broadcasting channels like BBC and ARD, and a more
party-oriented political communication culture in the European countries,
56 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
Table 2
Amount of metacoverage in U.S., British, and German election news (in percentages)
United States United Kingdom Germany (N = 174
(N = 284 ABC and (N = 231 BBC and ARD and RTL
NBC Election Stories) ITV Election Stories) Election Stories)
Stories with 14.5 (n = 41) 11 (n = 25) 24 (n = 42)
press topic
Stories with 21.5 (n = 61) 3.5 (n = 8) 6 (n = 10)
publicity topic
Stories with press 5 (n = 14) 0 (n = 0) 8 (n = 14)
and publicity topic
Total: Stories 41 (n = 116) 14.5 (n = 33) 38 (n = 66)
with metacoverage
Note: Each story could be coded for up to three salient topics. “Salient” meant primary or sec-
ondary presence.
Table 3
Amount of campaign topics in U.S., British, and German election news
Percentage of Stories Containing
a Campaign Topic
Overall: Rank
United States United Kingdom Germany Order of Most
(N = 284 (N = 231 (N = 174 Covered Topics
Election Election Election across
Campaign Topic Stories) Stories) Stories) Countries
Policy
Ideology/Political 2 2 1
Worldviews
Evaluations of 8 5 3
Candidates
Issues/Plans 36 43 36 2
Personality
Personal Character 19 9 13 4
Non-Issues/Gaffes 4 6 13
Politics/Process
Electioneering/ 57 65 57 1
Campaigning
Voters/Public Opinion 35 15 26 3
Electoral/Political 6 4 6
System
Total
a
167 149 155
a.Total is higher than 100 percent because the 284 U.S. stories mentioned 472 topics (= 167
percent), the 231 British stories mentioned 350 topics (= 149 percent), and the 174 German
stories mentioned 269 topics (= 155 percent).
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 57
would give rise to substantially stronger policy-driven coverage (e.g., Gunther
and Mughan 2000: 442). Rather, these data support recent assertions that
news cultures are changing in Europe in response to internal and external
modernization influences (Blumler and Gurevitch 2001; Hallin and Mancini
2004: 216, 272; Plasser and Plasser 2002: chap. 4). This means that election
coverage is still nation-specific and responsive to system-level characteristics,
but it is supplemented by and transfused with elements and practices of a
transnational culture (Plasser and Plasser 2002: 76, 348). Germany is a case in
point: Its high number of stories about Voters/Public Opinion can be
explained by the adoption of the U.S.-led practice of TV networks to cover
their self-initiated “exclusive” polls extensively. Also, Germany’s high number
of stories on Personal Character seems to correspond with the decision to
implement candidate-centered debates; its high number of Non-Issues stories
can be viewed as the result of a few scandals that received immediate and
intensive attention by an increasingly autonomous press that follows its own
media logic.
4
Press and Publicity topics always occur in conjunction with at least one other cam-
paign topic.The topic-by-topic matrix in Table 4 addresses Research Question 3.The
data shows that, irrespective of system characteristics, four campaign topics are
most prone to coincide with a press topic or a publicity topic: Non-Issues,
Personal Character, Electioneering/Campaigning, and Voters/Public Opinion.
Correlational analysis reveals strong similarities in the rank orders of those cam-
paign topics most likely to be combined with metacoverage topics in all three
countries (Spearman’s rho for GER and U.K. is .83; for GER and U.S., rho = .90;
for U.K. and U.S., rho = .92).
5
In terms of theory building, this stable cross-
country effect leads us to conclude that metacoverage is mainly connected to top-
ics in the Personality and Politics/Process categories. Particularly noteworthy is
the connection between the topic of Non-Issues and metacoverage.When a cam-
paign story contained Non-Issues as a salient topic, almost always a Press or
Publicity topic was intertwined with it.This was true in 100 percent of the U.S.,
95 percent of the German, and 28 percent of British stories (see Table 4).A closer
look at the Press/Publicity topic Non-Issues suggests that gaffes and scandals are
primarily press-driven events that require an immediate response by a candidate’s
publicity machinery—which ultimately leads to metacoverage.
Comparison of Metacoverage Frames
Since press and publicity frames are what journalists “add” to the news in the
media politics environment, this study reconfigures the thesis that all meta-
coverage is interpretive and cynical into the view that metacoverage is a nec-
essary narrative form in this complicated environment—a view that opens up
for empirical investigation the possibility that some press or publicity frames
58 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
may be cynical and some edifying. Analysis of all three countries’ election
coverage uncovered a broad range of propositions and scripts that journalists
used to frame the role of press and publicity.As Table 5 shows (see the Overall
column), the press is predominantly framed as a Conduit, which stresses the
news media’s connectivity function in transmitting campaign events.The press
is less often framed as a Strategic Actor, which accentuates the news media’s
role as a consequential actor that compels a candidate to adapt his strategies
to press coverage.The picture changes when we turn to the depiction of the
Table 4
Characteristic combinations of campaign topics and metacoverage topics in U.S., British, and
German election news
Percentage of How Often a Campaign
Topic Was Combined with a Press
or Publicity Topic
United United Overall:
States Kingdom Germany Rank
(N = 472 (N = 350 (N = 269 Order
Campaign Campaign Campaign of Most
Topic Topic Topic Frequent
Mentions) Mentions) Mentions) Combinations
Press/ Press/ Press/ across
Campaign Topic Publicity Publicity Publicity Countries
Policy
Ideology/Political 0/0 0/0 100/0
Worldviews
a
Evaluations of Candidates 0/9 0/0 0/0
Issues/Plans 3/11 2/1 3/0
Personality
Personal Character 15/42 20/15 9/18 2
Non-Issues/Gaffes
b
80/20 28/0 68/27 1
Politics/Process
Electioneering/ 11/40 8/4 24/18 4
Campaigning
Voters/Public Opinion 31/7 24/0 52/0 3
Electoral/Political System 6/6 20/0 2/0
a.The 100 percent in the German cell is based on one single anomalous case; see note 5 of this
article for details.
b. Reading example: In 80 percent of the cases a Non-Issue was mentioned in U.S. news, it was
combined with a Press topic; in another 20 percent, it was combined with a Publicity topic. In
the British news, Non-Issues were combined less often with a Press topic (28 percent) or a
Publicity topic (0 percent).
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 59
publicity process. Candidates’ publicity efforts are mainly couched in Strategy
frames, which emphasize the calculative and tactic-oriented rationale behind
advertising and public relations. Interestingly, this pattern of frame distributions
applies to all three countries to a similar degree. This indicates that the game-
minded character of U.S. news culture may be less distinct than previous stud-
ies implied because publicity strategy frames are widespread in European news,
too. Looking at press frames, it is remarkable that the news programs in all three
countries tend to portray the press in election campaigns as an uncontroversial
conduit rather than via more questionable strategy frames.
Thus, to answer Research Question 4, there was, on average, about as many
conduit frames (44 percent) as strategy frames (42 percent) in the metacoverage
of each country. Accountability frames, which emphasize press’s awareness of
professional standards and democratic norms, do not play a significant role in
either election (14 percent; see Overall column in Table 5).These marked cross-
national similarities in the distribution of metacoverage frames are another
important step in the generalizability of the concept.
Research Question 5 asked, “What are the most common combinations of
campaign topics and metacoverage frames in U.S., British, and German election
news?” Main descriptive results are as follows. Non-Issues is the topic most closely
connected with press strategy frames;Voters/Public Opinion is the topic mostly
connected with press conduit frames.Whereas a Non-Issues topic often empha-
sized the proactive, consequential role of a scandal-hungry press (the topic was
reported in conjunction with press strategy frames in 50 percent of U.S. and 50
percent in German cases),Voters/Public Opinion usually appeared in a context
where the press is shown as a constant source of poll data (this topic was reported
Table 5
Distribution of conduit, strategy, and accountability frames in U.S., British, and German
metacoverage (in percentages)
United States United Kingdom Germany Overall:
(N = 178 Press (N = 44 Press (N = 96 Press Average Shares
and Publicity and Publicity and Publicity of All Three
Frames) Frames) Frames) Countries
Press frames
Conduit 25 50 45 40
Strategy 10 23 15 16
Accountability 3 2 12 6
Publicity frames
Conduit 10 0 3 4
Strategy 39 20 20 26
Accountability 13 5 6 8
Total 100 100 101 100
60 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
with press conduit frames in 30 percent of U.S., 24 percent of British, and 39
percent of German cases). Even though media-sponsored polls could be consid-
ered strategically motivated pseudo-events, programs like ABC News preferred
to frame their Public Opinion stories with Press Conduit scripts that stress the
news media’s connectivity function (“ABC News’ latest tracking shows the can-
didates...”).Stories about Non-Issues used more press strategy frames and
showed the news media in a more proactive, partly antagonistic role.
6
Other notable linkages were found between Personal Character with publicity
strategy frames and Electioneering/Campaigning with both publicity strategy
frames and press conduit frames.Thus, Personal Character stories with a publicity
strategy frame (40 percent in the United States, 15 percent in the United
Kingdom, 14 percent in Germany) contained narratives about the impression
management techniques by the candidates or about their individual campaigning
and debating styles. Such stories discussed, for example, the image strategies
behind Bush’s appearances on Oprah and Letterman, or Gore’s attempts to
“repair” his robotic image in the debates, or Labour’s strategy behind a negative
attack ad to ridicule Tory challenger William Hague as Thatcher’s foster child.
Personal Character topics accompanied by a press strategy frame (11 percent in
the United States and 15 percent in the United Kingdom) included stories on how
candidates complained about their press coverage (as Dick Cheney did in an NBC
item) or on how a reporter team investigates the true character of a new candidate
behind a campaigning facade (as the BBC did with Tory-turned-Labour candidate
Shaun Woodward). The frames contextualizing the Electioneering/Campaigning
topic were more evenly spread in the three countries’ campaign coverage,although
an emphasis on publicity strategy frames was observed for U.S. coverage (24 per-
cent in the United States, 4 percent in the United Kingdom, 12 percent in
Germany). Such stories dealt with candidates’ tactical considerations behind ad
blitzes in battleground states, predebate strategies, and event and issue manage-
ment strategies.
Summary and Implications
This comparative study was designed to detect how a country’s media and
political systems regulate the frequency of metacoverage topics and how a
country’s political communication culture regulates patterns of press and pub-
licity frames. First, we found that the amount of stories with a prominent meta-
coverage topic was greater in the United States than in Germany and Great
Britain, where systemic conditions in both of those countries constrain the
behaviors of actors in the media politics environment vis-à-vis the production
of metacoverage. Still, the introduction of several media- and publicity-related
campaign innovations in Germany led to a spike in stories with metacoverage
as compared to Great Britain, where those innovations have not occurred.The
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 61
results supported our expectation that the frequency of metacoverage topics
corresponds to the structural level of mediatization in these countries.
Second, we found that the relationship between metacoverage frames and
cultural characteristics is best illustrated with regard to strategy frames, which
were most evident in U.S. campaign news. This finding can be explained by
the media-oriented and antagonistic political communication culture in the
United States. However, the differences between the amount of strategy
frames between the United States and the two European countries was smaller
than might be expected, given the differences in their political communication
cultures. This suggests that the party-oriented political communication cul-
tures of Germany and Great Britain are undergoing gradual change toward a
more media-oriented style (see Blumler and Gurevitch 2001: 388, 396; Genz
et al. 2001: 409; Hallin and Mancini 2004: 216, 272; Pfetsch 2001: 65).
Third, metacoverage topics occurred most frequently in all three countries
in conjunction with the campaign topics of Non-Issues, Personal Character,
Electioneering, and Public Opinion.Thus, metacoverage mainly contextualized
Personality topics and Process topics, a point that corroborates normative criti-
cisms that metacoverage, at least by topical association, is tied to story topics
considered unhealthy for the information environment of elections. However,
because Policy Issue topics were not usually accompanied by metacoverage, the
normative assumption that metacoverage displaces coverage of policy issues
seems unfounded.
Fourth, metacoverage occurred most frequently with conduit and strategy
frames. The relatively small amount of the more uplifting, edifying account-
ability frames can be traced back to the small number of media- or publicity-
related controversies in each of the three campaigns we examined. Yet when
such controversies occurred in each country, news networks apparently felt
that it was necessary to discuss the role of the news media and the publicity
efforts in terms of accountability frames.This pattern suggests that the politi-
cal communication cultures in the three countries operate similarly in facili-
tating accountability from the press and candidates.
The implications of these findings for comparative political communication
research (for an introduction, see Esser and Pfetsch 2004) are as follows. First,
metacoverage is a generalizable concept vis-à-vis different political and media sys-
tems and political communication cultures in Germany, Great Britain, and the
United States. In an effort to explain its emergence cross-nationally, we took up
the call made by Gurevitch and Blumler (2004), who argued that comparative
researchers ought to use integrative theoretical frameworks.They noted that “it is
not that conceptual frameworks are absent from the literature but that they are
almost never critically discussed after their publication” (p. 339).Recognizing that
systems and culture interact (e.g., Gurevitch and Blumler 2004; Pfetsch 2004),
our model focuses on the pivotal role of political communication culture, placing
it in an intermediate position between system-level conditions (i.e., media and
62 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
political systems) and actor-level behaviors (journalistic practice of metacover-
age).We propose that journalistic framing is contingent upon features of a coun-
try’s political communication culture. For example, structural changes in its
election environment that make German campaigns resemble U.S. campaigns
(e.g., the introduction of debates in Germany’s 2002 election) show up as more
metacoverage topics in stories, particularly when compared to campaign cover-
age in Great Britain, which lacks many of those structural changes. Even more
telling, the political communication cultures of Germany and the United States
seem to be converging on the level of press and publicity framing. Even though
Germany’s more party-oriented political communication culture gives rise to
more conduit frames than in the United States—whose media-oriented political
communication culture engenders more strategy press and publicity frames—for
both countries, press conduit frames more commonly contextualize other cam-
paign topics than both press strategy and press accountability frames, and public-
ity strategy frames more commonly contextualize other campaign topics than
both publicity conduit and publicity accountability frames (Table 5).
Second, this study fulfills Gurevitch and Blumler’s (2004: 333) criteria for
mature comparative research in recognizing that analysis of press and publicity
topics and frames have “double value”: our study aims to “shed light not only on
the particular phenomena being studied but also on the different systems in which
they are being examined.”Thus, comparative analysis of metacoverage can aid in
assessing change and stability in a country’s media politics environment, which,
in turn, can circle back to enable reevaluations of theoretically specified differ-
ences in the political communication cultures of countries being compared.
Third, political campaigns not only offer to voters a referendum on the policies
and character of their would-be elected officials, but they also offer a referendum
on the practices and standards of the news media and other publicity channels
through which policy and character are largely communicated to voters.To be sure,
the tenor of discourse about the press and publicity process that occurs between
candidates and members of the press—not to mention, of course, the public—
often takes on all the qualities of an unruly shouting match, with both candidates
and the members of the press vying for interpretive dominance. Still, this is no rea-
son to totally dismiss metacoverage as being an intrusive presence in campaign news
either because it (1) displaces more sanctioned discourse (e.g., about policy issues)
or (2) conforms to a particular (overly prescriptive, we would say) conception of
interpretation. On the contrary, metacoverage frames reflect variations of press
analysis and press criticism within the media politics environment of modern cam-
paigns.Thus, each time the press or publicity process is a topic of a campaign story,
and each time journalists frame the press or the publicity process, more is learned
about the complicated circumstances in which the news media and publicity par-
ticipate in constructing the reality of campaign events and influencing campaign
outcomes.True, some instances of metacoverage reflect an overtly strategic con-
ception, or frame, of the press and publicity—and there is good reason to worry
that these frames degrade the information environment of the campaign.Yet
alongside strategy frames there exist accountability frames. Whereas strategy
frames reflect the coarse side of media politics, they seem to be part of an ecol-
ogy of press and publicity discourse in which an ethos of accountability is simul-
taneously developing.
Finally, this study challenges comparative researchers to mine the potential
of framing analysis to assess the operations of political communication culture
on political change and stability. More cross-national studies on the connec-
tions between political communication culture and framing will facilitate the
maturation of comparative inquiry.
Notes
1. The first quantitative content analyses were conducted on the 1992 U.S. presidential
campaign because anecdotal evidence showed that the 1988 presidential campaign was a
watershed for metacoverage (see Entman 1989: 133; Gitlin 1991: 119).
2. On the press side, the main conduit scripts were (1) “the news media are technical trans-
mitter of campaign events” and (2) “the news media are journalistic platform of campaign
events.” The main strategy script was “news media are a consequential actor in a strategic
game of politics.”The main accountability script was “the news media try to live up to stan-
dards of democratic performance.” On the publicity side, the main conduit script was “mass
media are a conveyor of publicity acts.”Also for publicity, the strategy scripts were (1) “polit-
ical publicity and PR are manipulative,” (2) “publicity requires tactical expertise,” and
(3) “publicity is theatrical.” Finally, for publicity, the accountability scripts were (1) “publicity
is a viable part of media politics” and (2) “the truth about publicity claims can be discovered.”
3. Some stories were coded for two frames. For example, if a story contained two campaign
topics and also discussed the strategic role of political publicity, it was likely that a pub-
licity strategy frame was combined with both campaign topics (and thus coded twice).
4. A first scandal concerned media disclosures of politicians from the two ruling parties,
Social Democrats and Greens, who had broken parliamentary rules by misusing frequent
flyer miles earned on official business for private purposes. Another scandal concerned
media disclosures of internal remarks made by the country’s justice minister, in which she
compared the political tactics of U.S. President Bush regarding Iraq to those of Nazi dicta-
tor Adolf Hitler.A third scandal was caused by an election flyer judged by many to be anti-
Semitic, which was distributed to several million households by the Free Democratic
Party’s regional leader, Juergen Moellemann, known to be a publicity-addicted maverick.
5. For correlational analysis, we set aside an anomalous case from Germany, which was a
rare combination between an Ideology/Political Worldview topic and a Press topic.
Coverage in none of the other countries showed this rare combination.
6. Examples included discussions of antagonistic media-candidate relationships after George W.
Bush had used an obscenity to describe a veteran New York Times reporter. Another story
reported details about how Bush’s 1976 DUI arrest was leaked to a local FOX-TV reporter
and the media frenzy that followed. Examples from the 2002 German election included
reports about how party leaders of the ruling Social Democrats accused Bild, the country’s
largest newspaper, of waging a campaign against the government by publishing allegations that
parliamentarians had misused frequent flyer miles earned on official business for private pur-
poses. In an attempt to gag the press, government politicians initiated legal action against the
Esser, D’Angelo / Framing the Press and Publicity Process 63
64 Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
paper, which was dropped after leading editors of other media outlets defended Bild.Although
strategy frames dominated both countries’ coverage of Non-Issues, it should be noted, too,
that some of those stories contained a press accountability frame.That frame depicts awareness
on the part of journalists about standards that ought to govern how they cover such incidents.
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Biographical Notes
Frank Esser (Ph.D., University of Mainz) is a professor of comparative media research in the
Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. He was an
assistant professor of mass communication at the University of Mainz and the University of
Missouri–Columbia and a visiting professor at the University of Oklahoma. His research centers
around cross-national studies of news journalism and political communication.
Address: University of Zurich, IPMZ, Andreas St 15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland; phone:
01141-44-6352044; fax: 01141-44-6344934; e-mail: f.esser@ipmz.unizh.ch.
Paul D’Angelo (Ph.D., Temple University) is an assistant professor in the Communication
Studies Department at the College of New Jersey. His research focuses on framing theory and
effects, disciplinary analysis of media and democracy, and news credibility.
Address: The College of New Jersey, Department of Communication Studies, Kendall Hall
237, P.O. Box 7718, Ewing, NJ 08628.
