BACK TO THE FUTURE: PRESS COVERAGE OF THE 2008 CANADIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN STRIKES BOTH FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR NOTES
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BACK TO THE FUTURE:
PRESS COVERAGE OF
THE 2008 CANADIAN ELECTION
CAMPAIGN STRIKES BOTH
FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR
NOTES
Blake Andrew, Lori Young and Stuart Soroka
The Media Observatory at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada produced
another round of election news analysis for the 2008 federal election. Drawing on this
body of data and using a fully automated content analytic procedure, this article assesses
election news articles for prominence and tone of party and leader coverage, as well as
policy content. The main conclusions are three-fold. First, this campaign was increasingly
driven by the global and the Canadian economy. The environment, poised to control
the agenda, was overshadowed by the financial crisis in the United States. Second, the
Liberal Party — and particularly their new leader Stéphane Dion — was much less
prominent in this campaign than in previous elections. Third, while the Conservative
Party clearly received more coverage, it did not succeed in getting better coverage.
L’Observatoire des médias de l’Institut d’études canadiennes de McGill a produit
pour les élections fédérales de 2008 une autre analyse de la couverture de la
campagne. Sur la base des données recueillies, et en utilisant maintenant une
procédure automatisée d’analyse de contenu, les auteurs évaluent le ton ainsi que le
contenu politique des articles et la place consacrée à chaque parti et aux chefs. Ils
en tirent trois conclusions. Premièrement, la campagne a été de plus en plus centrée
sur l’économie mondiale et canadienne : l’environnement, dont on croyait au début
qu’il s’imposerait comme thème central, a finalement été éclipsé par la crise
financière aux États-Unis. Deuxièmement, la présence du Parti libéral, et notamment
de son nouveau chef Stéphane Dion, a été beaucoup plus discrète que dans les
campagnes précédentes. Troisièmement, le Parti conservateur a fait l’objet d’une
couverture plus importante sans qu’elle soit nécessairement plus favorable.
I
t has been 20 years since economic issues were at the main parties or leaders quite seemed prepared for. But per-
forefront of a Canadian federal election campaign. In haps the definitive contrast between 1988 and 2008 is that
1988, the debate on free trade with the United States the media spotlight on the Liberal Party (and particularly its
accounted for most of the policy coverage reported by leader) had faded considerably.
media. Since then federal elections have been mainly driv- As we shall see, though, the tone of this campaign was also
en by conversations about government accountability, markedly different. In media coverage, Stephen Harper and the
national unity and the enduring frame of a strategic “horse Conservatives may have prevailed in this campaign partly as a
race” between parties and leaders. One of the key differences function of receiving significantly more press coverage than
between 1988 and 2008 is that none of the main party lead- the other parties and party leaders. But their success media-wise
ers in this campaign was prepared for the almost complete seems to have been limited: coverage of the Conservatives was
domination of economic issues. Indeed, it became a cam- increasingly negative relative to that of their opponents.
paign about the economy to an extent that none of the Negative coverage for the Conservatives was apparently not so
POLICY OPTIONS 79
NOVEMBER 2008Blake Andrew, Lori Young and Stuart Soroka
bad, though; and the sheer volume of picture of Canadian newspapers’ cov- framed, and point to which party or
Conservative coverage overwhelmed the erage of the 2008 election. leader is effectively driving coverage.
other parties in a way that certainly has The study includes every story
not been evident for any party in the
past two elections. One challenge ahead
for all parties and leaders may be how to
from the main news sections of each of
the seven dailies that mentions the fed-
eral election or any of the parties or
T he automated content analysis
thus tracks the volume and
prominence of coverage allocated to
respond to and prepare for this peculiar- party leaders. In total, just over 4,050 the main parties and leaders, as well as
ly Conservative- and Harper-focused articles were analyzed including news trends in issue salience, efficiently and
media environment. stories as well as editorial and opinion systematically. It also includes one
The 2008 federal campaign offi- pieces. The content analysis captures final set of codes for the tone of cover-
cially kicked off on the morning of party, leader and issue prominence, as age of parties and leaders. The auto-
mated method we use to
The sheer volume of Conservative coverage overwhelmed the analyze tone is well estab-
other parties in a way that certainly has not been evident for lished in social science liter-
ature. Tone of coverage is
any party in the past two elections. One challenge ahead for
determined by the relative
all parties and leaders may be how to respond to and prepare frequency of a pre-defined
for this peculiarly Conservative- and Harper-focused media list of sentiment-bearing
environment. words in a selection of text.
Our tone dictionary is
September 7. Our analysis of media well as the tone of coverage about par- derived from several of the most well-
content begins several days earlier, on ties and leaders. For each newspaper, we established and comprehensive lexical
September 3, during the period when use a computer-based procedure that resources available for sentiment
election speculation in Ottawa began relies largely on simple text-based analysis. The dictionary is composed
in earnest. The study, then, spans the searches. of an expansive list of words (includ-
entire campaign — for 42 days in total Topic coding reflects the issue ing inflected word forms and common
— concluding on October 14, election salience or policy focus of a cam- idioms), all annotated for positive or
day. This is the third instalment of our paign. In previous studies, human negative valence. Sentiment classifica-
federal election content analysis, coders manually recorded the first tion is much more challenging than
extending our previous efforts in 2004 three topics mentioned in each arti- identifying topic and actor mentions,
and 2006. While analysis of past cam- cle. Here, the automated procedure of course, since tone tends to be more
paigns was performed manually by calculates topic codes using a diction- dependent on the relation between
human coders actively reading the ary of keywords for each major policy words. To determine the tone about
newspapers, the 2008 analysis relies domain. If an article mentions at least particular actors, then, we apply sim-
entirely on a new automated content three keywords for a given policy ple lexical rules to account for the
analytic procedure. topic, we assume the article has some proximity of keywords in the tone dic-
The automated method relies on content dealing with that topic. Based tionary to actor references. This
dictionaries of categorical keywords, on this procedure, then, our election requires some discussion, of course, a
which are currently available only in issue analysis reflects the percentage brief version of which we include here.
English. As a consequence, our 2008 of articles that discuss, at least in pass- (More detailed methodological infor-
study covers only English-language ing, a given topic. mation is available at http://media-
press. The sample includes the same The study also tracks the total observatory.mcgill.ca.)
English-language newspapers as in number of mentions of all major par- The automation procedure for tone
2006 and 2004, The Globe and Mail, ties and leaders, as well as the place- begins by identifying all sentences in
National Post, Toronto Star, Vancouver ment of each mention. To identify the which any of the major parties or lead-
Sun and Calgary Herald. To that group, first party or leader mentioned in an ers is mentioned and then counting the
we have added the Montreal Gazette article, we automatically count charac- number of positive and negative words
and the Ottawa Citizen, which replace ters from the beginning of the article, in those sentences. To generate the
Le Devoir and La Presse in terms of vol- directly replicating the manual coding measure of “net tone,” by article, we
ume though clearly not in terms of of first mentions in our previous stud- subtract the number of negative words
content. There are some gaps in ies. First mentions provide valuable from the number of positive words,
regional coverage, then, and we now information about the relative salience taken as a proportion of all words in
lack French-language Quebec media of parties and party leaders during the sentences mentioning a given party or
entirely. Our results should thus be campaign; they are indicative of the party leader. The result is a measure of
regarded as an accurate, but partial, way in which the campaign is being tone for each actor, in which a score of
80 OPTIONS POLITIQUES
NOVEMBRE 2008Back to the future
zero reflects neutral coverage, positive printed
usual, a large proportion of the articles about this campaign.
scores indicate increasingly positive printed during this election were Moreover, the prominence of the envi-
coverage, and negative scores indicate about strategy and the horse race ronment issue declined, slowly but
increasingly negative coverage. In these steadily, as the campaign progressed.
between parties and leaders. It is thus
data, the resulting measure ranges from especially striking that the economy Foreign affairs, crime and arts fund-
roughly -30 to +30, reflecting articles in figured so prominently in the supply ing were the next most salient issue
which as many as 30 percent of the domains in the press, appearing in
of election news about this campaign.)
about 18 percent, 12 percent
The “Green Shift” policy was the centrepiece of the Liberal and 10 percent of election
Party campaign. Moreover, as we shall see, the Green Party stories respectively. Much of
figured more prominently than ever in news media. Despite the foreign affairs coverage
these factors, environmental issues appeared in less than 2 of concerned Canada’s ongo-
ing military commitment
every 10 articles printed about this campaign. Moreover, the (and the cost associated) to
prominence of the environment issue declined, slowly but the Afghanistan mission.
steadily, as the campaign progressed. Crime policy was highlight-
ed by coverage of the
words in sentences about a given party The environment was the second Conservatives’ proposed changes to the
or leader are negative or positive. most salient topic. Even appearing in Youth Criminal Justice Act, and arts fund-
Because the vast majority of articles are nearly 20 percent of articles over the ing attracted media attention in
neutral, however, a weekly average for campaign (including both environ- response to Conservative campaign
net tone reflects a much narrower ment and energy), however, it trailed announcements.
range. Trends are apparent even using the economy by a rather wide margin. The shifting issue focus of the
that measure, though for the sake of This is surprising given the pre-elec- campaign is illustrated in figure 1,
simplicity we use data here in which tion salience of the issue, and given which tracks weekly coverage for “all
articles are assigned to one of three cat- that the “Green Shift” policy was the environment” stories (combining
egories: negative (“net tone” of less centrepiece of the Liberal Party cam- environment and energy), “all for-
than -2), positive (“net tone” of more paign. Moreover, as we shall see, the eign affairs” (combining foreign
than +2) and neutral (all others). Green Party figured more prominently affairs and international trade), and
Note that given the expansive than ever in news media. Despite these “all economy” (combining economy,
nature of the tone dictionary, this factors, environmental issues appeared employment and financecommerce).
measure reflects a combination of in fewer than 2 of every 10 articles The figure shows not just the slow
content about the issues and events
being reported on, and the opinions
or attitudes expressed about the con- FIGURE 1. TOPICS BY WEEK
tent itself. To be clear: party or leader 80
tone can result from attention to
campaign gaffes and policy failures, 70
or from criticism of campaign plat-
forms. Thus, tone of coverage is a 60
summary measure of the relative neg-
% of election articles
ativity of the events or issues being 50
covered and the opinions and atti-
40
tudes of newsmakers.
That is the 2008 study, then; what
30
were the results? First, press coverage
during this campaign was dominated
20
by economic issues. The economy fig-
ured in more than one-fourth of news 10
reports about this campaign. Indeed, if
we combine mentions of finance, 0
commerce and employment in this Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6
category, economic issues were fea- All economy All foreign affairs All environment
tured in about 50 percent of election-
related news articles. (Note that, as Source: The Media Observatory, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
POLICY OPTIONS 81
NOVEMBER 2008Blake Andrew, Lori Young and Stuart Soroka
decline in environment stories, but Dion did not dominate the news tion by mainstream newspapers
the rather striking prominence of the agenda in 2008. The declining promi- occurred in spite of his position as
economy, which steadily assumed nence of the Liberal Party’s leader is leader of the opposition and of the
control of the media agenda as this quite remarkable. In 2004, almost second-largest party in the country.
campaign unfolded. During the week half of the news stories in the Most of the articles concerning
before the official kickoff at Rideau Canadian press about leaders men- party leaders were led by coverage of
Hall, economic issues already figured tioned the Liberal Party leader first. Conservative leader Stephen Harper. In
in roughly 4 in 10 news reports relat- In 2008, Dion was the first leader fact, articles that began with Harper out-
ed to the looming election. But by mentioned in articles only about 15 numbered all articles beginning with the
the final week of the campaign, the percent of the time. This marginaliza- other party leaders combined. Where
economy was clearly at the forefront
of the press’s attention. Indeed, in FIGURE 2. LEADER FIRST MENTIONS
the week leading up to voting day on
October 14, economic issues were 50
mentioned in more than 70 percent 45
of articles about the campaign.
40
T here can be little doubt that the
increasing coverage of the
35
% of election articles
Canadian economy was directly related 30
to concerns about the financial crisis in 25
the United States that emerged during
the campaign. In some ways, then, the 20
2008 Canadian campaign looked a lot 15
like the famous FTA campaign 20 years
ago — the 1988 campaign was also 10
dominated by questions about the 5
economy, and especially the conse-
quences of the Free Trade Agreement 0
2004 2006 2008
with the United States. There are some
fairly stark differences between 1988 Martin/Dion Harper Layton
and 2008, however (and not just that
Source: The Media Observatory, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
the ’88 election was about trade rather
than the domestic economy). For
instance, in 1988 the main parties and FIGURE 3. PARTY FIRST MENTIONS
leaders all anticipated and primed the
45
economy frame. It is not clear that the
economy’s presence as the critical ballot 40
box question in 2008 was either antici-
pated or welcomed by any of the parties 35
or leaders contesting this campaign. 30
% of election articles
Another unique element of 2008
campaign coverage is the salience of 25
parties and leaders. To capture this, we
20
rely on “first mentions” — the party or
leader mentioned first in each article. 15
First mentions indicate who is framing
the election campaign — whether the 10
article is about Harper and reactions to
5
Harper, for instance, or, alternatively,
about Dion and reactions to Dion. 0
Figures 2 and 3 show that 2008 was 2004 2006 2008
clearly about the former. Liberal Conservative NDP
Unlike his predecessor Paul
Martin, Liberal Party leader Stéphane Source: The Media Observatory, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
82 OPTIONS POLITIQUES
NOVEMBRE 2008Back to the future
headlines were concerned, the gap was prominently in the press than the stories during the previous two feder-
even larger. That is, for Canadians skim- NDP. This was clearly a breakthrough al campaigns.
ming headlines, in both local and year in terms of press coverage for
national newspapers, Harper was even
more predominant. Strictly in terms of
the proportion of coverage, Harper was
the Green Party and its leader
Elizabeth May. Overall, almost 5 per-
cent of press articles during the cam-
H ow were these changes in the
prominence of parties and lead-
ers in 2008 related to the tone of cov-
mentioned three times as often as Dion paign mentioned May first, erage? After all, prominence in the
by the end of the campaign. remarkable considering that her press does not necessarily mean posi-
Party salience was also consider- predecessor Jim Harris was men- tive press coverage. In 2004 and
ably different in 2008, although the tioned first in only a tiny fraction of 2006, for instance, Paul Martin was
shift was not as dramatic as it was for
leaders. Once again, though, note in
FIGURE 4. NEGATIVE COVERAGE OF LEADERS
figure 3 the consistent decline in the
Liberal Party’s share of the media 25
spotlight during the three most
recent campaigns. In 2004, more 20
than 40 percent of articles that
% positive minus % negative
involved a party mentioned the 15
Liberals first. By 2008 the Liberals
10
accounted for only one-fourth of first
parties mentioned. They have
5
unquestionably been supplanted by
the Conservatives as the most salient 0
party in the campaign. Some of this
shift may be a function of incumben- -5
cy, of course — it may be that the
party of government always has an -10
advantage where campaign framing
is concerned. Note, however, that the -15
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6
salience of the Conservatives has
been relatively consistent since 2004, Harper Dion Layton May
hovering around 30 percent of first
Source: The Media Observatory, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
party mentions. While the promi-
nence of their leader, Stephen Harper,
has risen considerably, the FIGURE 5. NEGATIVE COVERAGE OF PARTIES
Conservative Party brand has not
15
become more salient in press reports
since 2004. The shift in party stand-
ings is due not to a rise in 10
% positive minus % negative
Conservative mentions, but to a
decline in Liberal ones.
5
NDP and Green Party leaders
were also treated differently in terms
of prominence in 2008. Jack Layton’s 0
salience in newspapers has declined
over time. His zenith appears to be in
-5
2004, when he was mentioned first
in about 12 percent of articles. The
2008 coverage of the NDP shows that -10
Layton was much less prominent in
the press. Only about 6 percent of
-15
articles led off with reference to the Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6
NDP leader specifically. Indeed, in Conservative Liberal NDP Green
the first few weeks of the campaign
the Green Party was featured more Source: The Media Observatory, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
POLICY OPTIONS 83
NOVEMBER 2008Blake Andrew, Lori Young and Stuart Soroka
the most prominent leader, yet he with net tone for Bloc Québécois leader part of the campaign, however. That
was also the leader who received the Gilles Duceppe, since we are looking at the Conservatives were unable to
most negative coverage. Stephen English-language papers only. What reopen a gap between themselves and
Harper received much better coverage data we do have for Duceppe thus do the Liberals as the campaign pro-
in those elections, though he not reflect his coverage for the vast gressed proved to be rather important.
appeared in far fewer articles than majority of the BQ constituency.) To be sure, the volume of Conservative
Martin did. Differences across parties are rel- coverage was extraordinary. But the
A key difference in 2008 relative atively similar. Conservative net tone tone was, relative to their main com-
to previous campaigns is that the over the campaign was 4.7 points petitor, rather middling.
Conservatives and their leader below the cross-party average, while What do these results tell us
received rather more negative cover- for the Liberals it was -4.9; for the about the 2008 election? They cer-
age than they have been accustomed NDP it was above 0.1 the average. tainly highlight the increasing signif-
icance of the economy
Most of the articles concerning party leaders were led by over the campaign. To the
coverage of Conservative leader Stephen Harper. In fact, extent that the campaign
provides some kind of
articles that began with Harper outnumbered all articles mandate, it is clear that the
beginning with the other party leaders combined. Where next government is sup-
headlines were concerned, the gap was even larger. That is, posed to deal with the
for Canadians skimming headlines, in both local and national economy. Results also illus-
trate what appears to be a
newspapers, Harper was even more predominant. Strictly in failure on the part of the
terms of the proportion of coverage, Harper was mentioned Conservatives — a failure,
three times as often as Dion by the end of the campaign. that is, to fully capitalize
on the sheer volume of
to. Figures 4 and 5 illustrate trends in Once again, the Green Party benefit- Conservative Party and especially
tone. Both figures rely on a relatively ed most from newspaper coverage. leader coverage. This was clearly a
simple version of average net tone: the The overall net tone for the Green campaign in which media coverage
percentage of positive stories minus Party was 9.7 points above the aver- focused on the Conservatives. This
the percentage of negative stories for age. In short, if a story mentioned was not driven by what appears to be
each party and leader. But to focus on the Greens, or Elizabeth May, overly critical media — certainly, cov-
inter-party differences (and also filter chances were high that coverage was erage was no more critical than it was
out the effects of shifting issue cover- framed in positive terms. for the Liberals. But at no point once
age on our automated tone measure), The most interesting trend over the campaign was under way were the
figures 4 and 5 show the weekly differ- the campaign is the absence of any Conservatives or Prime Minister
ence between party/leader tone and considerable gap between the Harper able to garner markedly better
the average of election tone for that Conservative and Liberal parties. coverage than the Liberals or Dion.
week’s coverage of all main parties or Indeed, in the final week of this cam- The consequence was, perhaps, that
leaders combined. The interpretation paign the Conservative Party and while the Liberals clearly did not win
is as follows: a Liberal Party value of Stephen Harper received the worst the election, the degree to which the
-12 in week 1 reflects the fact that coverage in the major newspapers. Conservatives did was rather limited.
Liberal net tone was 12 points worse But in spite of the Liberals’ compara-
than the party average for that week. tively rough start, from week 2 Blake Andrew is a doctoral candidate in
Note that these automated results are onwards there is rarely much notice- political science and research coordinator
not directly comparable with our able difference in the tone of cover- and Ph.D. fellow at the Media
manual data from past elections; they age for Liberals and Conservatives, or Observatory, McGill University. Lori
nonetheless provide a reliable indica- for Dion and Harper. Young is a former graduate student in
tion of trends, both over time and This trend in media coverage nice- political science and fellow at the Media
across parties, in the 2008 campaign. ly captures what voters observed in Observatory, now working as a consult-
Overall, net tone was as negative for both opinion polls and election com- ant on media analysis. Stuart Soroka is
Harper as it was for Dion. Combining all mentary over the campaign. The associate professor and William Dawson
six weeks, Harper’s net tone was 6.3 Conservatives began with an advan- Scholar in Political Science at McGill
points below the average, compared tage over the Liberals in terms of posi- University. Along with Antonia Maioni,
with -6.4 for Dion, +2.3 for Layton and tive versus negative coverage. This he is co-director of the Media
+10.3 for May. (We do not deal here advantage faded quickly in the first Observatory.
84 OPTIONS POLITIQUES
NOVEMBRE 2008You can also read
