Suchergebnisse

Debate about the quantity of political information often tends to evaluate television negatively since it became a widely used mass medium. Systematic data on the supply and proportion of political information on television, however, are scarce. This research fills this gap by presenting a longitudinal analysis of broadcast time for political information. The authors examine specifically how time spent on the broad categories of information, infotainment and entertainment on television in the Netherlands has evolved from 1957 to 2006. Results show that over time both public and commercial broadcasters have dedicated more time to information programming, but these programmes have moved out of prime time, especially on commercial channels. Overall, time spent on entertainment has gone down, contrary to expectations, while time for infotainment programmes has gone up, in concordance with existing beliefs.

Abstract
This study on the role of media attention for the Dutch question hour answers three questions: to what extent is media attention a source of inspiration for oral parliamentary questions? What explains the newsworthiness of these questions? And what explains the extent of media coverage for the questions posed during the question hour? To address this, we present a content analysis of oral parliamentary questions and related press coverage in five recent years. The results show first that oral questions are usually based on media attention for a topic. Concerns about media influence should however be nuanced: it is not necessarily the coverage itself, but also regularly a political statement that is the actual source of a parliamentary question. The media are thus an important "channel" for the interaction between politicians. Second, our analysis shows that oral questions do not receive media attention naturally. Several news values help to explain the amount of news coverage that questions receive. "Surfing the wave" of news attention for a topic in the days previous to the question hour seems to be the best way to generate media attention.