Original scientific paper
Politics and Politicians – Main Topic and Main Characters on Television News
Viktorija Car
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper examines the relationship between television as a medium, and politics and politicians as the content of television news in Croatia. The first part of the paper explains the models of ‘media logic’, ‘partisan logic’ and ‘party logic’. The second part of the paper presents the results of the research conducted on the representative sample of primetime news HTV Dnevnik for the period 1991-2009, and Nova TV Dnevnik and RTL Vijesti for the period 2005-2009. The goal of the research was to examine the presence of political topics on primetime news, as well to what extent politicians are presented as main characters. The results show a sustained decline of politics on the news and their simultaneous replacement by news on disasters and lifestyle. Further, citizens and their opinion become more important than opinions of politicians, experts and scientists. Comparing the news on public service television and on commercial televisions, the author elaborates on the internal processes and changes of the television medium and finally introduces the concept of ‘power logic’ to explain news selection and news editing on the Croatian TV channels.
Keywords
television; public service media; HTV; Nova TV; RTL
Hrčak ID:
64023
URI
Publication date:
31.1.2011.
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