News and Economic Voting During the Long Recession: How Associative Framing Affects Attribution of Responsibility and Government Support

• In Event: Influencing the Vote

Abstract

This paper looks at the moderating influence of media framing on economic voting. The economic voting literature has shown that economic voting depends on attribution of responsibility to national governments. Through associative framing, crisis coverage affects whether people attribute responsibility to national politicians. During the Long Recession, Danish media increasingly framed the economic malaise as a national rather than American crisis and paid more attention to national politicians. Panel surveys in 2008 and 2013 show that in line with this change of framing, people gave more weight to the economy when evaluating the government in 2013 than in 2008. Individual media exposure led to attribution of responsibility to the national politicians. This in turn made the economy more salient in vote decisions. Thus we conclude that the way the media frame economic development is an important meso-level factor which affects attribution of responsibility and in turn economic voting.

Author

• Arjen van Dalen, U of Southern Denmark, Centre for Journalism