The Varying Mechanisms of Media Access: Explaining Interest Groups’ Media Visibility across Political Systems

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Varying Mechanisms of Media Access:

T2 - Explaining Interest Groups’ Media Visibility across Political Systems

AU - Vesa, Juho

AU - Binderkrantz, Anne Skorkjær

PY - 2023/11

Y1 - 2023/11

N2 - A growing body of studies analyzes interest groups’ media visibility. Yet little is known about how the drivers of media access may vary across different interest group systems. This article focuses on two major mechanisms through which organizations can gain media visibility: media management efforts and the newsworthiness of elite actors. We hypothesize that media effort explains interest groups’ media access more strongly in competitive, pluralist interest group systems and that insider (i.e. “elite”) status does so more strongly in hierarchical, corporatist systems. We analyze surveys and media data on interest groups in the pluralist United Kingdom, the moderately corporatist Denmark, and the more strongly corporatist Finland. As hypothesized, media effort is most effective in the UK and weakest in Finland. However, we find only weak support for the insider status hypothesis: there is some evidence of the expected cross-country differences, but the effects are small and unrobust.

AB - A growing body of studies analyzes interest groups’ media visibility. Yet little is known about how the drivers of media access may vary across different interest group systems. This article focuses on two major mechanisms through which organizations can gain media visibility: media management efforts and the newsworthiness of elite actors. We hypothesize that media effort explains interest groups’ media access more strongly in competitive, pluralist interest group systems and that insider (i.e. “elite”) status does so more strongly in hierarchical, corporatist systems. We analyze surveys and media data on interest groups in the pluralist United Kingdom, the moderately corporatist Denmark, and the more strongly corporatist Finland. As hypothesized, media effort is most effective in the UK and weakest in Finland. However, we find only weak support for the insider status hypothesis: there is some evidence of the expected cross-country differences, but the effects are small and unrobust.

KW - interest groups

KW - journalism

KW - media access

KW - media visibility

KW - news media

KW - organized interests

U2 - 10.1177/00323217211064580

DO - 10.1177/00323217211064580

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0032-3217

VL - 71

SP - 1226

EP - 1242

JO - Political Studies

JF - Political Studies

IS - 4

ER -