However, the literature on news media pays little attention to new parties. Vice versa, the literature on new parties pays little attention to news media – and typically studies a non-random subset of new parties, which leads to biased inferences.
As a result, social scientists fail to offer complete explanations for new party coverage. For example, how did media cover the unprecedented surge of Podemos in Spain, AfD in Germany, and Beppe Grillo’s M5S in Italy? While new parties’ success and failure are affecting openness to new ideas in several democracies, social scientists remain largely unaware of how media cover new parties.
This paper addresses the questions of to what extent new parties are covered, and how they are framed. It does so by way of a content analysis of five Dutch newspapers during the entire post war era (i.e., from 1947 until 2017).
The results will reveal media portrayals of new parties, and how these portrayals vary. In so doing, they may inspire research on interactions between news media and new voices, allow media practitioners to reflect on current practices, and inform public debate over openness to new ideas in contemporary democracies.
