A study on the news coverage of the US election campaign

'The whole world is watching'. In November 2016 US citizens will elect a new president. The campaign in the run up to this election will be, in line with previous presidential elections, a major political event that will be extensively covered in countries all over the world. This provides political communication scholars with a unique opportunity to study how country differences influence the production of political news of the same 'international' event. During my stay as a postdoc researcher at the University of Washington in 2008, I studied (in cooperation with scholars from the University of Amsterdam) how newspapers in eight European countries covered the historic Obama-McCain campaign. Among others this study showed country differences on public opinion towards the US influenced how the campaign was covered (Vliegenthart, et al., 2010). In the 2016 my aim is to replicate and extend the 2008 study by comparing news coverage through time and space. In addition, more attention will be given to understand the difference in reporting of US media versus European media. By staying in the US, I will be better able to investigate the factors that drive news coverage and how they are used, ignored or adapted by journalists in other Western democracies.

Keywords:ELECTIONS

Disciplines:Other economics and business, Citizenship, immigration and political inequality, International and comparative politics, Multilevel governance, National politics, Political behaviour, Political organisations and institutions, Political theory and methodology, Public administration, Other political science, Communication sciences, Journalism and professional writing, Media studies, Other media and communications