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Article published In: Mass Media Effects and the Political Agenda: Assessing its Scope and Conditions
Edited by Ana Maria Belchior, Peter Van Aelst, José Santana-Pereira and Patrick Merle
[The Agenda Setting Journal 4:1] 2020
► pp. 64–87

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Media political parallelism and political agenda setting in Italy

ORCiD logo with link | University of Turin
Published online: 10 April 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.19007.sed
Abstract
The issue of whether and how political parallelism could play a role in the agendadynamics between media and politics is relevant. Yet, this issue has been exploredonly rarely and the findings are unclear. Using Italy as an illustration, this studyinvestigates the interactions between parallel media and the political agenda between2006 and 2011. Based on the analysis of a longitudinal dataset, this investigation aimsto assess whether and to what extent parallel media coverage may have affected thepolitical agenda concerning two policy issues: (i) reform of the labor market and (ii) theaccess of regular migrants to Italian citizenship. Specifically, the media’s attention tothese two policy issues will be analyzed based on the parliamentary questions (PQs)addressed by members of Parliament (MPs).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Agenda-setting dynamics in the light of political parallelism
    • 2.1Political parallelism, a close relationship between media and politics
    • 2.2How does political parallelism affect the agenda-setting dynamics between media and politicians?
  • 3.The case study: Political parallelism Italian style
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Dependent variable
    • 4.2Independent variables
    • 4.3Control variables
    • 4.4Models
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion and limitations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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