Diversity in the news? A study of interest groups in the media in the UK, Spain and Denmark

Abstract

This paper provides the first systematic cross-country analysis of interest group appearances in the news media. The analysis included three countries - the UK, Spain and Denmark - each representing one of Hallin and Mancini's (2004) three overall models of media and politics: the liberal system, the polarized pluralist system and the democratic corporatist system. We find important similarities across countries with high levels of concentration in media coverage of groups, more extensive coverage of economic groups than citizen groups and differential patterns of group appearances across policy areas and between right-leaning and left-leaning papers. However, we also identify country variation, with the highest degree of concentration among group appearances in Spanish newspapers and most attention to economic groups in Danish newspapers.