This book examines how election news reporting has changed over the last half century in Ireland by means of a unique dataset involving 25m words from newspapers as well as radio and television coverage. The authors examine reporting in terms of framing, tone and the distribution of coverage.They also focus on how the economy has affected election coverage as well as media reporting of leaders and personalities, gender and the effect of the commercial basis of media outlets. The findings - drawn from a machine learning computer system involving a huge content analysis study - will interest academics as well as politicians and policymakers internationally.

Reviews

'This is an important and substantial contribution to scholarship in Irish journalism studies and Irish political studies.'
Niamh Kirk, Estudios Irlandeses

1 Resilient reporting: An introduction
2 Ireland: political, economic, and media systems
3 The media and political change
4 The role of the economy in media coverage
5 Gender bias and Irish election coverage
6 Party leaders and personalisation of politics
7 Commercialism and election coverage
8 Economy and crisis coverage
Conclusion

Appendix 1: An overview of elections in Ireland since 1969
Appendix 2: Data and methodology
References
Index

Authors

The authors are based at Dublin City University, Ireland.

Michael Breen is an Associate Professor at the School of Law and Government

Michael Courtney is a Statistician at the Irish Central Statistics Office

Iain McMenamin is Professor of Comparative Politics and Head of the School of Law and Government

Eoin O'Malley is an Associate Professor at the School of Law and Government

Kevin Rafter is Professor of Political Communication and Head of the School of Communications