The media and politics Federal election 2001
Complete list of papers
Other streams: Australia's contribution to political studies
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Phil Chase, Senior Lecturer,
School of Communication, Unitec, Auckland
Hegemony in abstraction: Media coverage and the 2001 local
government election
The media are central to political communication in western liberal democracies.
All media —and television in particular —have become primary sources of information
—allowing the public to make informed decisions at election time. But increasingly
voters are making their choices on the basis of mediated data devoid of substance
or serious analysis. In October 2001 New Zealanders went to the polls for the
triennial local government elections. This paper explores how publicly-owned
national television and the regional daily press covered and portrayed the Auckland
Mayoral election. It analyses the textand visuals of television's news and current
affairs and the daily press coverage of items on the mayoral campaign drawing
on elements of content and discourse analysis. The two media focused on differing
facets of the election, and employed divergent linguistic and visual presentation
styles; yet the resulting coverage was similar: highly segmented, trivialised,
with a notable absense of genuinely insightful discourse. Voter citizenship
needs were more ably met via the paid press advertisements, despite the initial
press censorship. While appearing to provide some measure of balanced coverage,
the media focused on story constructions which militated against voter understanding
of policy platforms, public interest issues, and reinforced negative conventional
perceptions of politics.
Email: pchase@unitec.ac.nz
Andrew M. Vandenberg, Centre for Citizenship and Human
Rights, Deakin University
Trade unions, globalisation, and networked computers
Many trade union movements anticipate that networked computers constitute a
means of both reversing declining unionisation densities and coping with the
challenges posed by the globalisation of national economies. Reasons to doubt
this include: 1) the individualising effects of new media; 2) a contemporary
compulsion for public organisations to abandon the schooling of responsible
and active citizens in favour of networking with interactive consumers; and
3) a tendency for global capitalism to outflank unions and de-link unions and
parties within labour movements. Reasons to investigate the union organising
possibilities of networked computers include: 1) the potential for a post-liberal
civic republicanism in the electronic mode of information; 2) the potential
for local unionists to co-ordinate their organising with other activists in
diverse social and political movements; and 3) the rise of a new internationalism
among diverse groups critical of globalisation. In light of these considerations,
this article considers the Australian Council of Trade Unions' strategic plan
Unions@Work along with international research on unions and networked computers,
and argues that since networked computers will have no uniform or sweeping effects
on all agents, organisations, or people it is likely that both market-friendly
individualisation and post-liberal online republicanism will develop at once.
Some unionists will turn to networked computers in order to gain better "customer
service" while some will turn to them in order to organise community unionism.
Similarly, a propensity for globalisation to de-link unions from national parties
of labour may well combine with networked computers facilitating the emergence
of stronger linkages in the international union movement. The doubters will
therefore be right to some extent but unions should persevere anyway and make
the most of the opportunities offered by networked computers.
Email: vanden@deakin.edu.au
Sally Young, Department of Political Science, University
of Melbourne
Political advertising in Australia, 1949-2001
It is no longer possible to understand modern election campaigns without considering
election candidates' reliance on mass media and expensive television advertising.
Political advertising is now central to the conduct, if not the results, of
modern election campaigns. The ultimate purpose of political advertising in
elections is, of course, to win votes. While no researcher has been able to
conclusively determine how, many have argued that advertisements do have an
effect on voters and can even influence voting choice. Yet there is also evidence
to suggest that political advertisements have other, perhaps unintended effects.
It is alleged that they have contributed to the decline of the political parties,
the rise of a cynical electorate and the 'dumbing down' of political debate.
These are serious charges however, they have never been comprehensively tested
in an Australian context. Instead, many claims and assumptions have been made
about how modern Australian political advertising has degenerated. It is claimed
that 1) the information content of political ads has declined; 2) that political
ads have become more negative; 3) that political ads have become more personalised
- focusing on the party leader instead of policies or the party; and 4) that
the electioneering strategies behind political ads have changed as the principles
of political marketing have taken hold. This paper reports the results of a
comprehensive study of political advertising in Australia. The researcher has
collected and analysed over 1500 newspaper and television advertisements from
1949-2001. Analysis of these advertisements was performed using three complementary
research methods - content analysis, discourse analysis and ad-mapping (that
is, uncovering the decisions made by parties about when and where to place their
ads as well as the frequency with which particular ads are run). The results
reveal how Australian political advertising has changed over the past fifty
years.
Email: sallyyoung@bigpond.com
David Denemark, Department of Political Science, University
of Western Australia
Information flow and voter decision-making in the 2001 Australian
federal election: The role of international and domestic issues
This paper examines the role of TV coverage of international and domestic issues
during the 2001 Australian federal election campaign, and its effects on voter
decision-making. More specifically, it looks at voters' differential reliance
on the two distinct, high profile sets of issues that dominated media election
campaign coverage: the domestics issues that had been the focus throughout the
election year (especially, health, education, and taxes) and the international
issues that assumed centre stage just before the election was called (refugees
and asylum seekers, terrorism, and defence and national security). Using an
original content analysis of TV coverage, merged with the 2001 Australian election
survey, interaction models yield significantly different patterns of reliance
on international and domestic for groups of voters distinguished by the timing
of their vote choice, and the level of their existing political interest and
information. Those moderately-interested voters, who largely decided their vote
choice about the time the election was called, were the most likely to cite
international issues as the key to their vote choice, while those lower interested
voters deciding just before or on election day were significantly more reliant
on domestic issues. These patterns point to a variant on Zaller's (1989) model
by showing that a single, high-intensity campaign can sustain within it two
distinct issue agendas which voters with different cognitive skills and responsiveness
to TV cues differentially utilize to inform their vote choice.
Email: denemark@cyllene.uwa.edu.au
Ian McAllister, Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University
The border protection poll: The 2001 federal election and
the Coalition victory
The November 2001 federal election was the first since the Vietnam War in which
non-economic issues were prominent. The election was fought mainly on two non-economic
issues, both reinforcing one another: first, there was the issue of asylum seekers,
exemplified most dramatically in the ‘Tampa Crisis’; and second, the
events of 11 September and the subsequent ‘War Against Terrorism.’
The election resulted in the return of the coalition government led by John
Howard, his third election win and a record matched only in the postwar years
by three other prime ministers: Sir Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke.
This paper uses the 2001 Australian Election Study to examine the role of border
protection in determining the outcome of the election. The results show strong
public support for the government’s policies on asylum seekers and the
war against terrorism. However, these views were not at the expense of general
public support for current immigration policies which, if anything, became more
liberal. The asylum seeker issue seems to have offended the average voter’s
commitment to an orderly, properly regulated migration program, not to their
support for the program per se. Whatever the interpretation, the emphasis on
border protection cost Labor the election.
Email: ian.mcallister@anu.edu.au
Clive Bean, School of Humanities and Human Services,
Queensland University of Technology
Primus inter premiers: Or, The electoral influence of state
party leaders
While it is now well established that Australian party leaders at the national
level influence political choice in federal elections, little systematic study
of the equivalent role that state premiers and opposition leaders might play
has been undertaken. In the 2001 Australian Election Study (n=2010), questions
were asked of a national probability sample of voters about respondent feelings
towards their state premier and state opposition leader, in addition to equivalent
questions about John Howard, Kim Beazley and other major political figures in
federal politics. The data generated by this survey thus provide an opportunity
to investigate the impact that contemporary state political leaders have on
electoral choice. The analysis produces mixed results, but the paper finds that
state leaders generally do have an impact on voting behaviour in state elections,
although in some cases this influence is eliminated when account is taken of
voter attitudes towards the federal leaders. The analysis also affords an opportunity
to test the extent of crossover between state and federal politics, in terms
of how much state leaders influence federal voting and visa versa. Though the
results are rather scattered, the findings do indicate that some state leaders
influence federal voting and that the federal leaders do influence voting in
some states.
Email: c.bean@qut.edu.au
David Gow, UQ Business School, University of Queensland
Split-ticket voting and divided government in Australia
One of the most significant institutional features of recent Australian political
life is that the government of the day does not control the Senate. This division
of power among the political parties ("divided government") has persisted
for over two decades and through two changes of government, thereby creating
an unbroken "era of divided government" that has lasted from 1980
to the present. When the Senate is controlled by the non-government parties,
they can act as a "brake" on executive government and restore (at
least) one house of parliament to its rightful place of holding the executive
responsible. There are several explanations for the differing levels of partisan
success in the House and Senate. The orthodox interpretation is that divided
government is rooted in voters' preferences for institutional division. According
to this view, "a significant number" of electors make sophisticated
judgements about how to use their vote to influence electoral outcomes and therefore
cast "split-ticket" ballots. This paper reviews the evidence for sophisticated
voting in Australia and identifies its key features. The research design is
based on the insight that the change in government in 1996 should bring about
a corresponding change in the way in which sophisticated voters cast their ballots
for the Senate in subsequent elections. By examining voting patterns of partisans
in the 1987, 1990 and 1993 elections, and comparing those patterns with the
elections following the change of government, we can test the extent to which
divided government has its roots in sophisticated voting. The analysis is based
on the six Australian Election Studies (AESs) that have been conducted at each
federal election since 1987. We find that there has been an increase in the
level of split-ticket voting amongst the supporters of all party groups; however,
there is very little evidence that split-ticket voting is sophisticated voting
designed to create divided government. In particular, we find that split-ticket
voting is highest among Democrats who are significantly more likely to defect
to a major party in casting their Senate votes, than are supporters of the major
parties likely to defect to either another major party or a minor party. The
paper presents evidence that the "era of divided government" has its
roots in the electoral system rather than in voters' preferences for divided
government.
d.gow@uq.edu.au
David Charnock, Curtin University
Peter Ellis, AusAID
Postmaterialism and the Australian party system
In this paper we explore the positioning of Australian political parties at
the 2001 federal election using data from the Australian Election Study. We
focus on some of the attitudes of Senate voters for the various parties, concentrating
on how Inglehart's postmaterialism measures can be used to supplement more traditional
left-right descriptions of the party system. In order to make some assessment
of the significance of the electoral context we make some comparisons with the
1998 election and also examine party positioning in relation to other sets of
attitudes about potentially salient issues.
Emails: d.m.charnock@curtin.edu.au
Rachel Gibson, ACSPRI Centre for Social Research, Research
School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
The future of national election surveys? Evaluating online
election surveys in Australia and Britain
During 2001 the teams running the national election studies for Australia and
the UK (AES and BES respectively) incorporated an online element into their
methodological tool box in the shape of a Web survey. This innovation resulted
in an identical set of questions being asked using multiple survey methods and
thus, the possibility to examine in a more systematic way some of the claims
made for and against online polls. This paper examines the data collected from
those online and offline polls (which included mail-in, RDD and face-to-face
interviews) according to three main criteria: (1) first, the paper compares
the polls for their accuracy of prediction and representativeness of the general
population; (2) then the paper examines the polls' internal reliability and
consistency; (3) finally the paper investigates the substantive differences
between the Internet survey respondents and their non-electronic counterparts
in terms of political attitudes and interests during and after the election
campaign. Even if we can create demographic equivalence between the samples,
do differences remain among the online population on key issues? Conclusions
are drawn regarding the overall utility of web based surveys compared with their
more conventional telephone and mail-in versions.
Email: rachel.gibson@anu.edu.au
This site maintained by Phil Griffiths. This page updated 18 June 2002