ECREA16-Abstract

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Friday, November 11

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PP 357

Bridging Discontinuities by Stressing Continuities. An Analysis of the Party Manifestos of the German Christian Democratic Union

P. Hemmelmann

KU Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Eichstaett, Germany

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is Germany's ruling party. In the 2013 German federal election the CDU and the CSU won together their best result

since 1990 with almost 42% of the vote. Nevertheless it is currently rumoring within the party. Angela Merkel, chancellor and leader of the CDU, is sharply

criticized by her own party for her refugee policies. Some journalists already foresee the end of the Merkel era. Merkel is facing the biggest political crisis

of her career. However it is not the first time many Christian democrats are displeased with Merkel’s political course.The decisions to phase out nuclear pow‑

er, to suspend compulsory military service and to introduce a national minimum wage have something in common: Merkel is accounting for them, but at

the same time they contradict the traditional agenda of the CDU. Since Merkel leads the CDU, she was criticized to undermine the brand essence of her party.

Despite the various critics Merkel and the CDU continued to be very successful. The CDU is currently the German party with most members. At the party con‑

vention 2014 Merkel was reelected as party leader with almost 97%. Though being criticized for the U-turns, Merkel and her team were successful to keep

the party together. How did they manage to do that? An important source of the collective identity of a party is its party policy. Manifestos can be singled

out as a uniquely representative and authoritative characterization of party policy at a given point of time. They help to settle conflicts within the party and

to integrate the various wings. They are the base for cohesion within the party as they present the shared values, positions and aims of all members. Thus

the study is focusing on the party manifestos to identify the rhetorical strategies used to bridge discontinuities like the turnarounds during the last years.

The election manifestos from 1949 till 2013 were examined by quantitative content analysis. The aim was to find the brand essence of the CDU, consisting

of certain values and topics as well as rhetorical elements like reviews and personalization. Particularly the study aimed to examine how the brand es‑

sence was treated during Merkel’s leadership. Basis for the analysis was the saliency theory of party competition, originally developed by David Robertson

(1976) and Budge, Robertson and Hearl (1987). In the end, it became evident that it is an important strategy of the Merkel-CDU to bridge discontinuities

by stressing continuities, i.e. by stressing elements of the brand essence. Three case studies illustrate this strategy. The justification of the about-faces

regarding nuclear power, compulsory military service and minimum wage were analyzed. The result underlines: It has been a successful strategy to situate

the about-faces in the brand essence to gain the acceptance of the party members. So perhaps this could be a possible strategy for the refugee issue, too?

PP 358

Comparing Communication Strategies of Political Actors Between Austria and Germany: A Different Significance of Media Logic for

Politicians When Trying to Focus Public Attention on "Their" Issues?

P. Maurer

, A. Riedl

, B. Mühl

Universität Wien, Institut für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Wien, Austria

In a famous article, Strömbäck (2008) argues that, as mediatization advances, political actors, first, need to adapt to the media logic and then adopt it. That

means they begin to shape their news management and communication practices according to media logic and think and act increasingly along the same

lines as the media do. But empirical evidence for such adaptation is scarce (Strömbäck & Esser 2014). Moreover, the national context is very suspicious to

act as a moderator of media influence on political actors and, thus, might shape mediatization processes as well (Maurer 2013, Maurer & Pfetsch 2014).This

paper seeks to contribute to understanding the role of the national context in how mediatization affects political actors in their communication behavior.

It takes a comparative view on political communication strategies in Austria and Germany which stand for different contexts of political communication:

The Austrian party system includes a strong, media-centered populist party while the German does not. Second, the Austrian media landscape is strongly

affected by tabloids and their logic with a very weak position of broadsheets while the latter hold a strong position in the German media system. These

and other national-specific structures create different contexts of political communication to which political actors need to react. Against this background,

the paper aims to answer which role mediatization plays when it comes to communication strategies with the aim of arousing public attention. In particular

we investigated where these strategies can be located on the blurring border between media and political logic and whether they diverge across countries.

Data material stemmed from an international survey which was, among other European countries, conducted in Germany and Austria in spring/summer

2008 and winter 2009. Respondents include high-ranking politicians, political consultants and spokespersons from the national level of politics in both

countries. They were asked an open-ended question on strategies deemed effective when politicians want to focus public attention on specific issues. In

total the 196 respondents yielded 369 strategies, which where subsumed under 47 broader categories. Coding was done by three coders (inter coder reli‑

ability according to Holsti: .73) based on a codebook which the authors developed themselves using a deductive-inductive approach. Overall, sophisticated

media relations, emphasizing confrontation and conflict, targeting messages to specific media formats and types, and relying on orchestrated events and

disruptive activities were identified as the most commonly used strategies to get public attention. These results indicate different levels of acceptance and

maybe also different understandings of a media logic and are thus discussed with regard to their implications for the public discourse about political topics.

A strong focus thereby lies on problematizing strategies that are meaningless from a political logic point of view. The comparison between Austria and

Germany manifests that Austrian political actors focus considerably stronger on disruptive actions when they seek to attract public attention. Conversely,

German respondents see exacerbating conflict as a significantly more promising approach to focus public attention. Both results get contextualized within

the different political systems and media environments.