Politics as a Game in Danish Newspapers Lars Christian Jensen ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to find out whether the Danish written media focus more on the competitive aspect of an election rather than on political content. This is accomplished by analyzing newspaper articles from the three weeks leading up to the election for parliament in 2011. The analysis is based on the framework proposed by Thomas Patterson in his 1993 book “Out of order”. The framework consists of two underlying metaframes, an issue metaframe and a game metaframe. Either one or the other is present in any article with political content. Articles dominated by the issue metaframe rely on political issues, viewpoints and arguments, whereas articles dominated by the game metaframe rely on polling data and report only on how well a political party or candidate is doing in relation to its competitors by using metaphors. Articles that dominated the game metaframe focus on who is winning and who is losing. The analysis shows furthermore that one third of all articles are dominated by the game metaframe. The results furthermore indicate that articles dominated by the game metaframe are more frequent close to an election than in between elections. 1. Introduction The press is often said to be the fourth branch in the separation of powers as the press holds the other three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary in check (Patterson, 2000, 249). The press has as such no formal or legal role in the political system. Yet, the press has an ability to “structure the actions of governments and political actors and thereby the news influence on the political agenda and the framing of politics” (Ørsten & Allern, 2011, 1). Therefore it is interesting how the media utilizes this power when the press reports on politics and political issues. The press in Denmark has been criticized for focusing too much on winners and losers of the election during the election for parliament in September 2011. Some of the critique has come from voters, who state their opinions in blogs and debates in newspapers. However, critique has also come from academics, who search for more substance in the way the media covers elections (Hjort, 2011). The criticism culminated after a TV-debate on the national network TV2, in which each candidate was assigned to a team (blue team for conservative/liberal/right wing parties and red for socialist/left wing parties) and was able to score points for his team based on how well the Sønderborg Papers in Linguistics and Communication # 2 1 candidate debated for his political viewpoint. The TV-debate resembled a sports event with banners, referees and even cheerleaders. The TV-debate on TV2 was largely criticized on Facebook, on Internet forums as well as in the written press (Nielsen, 2011). The critique of the press has been harsh, but did the press really focus that much attention on winners and loser rather than actual political issues? This is what I aim to find out in this paper. I will do this by analyzing newspaper articles published in Metroexpress in the weeks leading up to the election. The analysis will try to uncover whether the press did focus more on winners and losers of the election than on political issues by searching for occurrences of a so called “game metaframe” in newspaper articles. A game metaframe is a way of using metaphors to explain politics in terms of a game (i.e. a soccer match or other sporting event). In other words, a metaphor explicating politics as a game carry all meanings of the word game. For example, a game can be won or lost, strategies can be successful or be faulty, a politician may be ahead or behind or attack and defend. Newspaper articles are typically structured around either a game or an issue metaframe. A game metaframe is defined by Thomas E. Patterson as a schematic framework in which candidates compete for advantage (Patterson, 1993, 57). Game metaframes are further referred to as news stories that frame politics in “terms of a game or strategy not related to issue positions” (Strömback & Shehata, 2007). In contrast, issue metaframes can be found in articles on political viewpoints of a candidate or a party, or for example, social welfare, civil rights or tax policy. Articles will be analyzed for either the issue or the game metaframe in order to determine whether Metroexpress focused on issues or on wins and losses. This leads to my research question: Was the news coverage of the Danish election for parliament in 2011 in Metroexpress based on the metaphorical game metaframe (Patterson, 1993), which stresses politics as a game with winners and losers or was the coverage of the election based on political issues? Research on the use of game frames is interesting because excessive use of game frames in political press coverage can lead to lower voter turnouts, as the use of game frames turns voters into spectators (Pedersen, 2011). Game metaframes have been studied in both the United States and in Europe, but as of yet no studies regarding game metaframes in Danish media have been published. Studies from the United States and Europe will be reviewed in the following section in order to provide an overview of the theories and studies this paper is based on. 1.1. Previous research This paper is on politics in the media, more precisely on how the media frame or present election news in Denmark. Framing has to do with choosing the language to define a debate, which is often is done using metaphors. Metaphors in language is studied by the cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who states that metaphors are not devices of language but of concepts. In other words, metaphors appear in language not because the language itself is metaphorical but because that is how we conceive the issues or themes we are discussing (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 6). In fact, Lakoff claims that human thought processes are largely metaphorical and the very reason that metaphors exist in linguistic expressions is that there are metaphors present in our conceptual system (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 6). Lakoff demonstrates that many everyday expression are metaphorical concepts. Examples of these expressions are ’His argument is shut down’, ’Your claims are indefensible.’ and ’I’ve never won an argument with him’. These expressions might all sound quite normal and not metaphorical at all, but in fact all of these expressions are instances of the conceptual metaphor ’Argument is war’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 5). Lakoff has also con2 tributed to the field of political framing in an article from 2003 called ”Framing the Dems - How conservatives control political debate and how progressives can take it back” (Lakoff, 2003). The article discusses how the conservatives in the U.S. control the debate by employing frames based on metaphors. One of the frames discussed is ’Tax relief’, which actually presupposes the metaphor that taxes are an ’affliction’ or a ’disease’ and that the ’afflicted’ needs to be saved by the ’hero’ (in this case the Conservative party), from the ’evil villain’ (in this case the Democratic party) (Lakoff, 2003). ’Tax relief’ is just another way of saying ’Taxes are bad and you shouldn’t have to pay them. Vote for us and we will relieve you of your burden.’ Metaphors used in politics is also studied by Thomas E. Patterson, who wrote the book “Out of Order” (Patterson, 1993), in which he studies the media coverage of past presidential elections in the United States. However, Patterson focuses on how the media uses metaphors to frame political articles rather than how politicians use it to set their agenda. Patterson states that there are two ways of writing an article about politics. One way is to report on issues, another way is to frame the article using a game schema (Patterson, 1993, 58). A game schema presupposes the metaphor that ’Politics is a game’ and it is then possible to construct linguistic expressions explicating politics as a game in much the same way as the metaphors ’Argument is war’ and ’Tax relief’ are used. Patterson found that during the presidential election of 1992 articles largely reported solely on the outcome, that is, how is the candidate doing in the polls in relation to other candidates and what kind of strategies will he employ to beat his opponents, rather than reporting on political content. Patterson exemplifies this by reviewing articles written after a speech held Bill Clinton, who was presidential candidate at the time, at the University of Syracuse. The speech was 22 minutes long and contained his ideas on an economic-recovery plan, health care and student-loans, just to name a few. He stepped down from the podium after the speech to dis- cuss his policy with the students and townsfolk who came to meet him. However, articles reporting on the speech focused largely on Clinton’s strategy and how he was doing in relation to other candidates and did not include any of his political viewpoints. Research on politics and the media has also been carried out in Europe, in particular by the Swedish researcher Jesper Strömback. Strömback investigates the media’s use of game metaframes when reporting on politics in a series of comparative studies (Strömback & Shehata, 2007; Strömback & Aalberg, 2008; Strömback & van Aelst, 2010). Each of the studies compare game metaframes used in Swedish media compared to other European nations. Strömback and Shehata (Strömback & Shehata, 2007) searched for the presence of game metaframes in Swedish and British newspapers in the elections in 2002 and 2005 and found that game frames were present in 50 percent of the articles analyzed in Sweden and in more than 60 percent of the articles analyzed in the UK. Strömback then carried out a similar study with Toril Aalberg comparing presence of game frames in newspaper articles with Sweden and Norway. They found that 66 percent of the articles analyzed in Norway were based on a game frame (Strömback & Aalberg, 2008). Finally, Strömback carried a study with Peter van Aelst comparing the presence of game frames in newspaper articles in Sweden and Belgium. They found that the game frame was present in more than 68 percent of the articles analyzed in Belgian papers (Strömback & van Aelst, 2010). Game frames have not been much researched in Denmark. However, this topic is currently being researched by a Danish PhD student at the University of Copenhagen but results of his research is only found in a newspaper article from March 2011. His research indicates that more than 20 percent of the articles in Metroexpress (the newspaper used for this study) are based on a game frame (Pedersen, 2011). He is expected to publish an academic article on the subject in the European Journal of Communication in the first quarter of 2012 and was not available for discussion in Sønderborg Papers in Linguistics and Communication # 2 3 the current paper. Together, the studies presented in this section lay the foundation for my research method which is presented in the next section. 2. Method and Data 2.1. Method My research method for this paper helps me to determine whether a given article is framed as a game or as an issue. The method relies on identifying and counting metaphors and has been developed by the German sociolinguist Rudolph Schmitt (Schmitt, 2005). He bases his method on Lakoff’s definition of a metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), which is: “A metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” Schmitt’s method consists of three rules identifying metaphors: 1. ”A word or phrase, strictlyspeaking, can be understood beyond the literal meaning in context of what is being said; and 2. The literal meaning stems from an area of physical or cultural experience (source area) 3. Which, however, is - in this context - transferred to a second, often abstract, area (target area).” The following example is found in one of the articles analyzed: “...det var en fodfejl fra Villy...” is understood beyond its literal meaning in that “Villy” didn’t physically put his foot at a wrong place but actually made an error (he made some statements in the press that made his party fall back in the polls). The literal meaning stems from a game (tennis, tabletennis and boxing, but other sports may apply as well) and is then transferred into an abstract meaning: “Villy made an error in the ’game’ of politics”. The example is taken from one of the articles analyzed and references to it can by found in appendix A. The method is applied to all articles in order to identify and count metaphors explicating politics as a game. It is useful for determining whether articles in Metroexpress focused on winners and losers or on issues. Articles are then further analyzed for the presence of a ’horse race frame’. The horse race frame refers to “news story focused on opinion polls and winning and losing in the battle for votes”(Strömback & Shehata, 2007). Horse race framing is defined as“the tendency to treat elections as if they were sporting events where the paramount goal is to get across the finish line in first place” (Patterson, 2005). The horse race frame is like the game metaframe based on a metaphor. The metaphor seems appropriate since a horse in a horse race is judged by its speed in comparison to the speed of other horses in much the same way political parties are “judged” by the media in the battle for votes. The horse race frame share many characteristics with the game metaframe but they are not identical. The horse race frame looks at the individual clauses and linguistic expressions within an article, whereas the game metaframe looks at an article as a whole and then determines which metaframe is the dominant one. For example, the game metaframe either dominates an article or not. In contrast, the horse race frame may be present in articles that also contain other frames, such as “political strategy frame”, the “politicians as individuals” or the “governing frame” (Strömback & Shehata, 2007). These frames will not be searched for in this paper since they don’t help to answer the research question. Horse race frames are often found in articles dominated by the game metaframe but may also be found in articles dominated by the issue metaframe. The horse race frame is useful for determining how much Metroexpress focused on the winners and losers. The game metaframe and the horse race 4 frame are both exemplified in the data section. be won or lost. That ’something’ is then the debate between Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the two top candi2.2. Data dates for Venstre and Socialdemokratiet reData for this study consist of articles from the spectively. The debate is adversarial and the Danish newspaper Metroexpress. This news- debaters are not simply presenting their view paper was chosen because it is the most well of the world but are presented as “attempting distributed newspaper in Denmark (Danmarks to defeat opponents” (Billig, 1996, 48). The Statistik, 2011a) and because the newspaper is debate is in the next clause framed as a race read throughout Danish society across diffrent (which is understood as a game) by using the genders, levels of income and levels of educa- Danish noun ’løb’, which translates directly tion (Metroexpress, 2011). Articles for analy- to ’race’. The debate was in fact no race at sis were selected on the basis of two criteria. all, both debaters were standing still the entire Firstly, the articles had to have some political time! The debate is then understood beyond story or relate to the election for parliament. the literal meaning, which stems from a physiSecondly, the articles had to be featured on cal or cultural experience (a race) and is in this the front page of the newspaper. However, ar- context transferred into an abstract meaning ticles with interviews were discarded. This se- (politics is a race) (Schmitt, 2005). However, lection method is inspired by the method used the second example is not understood beyond by Strömback and Shehata in their 2007 arti- its literal meaning. In other words there is no cle “Structural Biases in British and Swedish “experiencing one thing in terms of another” Election News Coverage” (Strömback & She- (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). hata, 2007). Articles are analyzed for the The following example shows how the horse game metaframe on a dominance basis. In race frame is found and identified. It is found other words, the dominant metaframe (issue on a presence/absence basis. The horse race frame does not exclude other frames, but is or game) was determined for each article. the only one that answers the question of how Example of Game Metaframe: much Metroexpress focused on the winners and losers of the election. Lars Løkke blev aftenens vinder, men det var meget, meget tæt løb Example of Horse Race Frame: Source: Metroexpress Friday, September 9th, “Det var en knaldgod debat” Example of Issue Metaframe: Dansk Folkepartis leder, Pia Kjærsgård har tidligere været fortaler for en uændret efterløn Source: Metroexpress Wednesday, August 31st, “Rød blok vil have DF til at redde efterløn” The first example is taken from a report of a TV-debate. The example shows how the journalist uses the game metaframe to report on the debate. The game metaframe is identified in the first clause of the first example that states that there is something that can ...og nærmer sig nu de Radikale, som står til 8,9 % af stemmerne Source: Source: Metroexpress Tuesday, August 30th, “Johanne står til kanonvalg” The example shown in the example above is a prototypical example of a horse race frame. It reports on political news based on a poll. In fact, the first example was also a very typical example of a horse race frame. It depicts, as mentioned, the debate as a race. All examples are taken from my analysis of newspaper articles in Metroexpress. All articles used in the analysis are listed in Appendix A. Articles chosen for analysis totalled 31. Of those 31 articles six were discarded, because they were either interviews or had no political content. One Sønderborg Papers in Linguistics and Communication # 2 5 article consisted exclusively of pictures. After eliminating these articles, 25 articles were left for analysis. The articles were found in Metroexpress in the three weeks leading up to the election (the newspaper is not published on neither Saturday nor Sunday) The method described and exemplified in this section is useful for gaining a quick overview of how the written press reports on the election. Furthermore, this method makes it possible to expand the research at a later point to include more articles from more newspapers and to compare the results from this research with other similar studies. the game metaframe in the final week whereas only one fourth of the articles are dominated by the game metaframe in the first week of the election campaign. The articles were then further analyzed for the presence of the horse race frame. The analysis is divided in two parts. The first part looked for the presence of the horse race frame in each article. This part of the analysis shows that the horse race frame was present in nine articles. It is presented in Table 2. Table 2: Presence of the Horse Race Frame Frame Horse Race Articles Percent 9 36 % 3. Results The second part of the analysis looked at how The results from analyzing the data show that frequently the horse frame was used. Results the game metaframe indeed is present in arti- of the analysis is shown in Table 3. cles when Metroexpress reports on politics or Table 3: Number of Occurrences of the Horse the election. The results reveal that nine of Race Frame the articles (or 36 percent) were metaframed as a game. This indicates that although artiStatistical analysis Result cles metaframed as a game were not more comMean 3,9 mon than articles metaframed as issues, there Median 7 still was much focus on winners and losers of Mode 3 the election since one third of the articles were Total 35 dominated by the game metaframe. Table 3 shows that the horse race frame was used 35 times in just nine articles. It further shows that the horse race frame occurred Week Issue Game Total on the average almost four times in each artiFrame Frame cle, but that three occurrences per article were Week 1 6 2 8 most frequent. These results reveal that alWeek 2 4 2 6 though game metaframing is not more domWeek 3 6 5 11 inant than issue metaframing in the articles analyzed, game metaframes are still dominant All 16 9 25 in more than one third of the articles. In weeks addition, all articles dominated by the game metaframe also contained the horse race frame The table shows that the game frame is dom- that focuses on winners and losers. inant in two articles (25 percent) in the first week of the election campaign, again in two articles (33,3 percent) in the second week and in 4. Discussion five articles (45,5 percent) in the third and final week of the election campaign. In perspective, The aim of this paper was to find out whether almost half of the articles are dominated by Metroexpress applied the game frame defined Table 1: Game Frames and Issue Frame 6 by Thomas E. Patterson (Patterson, 1993) and thereby focused on winners and losers in the three weeks of the election for parliament in 2011. The game frame was found dominant in a little more than one third of the articles analyzed. This result is in contrast to what the Danish PhD student Rasumus Tue Pedersen has found out in his study. He has revealed some of his results in a newspaper article (Pedersen, 2011) in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende. His results indicate that only 20 percent of articles in Metroexpress are metaframed as a game. However his research is done more than six months before the election for parliament, whereas data from my study are collected in the three weeks prior to the election. The difference in our result and time of study indicate that occurrence of the game frame becomes more frequent the closer we get to an election. This suggestion seems to be supported by the data presented in Table 1. The table shows that the percentage of articles dominated by the game metaframe were larger in the final week of the election than at the beginning of the campaign. Further research may also help to explain the difference between my results and the results of the Swedish researcher Jesper Strømback. Strømback has found evidence for the presence of game frame in more than 50 percent of the articles analyzed up to the Swedish election in 2002. There may be several reasons for the difference between my results and the results found by Strömback. Strömback’s research is based on data from 165 articles from four newspapers whereas my data consist of 25 articles from one newspaper. Hence, my data says more about Metroexpress and the way they write articles than providing a general tendency in the Danish written press. In addition, the four papers analyzed by Strömback are divided in the two categories tabloid (sensational newspapers) and morning papers (”serious/broadsheet newspapers”). However, Metroexpress does not fall into either category. It is a free daily newspaper that shares some qualities with a tabloid newspaper. Some of these qualities are that both types of newspapers are published in the tabloid-format, both papers contain relatively short articles and cultural content is valued higher than political content. However, free daily newspapers are distributed for free at traffical nerve centers, in subways, train stations and at universities, whereas tabloid papers are sold in kiosks and through subscriptions, which means that the two types of newspapers possibly have very different readerships. Tabloid newspapers in Sweden are reported to make more use of game frames than morning papers (Strömback & Shehata, 2007). Research on game frames in these two types of papers should be conducted in Denmark in order to do a meaningful comparison with Strömback’s research. As a matter of fact, such research is already being conducted by the Danish PhD student Rasmus Tue Pedersen, but as mentioned earlier only preliminary results have been published. The results show that the tabloids are indeed more prone to use the game metaframe than the morning papers are (Pedersen, 2011). There is a reasonable explanation why tabloids use the game metaframe more than other types of newspapers. Tabloids are more competitive than morning papers since they compete to be the first out with a sensational story. Competitiveness is what drives the game metaframe (Patterson, 2000). In other words, the occurrence of game frames increases or decreases proportionally to the commercialism and competitiveness of a newspaper. The media as a business has in Denmark gone through a tremendous evolution from a monopolistic partisan biased system to a commercialised and competitive system. That the media system today is a competitive system means that especially the written media compete for readers not only with other newspapers but also with television and providers of on-line content. This tendency applies especially to tabloids. However, this was not always the case. The written media in Denmark consisted up to the 1960’s of four newspapers that each expressed the viewpoint of the four existing political parties; “Venstre”, “Det konservative folkeparti”, “Socialdemokraterne” and “Det radikale venstre”. Sønderborg Papers in Linguistics and Communication # 2 7 In contrast, Denmark has today 35 daily newspapers (Danmarks Statistik, 2010), although the four original newspapers still have a remote connection with the four political parties. As a consequence of the increased competition, each newspaper has fewer resources available. As a result, one can assume that newspapers and especially tabloids don’t spend a lot of time on research or background information when writing articles. Writing an article about political issues is time consuming, it is much easier and quicker to just apply the game metaframe (Pedersen, 2011). Some journalist use polling data instead of field research when reporting on an election or politics in general. Polls were used extensively during the election in 2011 and up to four different institutes took polls every day of the election (Berlingske, 2011). Polls fuel horse race journalism and focus on who’s ahead and who’s behind in winning the election (Patterson, 2005). Horse race frames were found as much as 35 times in nine articles. The nine articles that contained the horse frames coincided with the nine articles dominated by the game metaframe. This shows that the extensive use of polling data influences the way articles are written. These results are cause for concern, since they indicate that there is much focus on the game of politics rather than political issues in the Danish written media. Focus on the game of politics is problematic in the sense that it turns voters into passive viewers. The voters then ’watch’ politics in much the same way they watch a soccer match (Pedersen, 2011). This process may then lead to a lower voter turnout since the voters treat the election and politics in general as something they watch, not something they participate in. However, the voter turnout in Denmark does not seem to have been much affected. The voter turnout for the election in 2011 was nearly 87 percent, compared to 85 percent in 2007 (Danmarks Statistik, 2011b). However, voter turnout is also affected by other factors than by how articles in newspapers are written. Therefore, further research should be carried out in order to find out how closely the presence of game metaframes and horse race frames in newspaper articles are related to voter turnout during elections. 4.1. Future Research This paper has revealed some facts on a very small scale in the Danish media in relation to the election for parliament in 2011. Unfortunately, the paper asks more questions than it answers. For example, it found some tendencies in Metroexpress. Do these tendencies also apply to other newpapers or other types of media (e.g. television, Internet, etc.)? Another question is what factors motivate the use of game metaframes and horse race frames in the media, are these factors related to the type of media, competitiveness of the media, competitiveness of the election, or something else? A third question is what the relationship between the use of game metaframes and horse race frames and voter turnout is in Danish elections for parliament. These are all important question that this paper could not answer due to its size, scope and time available. 5. Conclusion The aim of this paper was to find out whether the news coverage by Metroexpress was based on the metaphorical game frame discussed by Thomas Patterson in his book “Out of order”(Patterson, 1993). The metaphorical game metaframe was found to be present in the election coverage by Metroexpress in one third of the articles featured on the front page of Metroexpress in the three weeks of the election campaign. Furthermore, the articles also contained 35 references to the horse race frame that focus on winners and losers. This lead to the conclusion that the newspaper indeed focused much attention on who was ahead and who was behind in the election campaign. Data presented in this paper suggest a tendency that game metaframes become more frequent with an election approaching. This tendency should be investigated further in order to be confirmed. Finally, this paper raised 8 some questions that could initiate further re- Patterson, T. E. 1993. Out of order . Vintage Books. search. 6. Bibliography Berlingske 2011. Berlingske barometer. http://www.b.dk/berlingskebarometer. Accessed December 2011. Billig, M. 1996. Arguing and Thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge University Press. Danmarks Statistik 2010. Daily newspapers. www.dst.dk. Accessed December 21st 2011. Patterson, T. E. 2000. Democrazy and the Media. A comparative perspective. Cambridge University Press. Editorial: The United States: news in a free market society by in “Democrazy and the Media. A comparative perspective” by Richard Gunther and Anthony Mughan. Patterson, T. E. 2005. Of polls, mountains - u.s. journalists and their use of election surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69 (5), 716–724. Special Issue. Danmarks Statistik 2011a. Statistisk Årbog 2011. www.dst.dk. Accessed November 8th 2011. Pedersen, R. T. 2011. Det politiske spil skygger for politikkens indhold. Berlingske Tidende, (p. 3). Danmarks Statistik 2011b. Voter turnout. www.dst.dk. Accessed December 21st 2011. Ørsten, M., & Allern, S. 2011. The news media as a political institution. Journalism Studies, 12 (1), 92–105. Hjort, A. 2011. Medieekspert om valgkampen: Det hele har været alt for meget. http://politiken.dk/kultur/tvogradio/ECE1392323/medieekspert-om-valgkampendet-hele-har-vaeret-alt-for-meget/. Schmitt, R. 2005. Systematic metaphor analysis as a method of qualitative research. The Qualititative Report, 10 (2), 358–394. Lakoff, G. 2003. Framing the dems. American prospect, 14 (8). Strömback, J., & Aalberg, T. 2008. Election news coverage in democratic corporatist countries. a comparative study of sweden and norway. Scandinavian Political Studies, 31 (1), 91–106. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. 1980. The Metaphors we Live by. The University of Chicago. Strömback, J., & Shehata, A. 2007. Structural biases in british and swedish election news Metroexpress 2011. Læserprofil. http://metrocoverage. Journalism Studies, 8 (5), 798–812. media.dk/usercontent/Laeserprofil/Samlet.pdf. Accessed on November 8th 2011. Strömback, J., & van Aelst, P. 2010. Exploring some antecedents of the media’s framing of Nielsen, S. H. 2011. Massiv kritik af tv2 election news: A comparison of swedish and valgprogram. http://www.tvnyt.com/artikelbelgian election news. International Journal of /default.asp?id=19484. Accessed on October Press/Politics, 15 (1), 41–59. 30th. Sønderborg Papers in Linguistics and Communication # 2 9 Appendix A: Articles Used for Analysis Front pages of Metroexpress were analyzed for articles with political content from three weeks before the election. The articles used were published in Metroexpress between August 30th 2011 and September 15th 2011. Article Title Published Metaframe S og SF: Minister skyld i DSB-krise Unge vælgere vil have troværdige politikere S og SF lover ikke noget Johanne står til kanonvalg Rød blok vil have DF til at redde efterløn Arbejdsløse unge er en ny regerings største udfordring Væksttal er en gave til Løkke Magre økonomiske år venter forude Praktikgaranti fører DF over til rød blok Strid i rød blok truer valgsejr Ekspert: Politikere frygter EU uden grund S-SF: Lægebesøg må ikke koste noget Psykiatrien kan forbedres uden penge Supertvivlerne deler sig mellem rød og blå blok Det var en knaldgod debat Søvndal: VK’s løftebrud har kostet menneskeliv Alle vil bare stemme på Johanne Rød duo taber flyvehøjde Ro på rygeloven Kulturen deler blokkene Rød blok vil investere i kulturlivet Ørum kan blive Løkkes joker Landet skal styres af rene amatører Valget bliver endeligt farvel til blokpolitik Den eneste rigtige meningsmåling August 30th 2011 August 30th 2011 August 30th 2011 August 30th 2011 August 31st 2011 September 1st 2011 Issue Issue Game Game Issue Issue September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September Issue Issue Issue Game Issue Issue Issue Game Game Issue Game Game Issue Issue Issue Game Issue Issue Game 1st 2011 1st 2011 2nd 2011 6th 2011 6th 2011 7th 2011 7th 2011 7th 2011 9th 2011 13th 2011 13th 2011 14th 2011 14th 2011 14th 2011 14th 15th 2011 15th 2011 15th 2011 15th 2011 10