Valitsuskoalitsiooni meediarepresentatsiooni muutumine 2003.-2005. aastal Postimehe näitel
Date
2006
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Abstract
Description
Res Publica as a new political party was first introduced in 2001. Already in 2002 Res
Publica was remarkably successful on the elections of local government and managed
to be equally successful on Riigikogu elections. In its elections campaign Res Publica
introduced itself as a fresh and clean political party with lot of new ideas, which was
believed to mark a beginning of the new politics in Estonia. On April 10, 2003 the
37th
government of the Republic of Estonia gave its oath of office in Riigikogu.
Reform Party, People’s Party of Estonia and Union for the Fatherland – Res Publica,
formed the coalition. Expectations of people about the new politics were very high.
It is important to examine the representation of the government coalition in the media,
because if media gives people an opportunity to follow certain behavior patterns then
comparing their own ideas and attitudes to those reflected in media people get
opportunity whether to criticize and disapprove or understand and approve the public
opinion. One should keep in mind what kid of values and expectations are considered
important by the media and what are left unrepresented, because media does not
reflect the reality one-to-one but reproduces it.
Author of this thesis studied abovementioned representation of the government
coalition on the example of opinion pages of Postimees in the period April 10, 2003 –
April 13, 2005. The opinion pages gave an opportunity to get more adequate picture
about the topics related to the government coalition because the texts there were
prepared not only by journalists but by also representatives of different interests
groups. Aim of the thesis was to examine by means of media analysis, which events
related to the government influenced the publicity most and how big vas the role of
representatives of different groups (journalists, experts, representatives of coalition
parties, representatives of opposition parties, common readers, Postimees) in
designing the representation of the government coalition.
In the research quantitative content analysis as well as qualitative content analysis for
illustrating the results with textual examples were used. The empirical results are
based on 651 articles published in the printed version of Postimees.
While analyzing representation of the government coalition the author observed
separately themes whish were hot during the whole analyzed period ant topics whish
were reflected only during shorter periods. The themes mostly overlapped with the
questions considered important by the coalition in its coalition agreement. In the
articles mostly questions concerning the education reform and developing of social
spheres (parental benefit, health system) were discussed. In the foreign politics the
priorities were joining the European Union and participation in its activities. Also the
topic of the new politics was frequently represented. As the expectations about the
new politics were very high and promises of the coalition agreement seemed too
grandiose (media also criticized it!) the judgments were first skeptical and later
disappointed
Analysis of the events showed that the publicity was most influenced by the crises and
scandals concerning the government (its members). The government operated with its
initial composition of ministers for a year. Since April 2004 until the end of the
operating time of the government five ministers changed because of different
scandals.
The first and most important conclusion the author threw is that Postimees
represented the activities of the government coalition based on the coalition
agreement. Mostly representatives of the coalition parties and experts were used as
information sources. In the same time while reflecting (scandalous) events in the
feedback the representatives of coalition parties played the smallest and common
readers the biggest role. So one can conclude that the government did not take the full
responsibility for its actions.
Another important conclusion is that representation of the government coalition in
Postimees did not coincide with the support indicators to the government coalition
drawn by Emor. The charts were quite similar before the September 2003. But the
government had operated less then a year when in December 2003 the support by the
publicity and opinions of the articles published in Postimees started to be quite contradictory. The reasons why the opinion pages of Postimees did not influence the
public opinion are worth to be a subject of further research.
Third strong conclusion is that while representing the government coalition as well as
its members the opinions were rather negative. The ministers and politicians were not
trusted and their decisions were criticized.
The fourth conclusion is that mostly representatives of Res Publica were used as
spokespersons. Representatives of the Reform Party and People’s Party together were
uses as spokespersons as often.
The most general conclusion of the bachelor thesis is that while representing the
government coalition Posatimees relied mostly on the coalition agreement and its
implementation. Res Publica that had promised a clean, ethical and transparent
politics was in the spotlight of interest; due to its elections campaign expectations
about its new politics were very high. But the media proved the opposite – the new
political party was not ready to bear the responsibility set on it.
The author of the thesis believes that is worth to examine in further researches why
the judgments on opinion pages of Postimees were so different from the polls
conducted by Emor and if the same phenomenon could be observed in analyses of
other governments.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd