Research

Research

In its research and teaching, the Department of Government primarily focuses on comparative and Austrian politics. Its research is concerned with political behaviour, political actors, such as political parties and politicians, political institutions, the processes governed by these institutions, as well as their outcomes. It includes work on political participation, voting behaviour, parties and party competition, coalition politics and Austrian politics in general and is mostly based on rationalist and behavioural approaches.

Our goal is to conduct high-level, internationally competitive research in the area of Comparative Politics with the collaboration of international project partners and research networks. At the Faculty of Social Sciences the department is mainly engaged in the key research area ''Political Competition and Communication: Democratic Representation in Changing Societies'.

The department’s approach places it in the discipline’s empirical-analytical core and is mostly based on quantitative social science methods. To map empirical phenomena accurately, researcher in the department focus on the continuous development of survey design, as well as on the analysis of empirical data by applying the best suited statistical model. The department aims to achieve the best work on Austrian politics and to make important contributions to the international academic literature on Comparative Government and Politics.

An overview of current publications and activities at the department can be found below and on the personal websites of our team.

Publications

AUTNES Manual Content Analysis of the Media Coverage 2013: Actors and Issues Add-on (SUF edition)

Author(s)
Sylvia Kritzinger, Johann Gründl, Patricia Oberluggauer, Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Christian Glantschnigg, Hajo Boomgaarden
Abstract

This study adds to the existing manual content analysis on the media coverage of the 2013 Austrian national election. It emphasizes political actors, issues, and their evaluation. 8998 contributions from 14 print and TV media (selected according to various criteria in order to represent the Austrian media landscape as accurately as possible) were examined by means of manual content analysis. All contributions refer to either a political party or a political candidate of the Austrian national election 2013. All contributions have been published between 18.8.2013 and election day (29.9.2013) and were supplied by the APA Data Archive. Important variables are occurrence of parties and candidates as well as their evaluation; occurrence and evaluation of the government; occurrence and evaluation of the economy and migration; occurrence of important issues in the election campaign; and frames. Topics: headline; byline; media outlet; date; time; page; tone towards political actors; how is the situation of the economy and of immigration evaluated in the news; occurrence of election campaign issues; game framing in a news report (focus on a game character of politics, politics is portrayed as sports competition or warfare); news report mobilizes readers to take part in political activities; news report focusses on the fate of ordinary (i.e. unknown) people (human interest); policy relevant information; coverage in an article is one-sided or it takes multiple perspectives and arguments into account (perspectives and argumentation); number of different sources with quote. Additionally coded was: article-ID.

Organisation(s)
Department of Government, Department of Communication
DOI
https://doi.org/10.11587/BTEFJH
Publication date
10-2022
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
504007 Empirical social research, 508008 Media analysis
Keywords
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/c55678d7-fd7a-44e4-a10d-5ba31d4cc6d1