Which Politicians Pass the News Gates and Why? Explaining Inconsistencies in Research on News Coverage of Individual Politicians

Abstract

Which politicians make it into the news and why? Individual politicians appear more in the news, which is important for their political success. Research concerning news coverage of individual politicians, however, has been conducted with different research designs and little comparative work, which has resulted in contradictory findings. This study examines previous research and has three goals: (1) classify the many possible determinants of news coverage into a typology, (2) give an overview of the effect of the determinants in the typology based on a systematic review of prominent studies, and (3) speculate about explanations for inconsistent findings by examining interaction effects and variations in research designs.