Medijska retorika u predizbornom razdoblju 2007. Analiza dnevnoga tiska
Media Rhetoric in the 2007 Pre-Election Period. Analysis of Daily Newspapers

Summary/Abstract: By means of content analysis in six daily newspapers during the 2007 parliamentary election campaign there was an attempt to determine the main characteristics of political media coverage in the pre-election period and major forms of political rhetoric in the election campaign. The results indicate that a huge bipolarisation of the political scene with an emphasis on the two political parties HDZ and SDP occurred in the media. The election campaign passed without accentuating particular social problems, and the main topic of political media coverage as well as of political communication was the election itself and the pre-election party activities. As regards the rhetoric of political party representatives an affirmative rhetoric was dominant, i.e. reports containing statements in which party representatives commented upon their work, gave various promises or generally spoke positively about themselves or their party. In approximately one third of the reports containing politicians’ statements, the party actors spoke in a negative context about other parties (emphasised their faults or spoke adversely towards another party in general). There was a complete lack of solutions to particular problems and the most frequent were statements in which politicians gave only general promises. Such results indicate that in the current state of political communication in Croatia trends can be identified in accordance with theories of "packaging politics", constructing "the political spectacle" and "colonisation of politics by the media".

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