EUROPEAN MEDIA SYSTEMS SURVEY 2010: RESULTS AND DOCUMENTATION Marina Popescu with contributions from Gabor Toka, Tania Gosselin, and Jose Santana Pereira Colchester, UK: Department of Government, University of Essex Downloadable from www.mediasystemsineurope.org © Marina Popescu, 2011 Part I. Introduction 1 in the EMSS 2010 country-level data sets based How to obtain the data 1 on various recodes and averages of Conditions of use 2 elementary indicators 18-19 How to cite 2 Illustration 7: Composite measures in the EMSS 2010 country-level data sets based Contents Acknowledgements 3 on summing up two weighted averages 20 Part II. Project design 4 Objectives and method 4 Part IV. Data quality 21 Country selection criteria 5 Tests of data validity 21 Respondent selection criteria 6 Data reliability 22 Questionnaire design 6 Illustration 8: Data reliability in the Illustration 1: Except from the questionnaire EMSS 2010 study 24 as the respondents saw it 7 Media channels covered in the survey 8 References 26 The coding of media partisanship 8 Data collection and response rates 9 Part V. Graphical displays 28 Illustration 2: Response rates by national Single items 28 context to the 2010 EMSS survey 11 Composite measures 70 Country by country 120 Part III. Variables and visual displays 12 Single questions about individual media outlets 12 Part VI. Technical Appendix 28 Illustration 3: Outlet-level data on Italy from I. THE EMSS 2010 QUESTIONNAIRE 154 the 2010 EMSS survey 12 II. The coding of national media outlets Single questions about national media in general 13 covered in EMSS 2010 161 Illustration 4: Mapping broad trends 14 III. The coding of political parties in EMSS 2010 165 Illustration 5: Displaying country means IV. Outlet-level variables with their name, coding, with the margin of error 15 wording/construction an reliability in EMSS 2010 169 Composite measures: Weighted averages and V. Country-level variables with their name, multiple-item indices 16 coding, wording/ construction and reliability in Illustration 6: Composite measures EMSS 2010 172 Executive summary The main topics focus on: The remainder of part I of this The European Media Systems • information quality, i.e., accuracy, report presents the data dissemina- Survey (EMSS) provides an argument quality, depth, and tion plan; part II explains the methodo- assessment of national media contextualization in public affairs logical choices of the study and provides landscapes in 34 European coverage; details on implementation; while part III media systems on dimensions that are • media partisanship; discusses the types of measures and particularly relevant for political • the pluralism of political viewpoints visual displays developed and part democracy. It does so via averaging appearing within and across media IV assesses the reliability and validity the opinion of scores of specialist outlets, i.e., internal and external of the data collected. A separately Part I. Introduction experts of each national media diversity; downloadable technical appendix system in the sample. The survey • structural infl uences on editorial presents the questionnaire; the list specifi cally focused on media content; of the 289 media outlets covered by attributes for which no other cross- • journalistic professionalism; the survey; the coding of national nationally comparable indicators ex- • particularities of public television political parties at the media par- ist and the data are made publicly and online news; and tisanship question of the EMSS available. Thus, the EMSS is an • overall expert evaluations of media survey; and descriptive statistics and essential complement to previously credibility, infl uence and performance reliability estimates for all existing data available from in the given national contexts. questionnaire items and composite other sources on the legal, fi nancial, The data were collected from measures obtained. organizational, political, programming several hundred academic specialists and audience characteristics of mass of national media systems with How to obtain the data media in Europe. a cross-nationally standardized We make publicly available all The 2010 EMSS study focused on online questionnaire, and are country- and media outlet-level data both media content and structural made publicly available through the stemming from the study in a variety 1 characteristics, as well as the links www.mediasystemsineurope.org of formats via the study’s website at between the two. website in a variety of formats. www.mediasystemsineurope.org. Users are also encouraged to use own statistical analyses of the data national media system of a particu- the visual displays shown in this can download the complete coun- lar country; and (B) those that asked report in their own presentations or try- and media outlet-level data sets the respondents to assess particular publications. Electronic copies of from the same website in SPSS and media outlets like, say, BBC1 or The nearly-identical images can be found STATA format. We make these Sun. on the study website in Portable graphics and data freely available Network Graphics format. Users who for both reproduction and further Conditions of use wish to use these charts but with analysis in any publication on con- We authorize users to reproduce in the text appearing in a different lan- dition of the proper acknowledgement their own publications any part of the Part I. Introduction guage than English should send an of the source (see the How to cite raw data, any visual display, or any email specifying their request and section below). user-computed statistics from the providing accurate translation of The SPSS and STATA data fi les 2010 EMSS survey on condition that all text in the given charts into the provide the number of valid responses they acknowledge their source of data language of their choice to Gabor and their mean value and estimated as shown below. Toka at tokag at ceu.hu, and enter population standard deviation for each “request for EMSS 2010 charts” in the question and composite measure How to cite subject line. Users who would like to in each of the 34 national contexts. Users of the SPSS, STATA or Excel create their own tables about cross- Users can obtain the standard error fi les downloadable from our website national differences on individual of the mean values by dividing the are kindly requested to identify their variables can download from the estimated population standard source as: same website an Excel fi le that deviation of a variable by the Marina Popescu, Tania Gosselin and contains country-by-country de- square root of the number of valid Jose Santana Pereira. 2010. “Euro- scriptive statistics (national mean, responses. pean Media Systems Survey 2010.” minimum, maximum, standard We provide separate data fi les Data set. Colchester, UK: Department of 2 deviation) for all study variables. about (A) the questions that asked Government, University of Essex. URL: Users who wish to undertake their the respondents to assess the entire www.mediasystemsineurope.org Citations of this report and users of was provided through a British of the project. We would particularly our charts are requested to contain a Academy Postdotoral Fellowship and a like to thank John Bartle, Mikolaj reference to: University of Essex research Czesnik, Zhidas Daskalovski, Marina Popescu with Gabor Toka, initiative support grant to Marina Chris Hanretty, Andrija Henjak, Tania Gosselin, and Jose San- Popescu. The Qualtrics software Stephen Krause, Neophytos tana Pereira. 2011. “European Me- facility used for the online survey Loizides, Frances Millard, Aure- dia Systems Survey 2010: Results was provided by the Department of lian Muntean, Dusan Pavlovic, and Documentation.” Research re- Government at the University of David Sanders, Tom Scotto, Maria port. Colchester, UK: Department of Essex. Tania Gosselin and Jose Spirova, Catalin Tolontan, Dan Part I. Introduction Government, University of Essex. URL: Santana Pereira participated in the Tudoroiu and Stefaan Walgrave for www.mediasystemsineurope.org project as part of their work at the their comments, Stela Garaz and University of Quebec at Montreal Bogdana Buzarnescu for excellent Acknowledgements and the European University Institute research assistance, and Nicoleta This survey would have not been (Florence, Italy), respectively. Nasta and Laura Trandafi r for their possible without the contribution Gabor Toka of the Central European help with fi ne-tuning the graphic and interest of our 838 respondents University (Budapest, Hungary) design of the report. The visual from 34 national contexts, who also provided technical advice throughout displays in this report were generated provided additional information and all phases of the project. using the R 2.13 software. (1) comments that will improve the A number of other friends and col- next wave of the survey planned for leagues shared with us their time 2012. Funding for the 2010 project and insight to help in different stages 3 (1) R Development Core Team (2011). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org/. Objectives and method casting lives up to its mission in the ministerial powers, and party competi- The 2010 European Media Systems contemporary world; or the condi- tion (see Arvanidis et al. 2009; Benoit Survey (EMSS) aimed at fi lling a tions under which the internet can be and Laver 2006; Kitschelt et al.