Political parties’ statements on their policy positions and how their framing in the
media stand at the centre of election campaigns. Some statements will be featured more
prominently in the media, while less electorally beneficial ones will be downplayed. To assess
media coverage of parties’ ideological positions during election campaigns, we performed a
media content analysis of election campaigns in ten European countries between 2014 and
2019. This results in three datasets on (i) parties talking about themselves, (ii) parties talking
about other parties, and (iii) journalists talking about parties. Furthermore, all three datasets
contain information about parties or journalists talking about individual issue areas, parties or
journalists talking about the valence of these issue areas, and parties or journalists talking
about general valence characteristics. These datasets may further add to comparative
research on media coverage on election campaigns.
