Content analysis data of TV news and print media collected during the 2009 and 2013 German general election campaigns. The data was collected as part of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES).
The content analysis includes the most important German mass media, either with regard to their ratings, or with regard to their opinion leader role within the German media system: The main evening newscasts of the of the public broadcasters and those of the most popular commercial channels( Tagesschau (ARD), Heute (ZDF), RTL aktuell (RTL), Sat.1 Nachrichten (Sat.1)) as well as the five most important national quality newspapers (Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, die tageszeitung), and the most widely read tabloid “Bild-Zeitung” which is at the same time the newspaper with the largest total readership in Germany.
At the German Federal Election of 2009 the observation period covered the last 91 days before election day. Altogether 1.395 political TV news stories and 2.323 press articles were collected and analysed. At the German Federal Election 2013 the content analyses of print media and TV news was replicated with the same research design. During the last 91 days before the Federal Election 2013 1,060 political TV news stories and 2,403 press articles were collected and analyzed.
These data was collected in such a way that they can be linked to the survey data, most notably the rolling cross-section component as well as the short-term campaign panel of the GLES. The variable structure of the content analysis closely matches the surveys (which in turn collected detailed information about the respondents’ media use).