Electoral Campaigns in 2015 and 2016: Analysis of Headlines Features and News Toning in Daily News Portals

Abstract

Political elections are an important part of political
journalism. The ways of reporting news, especially the
messages conveyed through news headlines can affect the
electoral decisions of citizens. This paper shows the main
features of news headlines published in six news portals
during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in
Croatia in 2015 and 2016. Content analysis of the 777
headlines shows an even distribution of news during the
campaigns, with a slightly higher frequency of news released
in 2016 as well as on daily news portals that are exclusively
electronic. The main actors in the headlines are parties HDZ,
SDP and MOST, and politicians Andrej Plenković, Zoran
Milanović, Božo Petrov and Milan Bandić. There is also
domination of the terms elections, liquidation and
cooperation. The analysis of 245 articles shows a moderate
positive correlation between the (negative) reporting tone in
the headlines and news texts.