Comparative Extension Projects: Belgium

1. Comparative Extension Projects: Belgium Project History 2001 – 2003: Joint project of 4 universities (KUL, UCL, UA, VUB). During this period the data collection took place. The final report was delivered in May 2004 (Walgrave, S., De Winter, L. and Nuytemans, M. (Eds.) (2005) ‘Politieke agendasetting in België (1991-2000). De moeilijke dialoog tussen publieke opinie, media en het politieke systeem’, Academia Press, Gent). 2005 – 2007: no new data collection, but the project received further funding to be continued. Current funding ends in 2007, however we submitted a new grant proposal to the Belgian Fund for scientific research. Codebook As we were unaware of the existence of the American Policy Agendas Project when we started coding in 2001, we did not use the US topic coding system. We drew upon another self-developed system based on the so-called EUROVOC thesaurus. We devised a coding scheme with 143 topic codes, and 36 main categories. An exploratory conversion table translating the American in the Belgian coding scheme has been developed. • Media Agenda • Largest agenda (more than 160.000 news items coded). • 4 TV channels, 5 newspapers. • Both French-speaking and Flemish speaking media were coded. • Newspapers • In Flanders, a tabloid (Het Laatste Nieuws), and two ‘quality’ newspapers were selected, ‘De Standaard’ being the largest in this category. • In the French-speaking community, the largest ‘quality’ newspaper (La Libre Belgique) was coded, as well as the largest newspaper (Le Soir). • Four days per week (Mon – Wen – Fri – Sat) • The front page of the newspapers was coded. • Core information: • Smallest time unit: one day • Unit of Analysis: newspaper article (1 code / article) • Time span coded: 1991 – 2000 • N: 66607 • Saliency: size of article (large / medium / small) • TV-news broadcasts • In Flanders, VTM and VRT are the only two companies who where continuously showing news-broadcasts for a large public during the research period. • In the French speaking community, the two channels (RTBF and RTL) were selected in a similar fashion: one public, and one commercial news broadcast. • Every news broadcast of the week was coded. • All items in the news were coded. • Core information: • Smallest time unit: one day • Unit of analysis: one newsitem • Time span coded: 1991 – 2000 • N: 113654 • Saliency: time devoted to each item (seconds) • Government Agenda • Ideally: every item on the agenda of the Council of Ministers between januari 1st, 1991 and December 31st, 2000. • Obtaining original data was impossible. • Solution: coding of weekly magazine ‘Feiten’, which contains all press releases following the meeting of the Council of Ministers. • Issues with the data: • Not a perfect match with the actual agenda (80% similarity). This is the biggest problem with this datafile. • A few extra subcodes were added to code 71 for this agenda. • Fourth state reform in 1993 cuts the research period in two, since the division of powers changed (e.g. Environmental policy was transferred to the regions). • Core information: • Smallest time unit: one week • Unit of analysis: one press release • Time span coded: 1991 – 2000 • N: 6296 • Measuring saliency: not available • Possibilities for automatic coding • Source of the coded data are problematic: almost no electronic versions available, or in an inappropriate format. Almost everything was done manually, even the enormous media database was compiled by skimming through paper versions of the newspapers. • We decided to focus on the media agenda: • Largest N of all the agenda’s • Therefore most diverse • Best possibilities to (somewhat) automate the recoding (see below) • Preparing data for the automatic coding: • Full text of the newspaper articles in the years 1999 – 2000 is placed in a database. Then a match is made based on the title of the article, which was originally coded. • Civil Society Agenda • Based on data of previous work on Protest and Movements, which was adjusted and recoded following the EUROVOC codebook. • Data was gathered using three sources: the policy archives (main source), and the protest marches mentioned in the newspapers De Morgen and Le Soir (secondary sources). • Core information: • Smallest time unit: one day (day of the protest march) • Unit of analysis: one protest march • Time span coded: 1991 – 2000 • N: 4000 • Measuring saliency: using the amount of protesters. However, different sources report different amounts. Therefore: police count as a baseline figure, if this is not available, media count multiplied by a coefficient • Belgian Parliament Agenda • Core information: • Smallest time unit: one day • Unit of analysis: one activity (written / oral question, interpellation, initiative or law) • Time span coded: 1991 – 2000 • N: 39240 • Measuring saliency: not available • Government Agenda • Ideally: every item on the agenda of the Council of Ministers between Januari 1st, 1991 and December 31st, 2000. • Obtaining original data was impossible. • Solution: coding of weekly magazine ‘Feiten’, which contains all press releases following the meeting of the Council of Ministers. • Issues with the data: • Not a perfect match with the actual agenda (80% similarity). This is the biggest problem with this data file. • A few extra subcodes were added to code 71 for this agenda. • Fourth state reform in 1993 cuts the research period in two, since the division of powers changed (e.g. Environmental policy was transferred to the regions). • Core information: • Smallest time unit: one week • Unit of analysis: one press release • Time span coded: 1991 – 2000 • N: 6296 • Measuring saliency: not available • Party Agenda • Based on the original party manifestoes, as published in the year of the Federal elections held within the research period (1991, 1995 and 1999). • Coded using a slightly modified version of the EUROVOC codebook. • Core information: • Smallest time unit: every 4 years (each manifesto has a date, but they’re only made every 4 years) • Unit of analysis: one sentence • Time span coded: every manifesto published during the research period was coded (1991, 1995, 1999) • N: 36030 • Measuring saliency: not available, since each manifesto is treated as being equal