Amsterdam University Press

Chapter Title: Much ado about nothing Five media hypes in a comparative perspective
Chapter Author(s): Charlotte Wien

Book Title: From Media Hype to Twitter Storm

Book Editor(s): Peter Vasterman
Published by: Amsterdam University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21215m0.11

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Amsterdam University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to From Media Hype to Twitter Storm

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
6. Much ado about nothing
Five media hypes in a comparative perspective

Charlotte Wien

Vasterman, Peter (ed.), From Media Hype to Twitter Storm. News Explo-
sions and Their Impact on Issues, Crises, and Public Opinion. Amsterdam
University Press, 2018
doi: 10.5117/9789462982178/ch06

Abstract
This chapter challenges the widespread assumption that media hypes
can put pressure on politicians to change their policies. Through a com-
parative case study of five Danish media hypes, occurring between 2000
and 2005, the chapter will demonstrate that media hype’s influence on
policymaking is indeed very limited. No – or only very little – evidence
of political actions related to a media hype can actually be traced back
to a media hype itself. On the contrary, politicians use media hypes
strategically for their own interests, anticipating the recurring patterns
of media hype. The chapter will conclude that even though media hypes
receive extensive attention, their course and development are, in fact,
quite predictable and so is their outcome.

Keywords: journalistic practice, media hype, news values, social prob-

lems, media power, welfare policy, policymaking

Introduction

On 23 May 2006, media hype broke loose in Denmark. A young journal-

ist had worked undercover at nursing home for the elderly and had been
filming with a hidden camera for a couple of months. Featured clips shown
on national TV revealed that the elderly at the home were humiliated and
treated degradingly by the staff. During the first week, the story generated
more than 100 articles in the country’s five largest newspapers.
This media hype contained a number of striking similarities with other
media hypes on the care and spending on elderly in Denmark with regards
to both the subject and the course. For example, the so-called Kærbo hype,

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
150  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

which began on 19 January 2000: A public administration bachelor’s student

working part-time at the Kærbo nursing home had carried out undisclosed
participant observations measuring how his colleagues were spending
their working hours. The conclusion was that two thirds of it was spent
drinking coffee and complaining about the high levels of stress. A quick
glance at the Danish newspaper yearbooks from 2000 to 2006 reveal that a
total of six media hypes on the care of and spending on the elderly ravaged
the media scene in Denmark during this period. From a superficial point
of view, this may seem surprising. Denmark is a modern welfare state and
the care of and spending on the elderly is high on the political agenda. It
therefore seems reasonable to assume either that the first media hype had
led to changes in procedures and policies regarding this particular social
area or that the conditions at Kærbo, after careful analysis, had proved to
be an exception and therefore neither policies, nor procedures needed to
be changed.
A couple of questions naturally arise in connection with both this
sequence of media hypes in Denmark and media hypes in general: Firstly,
do media hypes share similarities in terms of structure and dynamics?
Previous studies on media hypes suggest that they do: They occur suddenly
and simultaneously in multiple media, they have a clear starting point,
where the media attention is most intense, and they appear repeatedly in
the same subject areas (Jørgensen & Rasmussen, 2001; Pedersen & Kjær,
2000b; Vasterman, 2005). Another, equally interesting question relates to
the effect of media hypes. Do media hypes like these have any political
significance, e.g. do they lead to changes and can they, thus, be said to exert
power over politicians, forcing them to implement changes?
This chapter is a popularized and shortened version of the results of
Elmelund-Præstekær’s and Wien’s research project ‘The power of media
hypes’, which was previously published in three articles (Elmelund-
Præstekær & Wien, 2008a, 2008b, and 2009). Like said articles, this
chapter seeks to answer the two questions above. The chapter is divided
into four sections: section one discusses the theoretical guidelines for
the analysis. Section two describes the data collection and the method
for the analysis. The third section analyses the results. The fourth and
f inal section, the conclusion, will provide the answers to the research
questions.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 151

Theoretical guideline

In this chapter, Boydstun & Walgrave’s (2014) def inition will be used.
They define a media hype as ‘an explosive increase in news coverage of a
specific item (event or issue) constituting a substantial share of the total
news agenda during a certain time’. As a consequence of this definition, a
media hype must be said to arise from everyday journalism and only differ
from ordinary news coverage in terms of its intensity. It therefore seems
natural to take a theoretical point of departure in the existing theories on
journalism and on how the media agenda is set. The literature on agenda-
setting is quite voluminous and comprises more than 400 studies published
since 1972 (McCombs, 2005: 555). Unfortunately, this vast body of literature
has not created clear and well-defined concepts or a clear and well-defined
boundary between research in agenda-setting and other areas of media
research. In fact, studying agenda-setting today may well include a number
of other central media research concepts, such as gatekeeping, stereotypes,
silence spiral (McCombs, 2005: 546) and ​​priming and framing (Weaver,
2007: 142ff). In this chapter, the agenda-setting literature will therefore be
used as a theoretical tool for reducing real life complexity. Only the those
theory fragments of agenda-setting that seem particularly relevant for this
chapter will be presented here.
A media hype can only occur when the journalists prioritize the topic
on the media agenda. Media agenda is a zero-sum game (see Zhu, 1992). If
journalists prioritize the topic of the media hype then this will happen at
the expense of one or more other stories.
This indicates that a news story that has the potential to develop into
a media hype must have some special qualities that enables it to attract
media attention and justifies the prominence of this particular story in
the news flow. The question is, what are these qualities? It seems obvious
to include the concept ‘scandal’ in the discussions of the qualities of media
hypes. According to Thompson, scandals are ‘actions or events involving
certain kinds of transgressions which become known to others and are
sufficiently serious to elicit a public response’ (Thompson, 1999). Thompson
continues arguing that transgressions of prevailing norms and values are
core ingredients in scandals and that for a scandal to rise it is necessary that
some are willing to express their disapproval. Thompson’s work does not
focus on the activities of media, however it is clear that there is a linkage
between the two concepts. Luhmann relates the discussion more closely to
media coverage when he argues that a breach of norms is a news criteria in
itself (Luhmann, 2000: 29ff). And that this particular news criteria is often

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
152  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

present in news stories that give rise to intense media coverage. Luhmann
then indicates that the discussion of the quality of the events that may
trigger a media hype should include a discussion of the ‘journalistic news
criteria’. Schultz (2007: 199ff) has shown how five criteria govern which news
stories are prioritized by journalists: relevance, identification, sensation,
timeliness, and conflict.
Schultz believes that at least one more news criteria should be added,
namely, ‘exclusivity’. One could argue that this particular news criteria
appears, at first sight, to limit the chances of media hypes occuring, as it is
part of the definition of media hypes that they evolve around stories that
receive attention simultaneously in multiple newsrooms. So if exclusivity
is added, it means that a paradox exists: How can multiple media outlets
cover the same story, at the same time, and meet the exclusivity criteria.
The only way this is possible is if the story has the potential to be framed
in a variety of ways. This provides a partial answer to the question of what
characterizes the stories behind a media hype. This characteristic – having
the potential for being covered within a variety of frames – leads one to focus
on the starting point of media hypes, what is sometimes called the ‘key event’
(Vasterman, 2005), and at other times the ‘trigger event’ (Cobb & Elder, 1972).
The latter term will be used in this chapter since it more clearly illustrates
that a media hype needs to be triggered by something. The question is, what
are the special qualities of the news stories that are capable of triggering a
media hype? According to Dearing & Rogers (1996: 78), a trigger event can
simplify a complex subject into an image, in its broadest sense, that is easily
understood by the audience. But apart from the classical news criteria, the
requirement for exclusivity and the requirement for a complex issue to be
put in an understandable frame, it remains relatively unclear what the
special qualities of these trigger events are.
Regarding the second research question related to the political influence
of media hypes, the focus of the study of the media’s agenda remains on
the question of the media’s possible political influence. McCombs & Shaw
(1972) argued that the public agenda should be seen as a mirror of the media’s
priorities of subjects. This gives media heavy influence on public opinion
and, consequently, political influence. Since McCombs & Shaw’s pioneering
study, these relationships have been nuanced in a multitude of studies
(useful reviews can be found in Dearing & Rogers, 1996; McCombs, 2005;
Newton, 2006; Takeshita, 2005; Weaver, 2007). Unfortunately, it is quite dif-
ficult to find any unambiguous conclusion on this matter in the literature.
The reason for this is of course that it is extremely difficult to conduct
empirical studies of power. Furthermore, it is difficult to compare the

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 153

existing results, because they are based on different types of methods and
different kinds of empirical data (see Walgrave & Aelst, 2006).
Looking specifically at the political consequences and thus the power of
media hypes, Vasterman (2005) argued that they can create ‘a spiral of social
amplification that transform individual cases to general social problems’.
Thus, media hypes – more than everyday mainstream journalism – should
be expected to have direct political impact. A similar claim is made by
Pedersen and Kjær (2000b: 221), who argue that media hypes in fact have a
direct influence on political processes.
Unfortunately, neither of the two studies explain what exactly they mean
by ‘impact on the political work’. To counter the prevailing empirical and
conceptual confusion, I will use the classic distinction between words and
deeds.
Thus, it cannot be seen as ‘political impact’ if a minister promises to
launch a study, or increase budgets, or change the law if he or she does not
actually do it. Consequently, real actions leave some kind of evidence. Thus,
if a politician has promised that a study will be carried out, it must result
in a retrievable written report. Likewise, changes in the budgets can be
traced when comparing original budgets to revised budgets and accounts,
and a proposal for a legislative change translates into a bill that has been
dealt with by the parliament and so forth.
Therefore, when analysing how the media hypes influence policymaking,
we will first seek the political promises that were made in public during the
media hype, and then we will discuss whether these promises were, in fact,
prompted by the hype or were already ongoing initiatives. Finally, we will
examine whether the promises were subsequently kept by the politicians
and have left any traces.
This means that our study cannot conclude anything about the indirect
effects of media hypes, or, for that matter, long-term effects of repeated
media hypes on a specific topic.

Method

In the analysis to follow, I will present data from studies carried out on
five national Danish daily newspapers over the period of 2000–2005. A
more detailed account of the method can be found in Wien and Elmelund-
Praestekaer (2008a and b).
In order to capture the media hypes, we developed a search statement
on the basis of an earlier work on stereotypes about elderly people in the

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
154  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

Danish media (Wien, 2005). We ran the search statement against the five
selected newspapers (using the full-text newspaper database ‘Infomedia’)
and retrieved 7,703 unique articles for the six-year period. All articles were
subsequently plotted into a graph showing the total number of articles
found each day. By definition, a media hype requires intense media cover-
age. The concept ‘intense coverage’ is relative, so operationally we decided
to pick all days yielding ten or more articles. This was the case for thirty
individual days. We considered each of the thirty peaks a potential media
hype and carefully analysed all the articles published on these particular
days to determine whether the high intensity was a random coincidence or
if the articles concerned the same issue. In total, twenty-five peaks were
dismissed as pure coincidence, while five of the peaks contained articles
that dealt with the same issue and could thus be considered media hypes.
For each of the five media hypes, we carefully read all the articles that
appeared a couple of days prior to and after the peak day. The purpose of
this reading was twofold: we needed to identify the trigger event of the
media hype, and we wanted to extract issue-specific search terms in order
to perform a second and more precise search covering a shorter period
around each of the five peaks. This way, we developed five new search
statements, which – after irrelevant articles were extracted – yielded a
total of 569 articles. These 569 are the empirical basis of the analysis to
follow.

Analysis

The first media hype revolves around the Kærbo nursing home, which
broke out in January 2000 following the national newspaper Jyllands-Posten,
receiving a copy of a paper written by a Bachelor’s student. In his paper,
the student describes how he carried out undisclosed observations while
working part-time at the nursing home, in which he measured how the staff
spent their working hours. He concluded that two thirds of the hours were
spent drinking coffee in the staff room and complaining about the heavy
work load. In the following three weeks, media coverage was very intense:
Initially, relatives of the elderly accommodated at the nursing home blamed
the management and employees. But the unions, government, and the
opposition parties joined in the debate and gradually the matter became
increasingly political.
The second media hype took place in August 2001 and started in Co-
penhagen. This particular media hype is slightly different from the others

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 155

because it has two trigger events. The first was an article with the title
‘Elderly are living in filth and dirt’, which was published in another national
paper Berlingske Tidende. This article analysed the impact of changes to the
standards of care for elderly in the light of a series of complaints from senior
citizens. As fate would have it, just a few days later, the several-weeks-old
corpse of an elderly man was found in his apartment: A communications
failure had led to the deceased not being collected and buried. This devel-
oped into a political conflict at a national level: The right wing demanded
more money to be spent on care for the elderly, while the social democratic
government promised better internal organization and better training of
managers and employers in the care sector.
Our third media hype differs significantly from the previous two in one
regard: that its trigger event stems from a political party’s actions and not
from a scandal in the public sector. One month before the fiscal negotiations
in November 2002, the ‘People’s Party’ (a supporting party for the newly
formed right-wing government) demanded payment of a so-called elderly
cheque to the 200,000 poorest elderly in Denmark. Opposition parties
rejected the proposal, arguing that it would not benefit the disadvantaged
elderly. In this particular case it makes little sense to discuss how
media agenda influenced the policy since cause and effect is reversed,
i.e. in this case, the politicians influenced the media’s agenda.
The fourth media hype was also partially triggered at a political level. It
broke out in May 2003 when Berlingske Tidende printed a few pages from
a book being published by the Danish prime minister. In this excerpt, the
prime minister advocated the raising of the retirement age in line with the
growing life expectancy. Since the prime minister had previously pledged
not to change the early retirement scheme, the opposition tried to distort
the idea to make the proposal look like a broken promise.
The last of our media hypes started in January 2005, just three weeks
before the Danish general election. This media hype was the result of a
paradox: During the election campaign for the previous general election in
2001, the right-wing opposition criticized the social democratic government
for applying an inhuman and rigorous barcode-based system to ensure the
quality in the public sector. The term ‘barcode system’ became synonymous
in the public’s minds with a meaningless time tyranny, inhumanity, and
over-administration in the public sector. Just three weeks before the 2005
election, two national newspapers (Berlingske Tidende and Politiken)
revealed that, despite the shrill attacks from the opposition a few years
earlier, the barcode system was still being used under the new right-wing
Government.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
156  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

The anatomy of media hypes

The brief review of the five media hypes in the previous section reveals both
differences and similarities between them. Therefore, we believe that is
possible to describe the general anatomy of media hypes. In the two sections
to follow, I will sketch out the similarities and, on the basis of these, draft
a general model of media hypes.
Our analysis shows that, in order for an incident to become a trigger
event for a media hype, it must meet the general news criteria. Moreover,
at least four factors seem to be influential. Primarily, the trigger event must
be suitable for public debate, meaning that it must be about a topic where
several conflicting but legitimate points of view can be presented and thus
debated in public. Conversely, it is a prerequisite that there are several
actors (individuals, organizations, political parties, etc.), who are willing
to participate in the debate. Secondly, and in accordance with the previous
point, it is important that the trigger event can be presented in several
frames. The reason for this is that media hypes place news media in the
exclusivity dilemma: On the one hand, it annoys them to see the competitor
have a ‘good story’; on the other hand, they are reluctant to jump on the
bandwagon and copy the story since they all want ‘a solo’ (see Schultz, 2007:
199ff). It seems obvious from our material that the news media handle this
challenge by choosing different frames for the same story. Exactly how they
do this will be explained in the next section, ‘Editorial policies’.
Thirdly, each of our five trigger events contains a breach of norms. For
example, it was a breach of norms for a student to conduct an undisclosed
time-measurement study of his colleagues at Kærbo. And it was certainly a
breach of norms if the staff at the nursing home were spending two thirds
of their working hours drinking coffee and complaining about stress.
Luhmann (2000: 29ff) argues that a breach of norms is a news criterion in
itself, and that this particular news criterion, often present in news stories,
gives rise to intense media coverage. Our findings support this.
Finally, trigger events must be able to condense a complex problem into a
single striking image, as Vasterman (2005: 514) pointed out. Such a striking
image often draws on existing stereotypes. An example could be the classic
notion of lazy public workers and their incompetent leaders, which ‘Kærbo’
could draw upon.
Regarding the course of the media hypes, we notice a sequence with
approximately one media hype per year. We see this as a sign of fatigue on
the part of the media, the audience, and the politicians after each media
hype. Furthermore we notice that all five media hypes lasted about three

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 157

weeks and that they seem to fade away, either once a consensus has been
reached among stakeholders, or when the subject becomes too blurred or,
finally, when politicians agree to ‘do something’. These observations are
in accordance with previous studies (Lund, 2000; Pedersen & Kjær, 2000b;
Vasterman, 2005). We suggest the following explanation: During a media
hype, journalists call upon different types of sources in a certain sequence:
Immediately following the trigger event, journalists draw on politicians,
interest groups, employees, and relatives. In this phase, the intensity of the
media coverage increases. The reason for this is that the media hype gets its
energy from the debate, discussion, and presentation of conflicting views.
After some days, the journalists turn to the experts. Since their role is to
provide facts, they often end up killing the discussion, which causes the
media hype to lose momentum. The experts may also deflate the media
hype by illustrating the complexity of the case, by giving several possible
explanations and interpretations of the event, or by pointing out that a
case is really about something completely different, is not representative
of any general trends, and so on. In that case, the media hype also loses
momentum, because it is no longer, in Vastermans (2005: 514) words, able
to condense a complex problem into a single striking image. One may argue
that this is a sign that the media hype is moving through Downs’ ‘issue
attention cycle’ (1972: 39) from step two – ‘Alarmed discovery and euphoric
enthusiasm’ – towards the third step – ‘Realizing the cost of significant
change’.

Figure 6.1. The anatomy of media hypes

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
158  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

In terms of media hype quantitative anatomy, our study reveals a pattern

in which the trigger generates the first – and typically – biggest wave of
media attention. This is followed by one or two waves of decreasing intensity
(see Figure 6.1). Each of the smaller waves occurs when a new theme enters
the debate. ‘Kærbo’ illustrates this point: The second wave was triggered, in
this case, when academia began to debate the ethical aspects of undisclosed
observation as a scientific method.

Editorial policies

As already mentioned, the newspaper solves the exclusivity paradox of the

media hypes by choosing different frames for the story. This enables thems
to cover the same story as their competitors without writing the same
articles. Our analysis shows that, in their endavour for exclusivity, they
consistently chose the same editorial line in all five media hypes: It seems
from the data that the omnibus newspapers, consciously or unconsciously,
maintained a continuous political orientation in their choice of frame,
sources, experts and, letters to the editor, and thus became a partisan
press: The old right-wing papers like Berlingske Tidende and Jyllands-posten
consistently selected editorial lines favouring the opinions of right-wing
parties. Politiken chose to emphasize the themes and arguments that
resounded with the Danish Social-Liberal Party. In this respect, the two
tabloids were apolitical and adopted an editorial line that gave ‘the man
on the street’ an opportunity to speak against the power elite. Looking, for
example, at the media hype regarding the change in the retirement age, it
is clear that Berlingske Tidende accepted the (liberal) prime minister’s idea
as both reasonable and necessary.

Jyllands-Posten (populistic right-wing) spent significantly more ink in the

beginning of the media hype, reporting on the negative responses to the
prime minister’s proposals. However, it changed its point of view slightly
after about a week and began to argue that these proposals had resulted
in the debate and the necessary welfare reforms taking a step backwards,
since politicians would now have to denounce the deterioration of the early
retirement scheme even more strongly than before. Jyllands-Posten thereby
placed itself in a centre position politically, where, on the one hand, the
paper was critical of early retirement, but, on the other hand, it recognized
the arguments for preserving the scheme. Thus, Jyllands-Posten was able
to cover the viewpoints of both the right-wing parties and their desire for

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 159

change and those of the Danish People’s Party (populistic), who wanted
to maintain the early retirement scheme. The social-liberal Politiken was
the only newspaper that quoted a local economist, who saw no reason to
abolish the early retirement scheme. In this way, the newspaper used a
frame within which early retirement was seen as a vested welfare right. The
newspaper followed this line in their choices of ‘letters to the editor’, almost
all of which (ten, in total) were critical of the prime minister’s suggestion.
Both major tabloids B.T. and Ekstra Bladet chose a populist frame, re-
flected in a series of vox pops in which ‘the man on the street’ expressed a
lack of will to change anything. The tabloids had a strong focus on readers’
attitudes. This becomes especially evident when analysing the letters to the
editor and their relative weight in the coverage: Apart from the vox pops,
more than half of the remaining units in B.T. were reader’s letters, compared
to fourteen of the seventeen units in Ekstra Bladet.
Tabloid readers would argue in favour of the early retirement scheme and
their letters expressed distrust of the recommendations and calculations
of experts, academics, and politicians.
In other words, the newspapers’ choice of editorial lines during the five
media hypes solves the newspapers’ exclusivity paradox by reviving the
partisan press. Ironically, all the newspapers defaulted to the political
positions that they had promoted before becoming omnibuses.

The political impact of media hypes

The short answer to the question of whether media hypes directly influence
political work is ‘no’. We found no convincing evidence that media hypes
result in real political action. To paraphrase a famous quote by Bernard
Cohen (1963: 13), the media does not seem to be successful in telling politi-
cians what to think, only what to think about. That is to say, the media
appears only to be capable of setting a clear agenda that politicians have to
relate to. We found no evidence that the media hypes made the politicians
change their policies as a direct result of any of the selected media hypes.
The media hypes seem to be more like Lippmannian lighthouses that throw
light on particular topics and actors, but do not change or interfere with
anything. Instead, media hypes are occasions that politicians can utilize to
present well-prepared political plans or forward their existing policies (see
Kingdon, 1995 [1984]): We found many examples of politicians re-launching
suggestions for resolutions or specific election pledges that were already
formulated long before the media hype, but, in general, it was only ‘old wine

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
160  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

in new bottles’. Furthermore, the fact that most of the media hypes revolved
around the same issue (e.g. service failure in the social sector) emphasizes
that the problems were not solved. We can deduce, then, that media hypes
may identify problems, but they do not create solutions to them.
This point is well-illustrated by our second media hype concerning the
care home in Copenhagen. That same year, the right-wing opposition had
suggested a number of specific changes in the organization and funding of
this service including a large sum of extra money as well as the introduction
of a free choice between private and public nursing care. However, most
of these ideas had been the formal policy of right-wing parties already
for several years. Therefore, one cannot argue that this media hype made
any imprint on the subsequent policy of the right-wing parties. Instead,
one may argue that these ideas were part of a larger package of political
initiatives, which had been conceived long before the media hype. In this
way, the media hype was a timely and practical opportunity to (re-)present
(old) political ideas.
Likewise, we found some instances where the media coverage had been
manipulated in such a way that it seemed as if political action was a direct
result of the media hype, although the action and the media hype had noth-
ing – or very little – to do with each other: For example, reports in the media
during our first media hype ‘Kærbo’, claimed that the Minister of Social
Affairs was called in for questioning by the parliament on 20 January as a
result of ‘Kærbo’. However, in reality, the meeting had been summoned long
before the Kærbo hype and the questioning concerned a different nursing
home. Nonetheless, the media coverage linked Kærbo and this parliamen-
tary inquiry. The Minister of Social Affairs was called in for questioning
once again on 24 February, this time about the ‘Kærbo’ matter. But by that
time, media attention had faded and this meeting went unmentioned in
the news media. The linking of ‘Kærbo’ with the initial 20 January meeting
can be seen as a journalistic attempt to circumvent the time lag that exists
between the media agenda and the political one. That is to say, political work
takes time: politicians need time to formulate proposals, discuss them, and
present them to the parliament. By the time this process has concluded, the
media attention has faded. One way, then, of compensating for this is to link
some of the activities of political life to an on going media hype, even when
they have nothing – or only very little – to do with each other.
Our study further suggests that politicians benefit from media hypes:
During a media hype, journalists lower the news threshold for a particular
topic, in our case, the care of and spending on the elderly. As this subject
otherwise receives relatively little attention, the politicians specialized in

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 161

social affairs may consider a media hype on this topic an opportunity to

gain media exposure. Thus, a media hype can give politicians opportunities
to present and promote ideas or concrete proposals in mass media, thereby
attracting attention to their work. Media hypes create a symbiosis in which
politicians, so to speak, present old wine in new bottles, and the media
puts the bottles on the shelves for them. This kind of symbiosis between
politicians and news media is well documented in several studies (e.g. Aelst
& Walgrave, 2016).
The few direct effects we have found were at the local political level. Two
of our media hypes had both a local and a national scope. At the national
level, none of them led to any political actions, but they did at the local
level. Our second media hype is illustrative of this. As a result of this media
hype, more than ten million euro extra was allocated to the municipal
budget for nursing care for the elderly. This money would not have been
allocated if there had been no media hype. Likewise, the media hype on
the ‘Barcode system’ prompted a strike among caretakers. The strike was
used as a means for entering into a dialogue with the political management
of the municipality and, subsequently, played a role in the bar code system
being scrapped. The fact that the only traceable political actions are found
at the local level might be a sign of a healthy political system: Most of the
services for the elderly are the responsibility municipalities, which is why
problems must be solved locally and not through national legislation.
Finally, we must emphasize that we have only analysed the direct and
immediate effects of media hypes, and that our conclusion therefore only
applies to these. We have not dealt with indirect effects, just as we can-
not exclude that long-term effects exist. It is both possible and likely that
repeated media hypes can have long-term political effects: They may create
a zeitgeist, which, over a longer period of time, can make politicians launch
initiatives that they would not otherwise have launched. In fact, the time
lag between political work and news production may be the reason why
we do not see any immediate effects. Media hypes may well contribute to a
much more subtle cultivation of ideas over time and, as such, have an effect
on the political agenda (Cohen & Weimann, 2000). In addition, Djerf-Pierre
et al. (2013) have shown that the political effects of media hypes depend
on how media frames the story. They argue that political impact depends
on the framing, i.e. when the theme of a media hype is framed as a policy
failure it is more likely to have political impact than if it is framed as a
moral scandal. Likewise, Trumbo (2012) has argued that since media hypes
have clear and traceable effects on the public, there must be, at least, some
indirect political impact although these may seem hard to trace.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
162  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

Conclusion

When first published, the analysis of these five media hypes on the care of
and spending on the elderly in Denmark in 2000-2005 added comprehensive
empirical material to the relatively limited amount of scientific literature
on the phenomenon of media hypes. We had two ambitions with our work:
First, to describe their anatomy, and second to analyse the political influ-
ence of media hypes.
Regarding our analysis of the anatomy of media hypes, we believe that
it is possible to develop a general model based on our five cases: A media
hype obviously begins with a trigger event. A necessary, but not sufficient,
criterion is that this event meets general news criteria. Moreover, that
trigger event often contains a breach of norms or an element of a scandal.
The event must furthermore be suitable for public debate, i.e. it must allow
for several conflicting but legitimate viewpoints. Finally, it requires that
both the public and politicians are willing to engage in a debate about
the topic.
We found that the duration of a media hype is approximately three
weeks. Furthermore, they consist of two to three consecutive waves of
declining intensity. Each of the consecutive waves are initiated by some
new information related to the trigger event. Within each wave there is
a certain sequence of sources: In the initial days, the journalists mainly
quote politicians and sources who are somehow emotionally involved in the
event, e.g. relatives of the elderly. These sources stir the debate and provide
energy to the media hype. After two to three days, the journalists will turn
to expert sources, who typically take the energy out of the discussion by
providing facts and not feelings.
Through the analysis, we found that the exclusivity paradox of media
hypes is solved by newspapers choosing different editorial lines. Their
choices follow a well-established pattern that closely corresponds with the
individual newspapers’ old partisan press ties.
Regarding the political effects of media hypes, we found that, despite
the fact that we have selected a topic where both politicians and citizens
consider failure unacceptable, we did not identify any direct short-term
political effects of the media hypes at the national level. And, as such, we
found no evidence that media exerts direct political power or have actual
influence on the political work. At the local level things were different:
Two out of three of our media hypes concerned the municipal level and
prompted local politicians to act. This difference between the two levels
is not surprising, since care for the elderly is managed by municipalities,

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 163

and since media hypes often revolve around single cases that are played
out at individual care centres.
Finally, we found that media hypes create synergy among politicians
and news media and thus media hypes say more about modern political
communication than about the political reality: By focusing intensely on
a particular story within a certain area journalists can make it ‘look as if’
the media agenda has a direct effect on the political agenda and that the
media therefore has some kind of power over politicians. Correspondingly,
politicians gain advantage from media hypes since they provide almost
unlimited access to (re-)presenting initiatives and proposals that they
otherwise would have to fight hard to drum up media attention for. Seen
in this perspective media hypes seem to be much ado about nothing.

References

Boydstun, Amber, Hardy, Anne & Stefaan Walgrave (2014). ‘Two faces of media
attention: Media storm versus non-storm coverage’. Political Communication,
31 (4): 509-531.
Cobb, Roger W. & Charles D. Elder (1972). Participation in American politics: The
dynamics of agenda building. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cohen, Bernard C. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Dearing, James W. & Everett M. Rogers (1996). Agenda-setting. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Cohen, Jonathan & Gabriel Weimann (2000). ‘Cultivation revisited: Some genres
have some effects on some viewers’. Communication Reports, 13 (2): 99-114.
Djerf-Pierre, Monika, Ekström, Mats & Bengt Johansson (2013). ‘Policy failure or
moral scandal? Journalism and new public management’. Media, Culture &
Society, 35 (8): 960-976.
Downs, Anthony (1972). ‘Up and down with ecology: The issue-attention cycle’.
The Public Interest, 28 (3): 38-50.
Elmelund-Præstekær, Christian & Charlotte Wien (2006). Mediestormens Magt. Om
mediestorme på ældreområdet og deres indflydelse på ældrepolitikken. Odense:
Syddansk Universitetsforlag.
Elmelund-Præstekær, Christian & Charlotte Wien (2008a). ‘What’s the fuss about?
the interplay of media hypes and politics’. The International Journal of Press/
Politics 13 (3): 247-266.
Elmelund-Præstekær, Christian & Charlotte Wien (2008b). ‘Mediestormens
politiske indflydelse og anatomi’. Nordicom-Information, 30 (1): 19-28.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
164  From Media Hype to T witter Storm

Wien, Charlotte & Christian Elmelund-Praestekaer (2009). ‘An anatomy of media

hypes. Developing a model for the dynamics and structure of intense media
coverage of single issues’. European Journal of Communication, 24 (2): 183-201.
Jørgensen, Jan Peiter & Thomas Martin Rasmussen (2001). ‘Mediestorme’. In: Mie
Femø Nielsen (ed.) Profil og offentlighed. Roskilde: Samfundslitteratur.
Kingdon, John W. (1995 [1984]). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. New
York: Longman.
Kramhøft, Peter (2000), Journalistik med omtanke: Arbejdsmetoder i udredende og
analytisk journalistik. Århus: Ajour.
Lippmann, Walter (1991 [1922]). Public opinion. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction
Publishers.
Luhmann, Niklas (2000). The reality of mass media: Cambridge and Boston, MA:
Polity Press.
Lund, Anker B. (ed.) (2000). Først med det sidste – en nyhedsuge i Danmark. Århus:
Ajour.
McCombs, Maxwell (2005). ‘A look at agenda-setting: Past, present and future’.
Journalism Studies, 6 (4): 543-557.
McCombs, Maxwell & Donald L. Shaw (1972). ‘The agenda-setting function of mass
media’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (2): 176-187.
Newton, Kenneth (2006). ‘May the weak force be with you: The power of the mass
media in modern politics’. European Journal of Political Research, 45: 209-234.
Pedersen, Ove K. & Peter Kjær (2000a). ‘De mange enkeltsager. Mediestormen – om
genteknologi og grundvand’. In: K. Ove Pedersen, Peter Kjær, Anders Esmark,
Maja Horst, Erik Meijer Carlsen (eds), Politisk Journalistik. Aarhus: Forlaget Ajour.
Pedersen, Ove K. & Peter Kjær (2000b). ‘Enkeltsagen – Når medieorkanen raser – om
Rushdie-sagen’. In: Ove K. Pedersen, Peter Kjær, Anders Esmark, Maja Horst,
Erik Meijer Carlsen (eds). Politisk Journalistik. Aarhus: Forlaget Ajour.
Przeworski, Adam & Henry Teune (1970). The logic of comparative social inquiry.
New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Schultz, Ida (2007). ‘The journalistic gut feeling: Journalistic doxa, news habitus
and orthodox news values’. Journalism Practice, 1 (2): 190-207.
Takeshita, Toshio (2005). ‘Current critical problems in agenda-setting research’.
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18 (3): 275-296.
Thompson, John B. (1999). ‘The nature and consequences of political scandal’.
Comunicación y Sociedad (DECS, Universidad de Guadalajara) num. 36 julio-
diciembre: 11-46. Available at: http://www.comunicacionysociedad.cucsh.udg.
mx/sites/default/files/a1_13.pdf.
Togeby, Lise, Anderson, Jørgen Goul, Christiansen, Peter Munk, BeckJørgensen,
Torben & Signild Vallgårda (eds) (2003). Magt og demokrati i Danmark. Hove-
dresultaterne fra Magtudredningen. Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Much ado about nothing 165

Van Aelst, Peter & Stefaan Walgrave (2016). ‘Information and arena: The dual
function of the news media for political elites’. Journal of Communication, 66
(3): 496-518.
Vasterman, Peter (2005). ‘Media-hype. Self-reinforcing news waves, journalistic
standards and the construction of social problems’. European Journal of Com-
munication, 20 (4): 508-530.
Walgrave, Stefaan & Peter van Aelst (2006). ‘The contingency of the mass media’s
political agenda setting power: Toward a preliminary theory’. Journal of Com-
munication, 56: 88-109.
Weaver, David H. (2007). ‘Thoughts on agenda setting, framing and priming’.
Journal of Communication, 57: 142-147.
Wien, Charlotte (2005). Ældrebilledet i medierne gennem 50 år. En undersøgelse af æl-
drestereotyper i dagbladene fra 1953 til 2003. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag.
Zhu, Jian-Hua (1992). ‘Issue competition and attention distraction: A zero-sum
theory of agenda-setting’. Journalism Quarterly, 69 (4): 825-836.

About the author

Charlotte Wien is Head of the Research and Analysis department at The

University Library of Southern Denmark. She is a former full professor of
Communication and Media Science. Her research interests include media
stereotypes, media hypes and science communication in mass media. She
was the PI for the research project called ‘Mediestormens Magt’ [The power
of Media Hypes] and with her colleague Christian Elmelund-Præstekær she
has made several contributions to the international debate about media
hypes.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 This content downloaded from
103.243.237.5 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:52:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms