Abstract With the upswing of populist, right-wing, and EU-skeptical parties and politicians in Europe, as well as the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential elections, the media and its role in democracies are, once again, under scrutiny. To investigate whether the media fulfill its role as the fourth estate, i.e. providing another level of control for government, or whether there is evidence of media capture, first, we introduce the Political Coverage Index (PCI), a new measure of the relative positioning of media within the political spectrum. In contrast to existing measures of political positioning (e.g., language similarities, explicit endorsements, mentions of ideological references), we utilize the tonality of articles and newscasts on political parties and politicians. Then, we apply the PCI to 35 opinion-leading media in Germany, on the basis of more than 10 million news items on political parties and politicians between 1998 and 2012. Lastly, we use the PCI to investigate whether the media fulfil its fourth estate role. Our findings show that the media outlets in our sample report more negatively on governing parties, which we interpret as suggestive evidence that media is fulfilling its role as fourth estate in democracies.

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4楼发货了吗？政治报道指数及其在媒体捕捉中的应用

摘要 随着欧洲民粹主义、右翼和持怀疑态度的政党和政客的抬头，以及唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 在 2016 年美国总统大选中的成功，媒体及其在民主国家中的作用再次受到审视。 . 为了调查媒体是否履行了其作为第四等级的角色，即为政府提供了另一个级别的控制，或者是否有媒体捕获的证据，首先，我们引入了政治报道指数（PCI），这是一种衡量相对定位的新指标政治范围内的媒体。与现有的政治定位衡量标准（例如，语言相似性、明确认可、提及意识形态参考）相比，我们利用关于政党和政治家的文章和新闻广播的语气。然后，我们根据 1998 年至 2012 年间超过 1000 万条关于政党和政治家的新闻条目，将 PCI 应用于德国的 35 家舆论引导媒体。最后，我们使用 PCI 来调查媒体是否履行了其第四等级角色。我们的研究结果表明，我们样本中的媒体对执政党的报道更为负面，我们将其解释为媒体正在发挥其作为民主国家第四等级的作用的暗示性证据。