Routledge International Handbook on Electoral Debates by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Government, Elections, Social Science
ISBN: 9781000063912
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2020-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

One-on-one debates are media events with a high news value. They are staged by the media and its reporting of them before and after the duels elevates them as the supposedly most important campaign event. Advance reporting directs attention to the event, while post-reporting provides an assessment of the candidates’ performances and suggests who was the winner. In a self-reflexive manner, the media also make the event the subject of critical evaluation (Weiß, 2005, p. 186).

Over the years, debates between chancellor candidates have become highly ritualised encounters. The rules negotiated by broadcasters and party leaders—whatever their assumptions for effects may be—put the duels into a straitjacket that leaves little room for a lively debate. Interaction mostly takes place between the journalists on one side and the politicians on the other. In contrast to their designation as duels, which evokes the association of a deadly confrontation of two duelists, the two chancellor candidates answer questions from the journalists most of the time and rarely interact with each other.

Whereas the spin-doctoring was formerly restricted to anterooms and post-event reporting, the spread of social media has brought along the possibility for instant fact-checking and assessment of the candidates’ performances. These attempts to prime the evaluation of the debates are preferentially directed at commentators of the event in other media and at second-screen users. Analyses of Twitter activities reflect the increased use of social networks during and around the duels (Dusch, Gerbig, Lake, Lorenz, Pfaffenberger, and Schulz, 2015; Nyhuis and Friederich, 2017).

Since the idea to organise debates with only the two major party chancellor candidates began in 2002, it has been criticised for contributing to further personalisation in a parliamentary system with proportional representation that is dominated by parties. In addition, the chancellor is elected by the parliament and not directly by the people. Thus, the concentration of campaign advertising, media reporting, and the duels between chancellor candidates, stands in contrast to the electoral system but is a common campaign strategy with the hope that the popularity of the candidate also boosts the popularity of the party. Although some studies show that the introduction of the duels intensifies the personalisation of the campaign (Reinemann and Wilke, 2007), findings from long-term research indicate that there is no continuous trend toward personalisation of campaign communication in Germany (for example Leidecker and Wilke, 2015; Zeh and Schulz, 2015).

Since 2002, one-on-one duels have become an established event that benefits the television channels that organise these debates most of all. On the part of the candidates, participation in the duels is particularly attractive for the challenger or the candidate who is trailing behind and hopes to catch up. However, not least with the parliamentary election in 2017 and the European election in 2019, far-reaching changes of the German party landscape have become obvious. What was a three-party system for many years until first the Greens made it into the Bundestag in 1983, then the Left in 1990 and finally the populist AfD (Alternative for Germany) in 2017, has developed into a multiparty system.

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