När ett vallöfte blir verklighet
Analys av DN
Political communicationElection promiseElection pledgeReal estate taxSwedish election 2006Dagens Nyheter
Did the mass media report in a different way about the real estate tax before the Swedish national election 2006 than they did after the election? If there were differences, what could be the cause?This study aims to answer these questions by using a quantitative analysis of articles about the real estate tax published in the Dagens Nyheter (DN), the biggest morning daily. The summer before the election, the ?Alliance?, (the non-socialist coalition, launched an election promise to abolish the real estate tax. Instead they planned to introduce a low community charge.The Alliance won the election and formed a government to implement their election promise. The analysis was made on all the published articles in DN that covered the real estate tax issue. In total there were 43 such articles. These where all published between the launch of the campaign promise until the electionday and a month before the proposal was launched 19/9 2007, until the proposal was implemented in 2008. The study results in three interesting conclusions. After the election, when the election promise was about to become political reality, DN reported more negatively about this specific issue. The genre of the articles varied heavily before and after the election. Before the election more news articles where published than after the election and the letters-to-the-editor about the real estate tax were published almost only before the election. This study also treats the intresting phenomenon that the Alliance, before the election, had the power to define their election promise but after the election they seem to have lost this power and instead the real estate tax question was defined by the media. The Alliance claimed that they would ?abolish the real estate tax and introduce a low community charge? and DN used this definition in their newspaper. After the election, DN reported about the election as a new real estate tax, which is a very different thing.