The art of framing: explaining framing mechanisms in 2011 and 2015 election campaigns in Switzerland

For decades, research on elections has focused on parties’ ideology, interplay with voters, policy positions, and issues parties address. Framing theory, recently borrowed from the field of political communication, has highlighted the importance of framing as a new dimension of party competition. However, existing scholarship in the field of party competition has mostly explored specific policy issues and their framing, overlooking the mechanisms of framing. My paper focuses on the framing mechanisms political parties adopt, specifically frame transformation and frame diffusion, and aims to reveal the factors that influence the parties’ choice of framing strategy in electoral campaigns. I argue that party type, role within the parliament and government, and ideology combined with the context of elections affect the parties’ choice of specific framing strategy and thus define the mechanism. I test my theoretical assumptions using combination of various data (manifestos and political ads in the newspapers) from two recent federal elections in Switzerland (2011 and 2015). I identify the frames using quantitative content analysis and aim to trace the use of specific framing mechanisms by means of network analysis. Further, I define the role of specific factors and electoral campaign context in shaping framing mechanisms.