Same, same but different: Exploring issue dialogue and framing strategies across election campaign communication channels in Germany (2009-2021)

Recent research has challenged the traditional approach to party competition that parties campaign on their own issues and downplay the issues owned by their opponents. Empirical studies show that rather than talking past each other parties often trespass on their opponents’ issues. Real-world events impact political agenda putting into public spotlight issues that parties would prefer to neglect forcing them to engage in issue dialogue. A growing number of researchers argue that parties use framing as a complementary strategy that facilitates issue dialogue. Framing allows parties to distinguish themselves through the way they talk about the issue at stake. That is, how parties define the issue, what justification or what result of the proposed policy solution do they promote. In combination with a selective issue emphasis choice parties face a choice of a framing strategy, as they decide whether they should reframe the issue owned by their opponent or adopt the opponent’s frames. As social media become an important campaign communication channel, new challenges emerge in party competition. Parties are increasingly confronted with a need to react to their opponents and the public in a high-paced environment that allows for engagement. Thus, issue selection and framing choice happen in a more dynamic setting than the traditional campaign communication channels, such as manifestos or even press releases that allow more time to craft a message. My paper explores the strategies on the issue and framing dimension on social media and in traditional campaign communication channels in federal election campaigns in the federal elections in Germany (2009-2021). I investigate the changes in issue and framing dynamics over time, accounting for the exogenous shocks, party-specific factors, and the election context. The paper relies on a content analysis of party manifestos, press releases, and official Facebook accounts coded according to an extended version of the Policy Frames Codebook (Boydstun and Gross 2014) and Comparative Agendas project issue coding scheme.