Media Coverage after Power Transitions: Is There a "Honeymoon Effect" for New Governments in Japan?

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26380190
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: Aoyama Gakuin University (2016-2017); Waseda University (2014-2015)
• Principal Investigator: BOYD J. PATRICK 青山学院大学, 国際政治経済学部, 准教授 (50449328)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: メディア / 政権交 / ハネムーン効果

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The “honeymoon” effect refers to the hypothesis that new governments receive especially favorable treatment from the media during the first months after an election that brings a new party to power. However, this effect is poorly studied in Japan, likely because there have been only three instances of such partisan transfers of power in recent decades: Miyazawa to Hosokawa government (1993), Aso to Hatoyama government (2009), and the Noda to Abe government (2012). This study focuses on measuring and understanding honeymoon effects for these three new governments. Articles were gathered from the three largest national newspapers covering the first six months of these governments and a coding scheme was developed to conduct content analysis. One interesting finding is that all three governments received roughly the same amount of prominent coverage. However, due largely to a change of research institution by the main researcher, the content analysis was not conducted.

Free Research Field

日本政治