Drs. J.C. Muis

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PhD Project

Pim Fortuyn: The evolution of a media phenomenon.
A research into the causes of the rise of Pim Fortuyn and his political agenda in the public discourse in the massmedia.
Supervisor: prof. dr. R. Koopmans.

The Dutch parliamentary elections of May 2002 were exceptional in many respects. Never before in the Netherlands did a newcomer gain so many voters, nor had the size of the electoral volatility been that high and did an incumbent government lose so many votes. Already much is known about the reasons why people voted for the List Pim Fortuyn and about the effects of media coverage on voting behaviour. But few research is done on the the rise of Pim Fortuyn in the media. The question in this project is how we can explain the rise of Pim Fortuyn and his political agenda in the public discourse in the mass media.

To find an answer, theories from the communication science about agenda-setting and the production of news will be used. Secondly, literature and research on social movements will be applied to answer questions about the emergence of new political parties. For analyzing dynamic processes of social change, an evolutionary approach is needed, as introduced in biology by Darwin.

The data will be derived by content analysis of newspaper articles from the period between May 2001 and May 2002. Because of the dynamic character of the public discourse, time-series and event history analysis methods are required. In addition, it will be useful to develop co-evolutionary models as we are dealing with a complex social system. There is no clear-cut distinction between dependent and independent factors as the claims and strategies of politicians and journalists interact.

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