In recent years, scholars have developed an increasingly refined theory about the political agenda-setting effect of the mass media. Last week’s news (co-)determines what today’s parliamentary questions are about, depending on source, issue, receiver and context characteristics (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006). So far, however, there has been little work about how news content characteristics moderate the political agenda-setting effect. Moreover, the research to date has tended to take a macro level approach, rather than to focus on how the media influence the individual political actor. Yet, since political decisions are primarily taken by individuals and not by institutions, a micro perspective is key for a good understanding of the role the media play in parliament. This paper seeks to remedy these shortcomings, by using an innovative design combining content analysis methods with interviews with political elites. After an elaborate coding of a whole range of Belgian (Flemish) media outlets (newspapers, television and radio) during one week, more than 200 MPs from both the federal and the Flemish parliament are interviewed about their use of mass media information in the preceding week. The respondents indicate which media stories they paid attention to, whether they intended to act upon the stories, and whether they undertook action. As such, the paper lays bare how different types of mass media information influence MPs throughout the whole course of information processing, showing that politicians are not passive reactors to, but instead active and strategic users of media information. It is hypothesized that news content characteristics, in interaction with receiver characteristics, explain MPs’ attention to media stories and their intention to act upon these stories, while meso level factors (e.g. parties) determine whether real action will follow. The results contribute to the scientific and societal debate about the role of the mass media in politics.
