The political arena is a complex, constantly changing, and highly charged environment where many different actors are at work. From the actions of individual politicians to international events, ballot issues and national referendums, a wide range of news events and related public discourses receive extensive media coverage. Political news is a representation of these events and related discourses and serves a number of important functions such as describing the status quo, revealing political power structures, informing voters, stimulating debate, and even motivating electoral behavior.
The quality of political news depends on the organization of news production as well as the individual journalist’s news-making behavior. In democratic societies these conditions are largely regulated by a variety of legal instruments (e.g., media law), market and ownership arrangements, and more or less formal communication norms and journalistic standards. Moreover, the nature of political news is partly determined by the strategic use of the media by policymakers. Consequently, empirical studies focusing on the role and function of political news often also examine how journalists, policymakers and other key players manage their relations with the media.
As the media landscape has changed over time, so have the sources of political information. Long gone are the days when people could rely on one or a few traditional newspaper organizations and network news channels for their daily political fix. Now, the Internet carries a vast array of political news in different formats from online news services offered by traditional news publishers to user-generated content on personal websites, blogs and social media sites. As a result, users can customize their news with a myriad of different services and delve into a long tail of media content to narrowly focus on content that fits their existing political philosophy.