oa Van politiek centrum Binnenhof naar Albert Cuypmarkt

From political centre Binnenhof to the Albert Cuyp street market: a longitudinal analysis of sources in television news

Since the 1990s, many have argued that journalists should focus less on elite sources and more on alternative sources as news definers. It is however unclear whether they succeed in doing so. A longitudinal content analysis of Dutch television news (1990-2012) showed that the use of elite sources has declined, whereas citizen sources have increased. The use of civil society sources did not change over the years. The finding that citizen sources are primarily used as vox populi implies that citizens generally play a passive role in news stories, and that they thus do not add significant information to the story. The traditional monopoly of political elite sources as primary news definers is counter-balanced throughout the years by the use of in particular other elite sources: journalists and experts.