Willemien Sanders (Utrecht University and Sound and Vision), Helene Ayar (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Edith Brooks (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Mari Wigham (Sound and Vision), André Krouwel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Introduction

News broadcasts, campaign commercials, interviews and discussions in chat shows - an election without the media is unimaginable. As many voters get their information on the various parties and their positions on important issues from the media, it is important to look at who is talking and appearing on-screen, and what they discuss, particularly on the public service broadcasters. Is it always the same politicians who are invited? Do men and women appear equally often in front of the camera? Is there a preference for left-wing or right-wing parties? We investigate this in a selection of radio and TV broadcasts on the public service broadcasters from 1st February up to and including 16th March (the day before election day, when campaigning is stopped).

In this data story we show our initial findings, over the period of 1st February up to and including 12th March. These findings were discussed on nos.nl and in the Radio 1 news on Tuesday 16th March. This analysis mainly looks at appearances in the media; the subjects under discussion will be part of the complete analysis, which will follow after the elections.

Analyses

Two analyses were carried out:

1. the content of programmes was analysed for the names of politicians via speech recognition, whether these were men or women; and which parties they belonged to;
2. the content was analysed with face and voice recognition to detect politicians, and information about their party was added; in addition we looked at gender and parties.

Initial results

1. Right-wing male politicians are most discussed (Figure 1) and they appear and speak most often (Figure 2), but left-wing female politicians appear on-screen and speak for approximately the same amount of time (Figure 3).
2. Mainly Rutte (VVD) dominates as a topic of discussion: his name was mentioned by far the most often in the radio and tv programmes analysed . He stands head and shoulders above the rest, including Hugo de Jonge (CDA) and Wopke Hoekstra (CDA; see Figure 1).
3. Rutte was also most frequently seen and heard (see Figure 2): 214 times and that is more than numbers two and three, Hugo de Jonge (CDA) and Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) together (116+84=200). Rutte seems to get a bonus for being prime minister.
4. Of all politicians, Lilian Marijnissen (SP) spoke for longest and Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) appeared on-screen for longest. Adding it all up, Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) appeared on-screen and spoke for longest, with Sigrid Kaag (D66) and Lilian Marijnissen (SP) closely on his heels, who both score higher than Mark Rutte (VVD) in fourth position (see Figure 3).
5. The female politicians who are named most often, are Esther Ouwehand (PvdD, see Figure 1) in seventh position, followed by Sigrid Kaag (D66) in ninth position. They are the only women in the top 10, while five relevant parties have a female leader.
6. Sigrid Kaag (D66) and Lilian Marijnissen (SP) dominate the debate for the women. Lilian Marijnissen (SP) is of all women the one who appears on-screen and speaks most frequently (Figure 2, 5th position) followed by Sigrid Kaag (D66, 6th position). Kaag appears on-screen and speaks, as previously mentioned, slightly longer than Marijnissen (Figure 3, 2nd and 3rd position).
7. Names of male politicians were counted 3,241 times and that is more than three times as often as the 1,026 times that female politicians are named(Figure 4). So the men are talked about more, despite all the female party leaders.
8. There were 1164 appearances by male politicians counted, as opposed to 499 by females, that is more than twice as many appearances by male as by female politicians (Figure 5). In contrast women speak for longer when they do appear: on average 2 minutes 5 seconds (2.08 minutes) as opposed to 1 minute 11 seconds (1.18 minute) for the men (Figure 6). Women also appear slightly longer on-screen than men: on average 1 minute 15 seconds (= 1.25 minutes) for women as opposed to 1 minute 2 seconds (1.03 minute) for men(Figure 7).
9. If we count the number of times that politicians are named per party, then politicians from the VVD are named most often (almost 1300 times), followed by those from the CDA (more than 600 times) and D66 (circa 400 times, see Figure 8).
10. The emphasis on right-wing is clearer when we group the parties: centre-right clearly dominates. Together with populist right-wing and extreme right-wing, they are clearly discussed more than centre-left and left-wing combined (Figure 9, categorisation below). In the Tweede Kamer right-wing parties (centre-right and populists together) have slightly more than half the seats, but in the media right-wing parties get more than three times as much attention as left-wing parties. If we look at the distribution over members of the coalition parties, left-wing opposition and populist right-wing opposition, then coalition parties are mentioned most (almost 2500 times) and the left-wing opposition are mentioned much less (ca 750 times) as is the populist right-wing opposition (almost 300 times, see Figure 10).
11. If we divide the the parties into the coalition (VVD, CDA, D66 and CU combined), the populist opposition (FvD, PVV and JA21) and the left-wing opposition (PvdA, GL, SP, PvdD), we see that the coalition got the most speaking time, namely more than 19 hours. The left-wing opposition got more than 12 hours speaking time and the populist opposition more than 2 hours (Figure 11). This probably has to do with rejections of invitations to appear on the NPO.

Graphs and discussion

1. Number of times mentioned

Mainly Rutte (VVD) dominates as a topic of discussion: his name is mentioned by far the most often in the radio and tv programmes analysed. He is head and shoulders above all the rest, including Hugo de Jonge (CDA) and Wopke Hoekstra (CDA; see Figure 1).

Henk Krol’s second position is thanks to his recent appearances on 1 op 1 on 26th February, Goedemorgen Nederland on 4th March and Op 1 on 10th March.

(NB: From test samples it turned out that the speech recogniser has trouble recognising the name Thierry Baudet. As we can’t manually correct this, he is currently under-represented in the results)

The female politician whose name was mentioned most often was Esther Ouwehand (PvdD, see Figure 1) in seventh position, followed by Sigrid Kaag (D66) in ninth position. They are the only women in the top 10, while five relevant parties have a female leader.

Figure 1. Number of times that the names of politicians were mentioned in the media

2. Number of times appearing on-screen and speaking

In addition to the times that politicians were mentioned in the programmes , we looked at which politicians were visible on-screen or spoke in the media (the so-called appearance), that is to say that they were recognised by Sound and Vision technology based on their face or voice in a broadcast.

Rutte was most frequently seen and heard (see Figure 2): 214 times and that is more than numbers two and three, Hugo de Jonge (CDA) and Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) together (116+84=200). Rutte appears to get a bonus for being the prime minister.

Sigrid Kaag (D66) and Lilian Marijnissen (SP) dominate the debate for the women. Lilian Marijnissen (SP) is of all women the one who appears most frequently (Figure 2, 5th position) followed by Sigrid Kaag (D66, 6th position).

Figure 2: Number of times that politicians appear on-screen or speak

3. Time on-screen and speaking

Of all politicians, Lilian Marijnissen (SP) spoke longest and Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) appeared on-screen longest. If we add this all up, then Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) spoke and appeared on-screen the longest, with Sigrid Kaag (D66) and Lilian Marijnissen (SP) closely on his heels, who both scored higher than Mark Rutte (VVD) in 4th position (see Figure 3).

(NB: Due to a matching error the face model of Liane den Haan was not included, so she is only detected as a speaker)

Figure 3. Length of speaking time (red) and time on-screen (blue) of various politicians.

4. Men and women

Names of male politicians were counted 3,241 times, and that is more than three times as much as the 1,026 times that the names of female politicians were counted(Figure 4). The men were therefore discussed more, despite all the female party leaders.

Figure 4. Number of times that names of male and female politicians were mentioned.

5. Speaking time for men and women

1164 appearances by male politicians were counted as opposed to 499 by females, that is therefore more than two times as many appearances by male as by female politicians (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Number of appearances of male and female politicians in the media.

In contrast, women spoke for longer when they did appear: on average 2 minutes 5 seconds (2.08 minutes) against 1 minute 11 seconds (1.18 minutes) for the men (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Speaking time for male and female politicians.

6. Male and female politicians appearing on-screen.

Women also appear slightly longer on-screen than men: on average 1 minute 15 seconds (= 1.25 minutes) for women against 1 minute 2 seconds (1.03 minutes) for men (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Female and male politicians appearing on-screen

7. Number of times that politicians from particular political parties were mentioned

Politicians from right-wing parties were mentioned most often: those of the VVD are at the head of the list, followed by those from the CDA and D66 - but for both parties they are mentioned less than half as often. GroenLinks and PvdA are only in the fifth and sixth positions.

Figure 8. Total number of times that politicians from particular parties were mentioned.

8. The political spectrum

The emphasis on right-wing is clearer if we group the parties: centre-right clearly dominates. Together with populist right-wing and extreme right-wing they are mentioned more than centre-left and left-wing parties combined. (Figure 9, categorisation is below). Right-wing parties (centre-right and populists together) have slightly more than half of the seats in the Tweede Kamer, but right-wing parties get more than three times as much attention in the media as left-wing parties.

Figure 9: Grouping of political parties for the number of times that they are mentioned.

If we look at the division between members of the coalition parties, left-wing opposition and populist right-wing opposition, then mostly coalition party members are discussed (almost 2500 times), much more than the left-wing opposition (ca 750 times) and populist right-wing (almost 300 times, see Figure 10).

Figure 10: Number of times that politicians were mentioned for the coalition parties, the left-wing opposition and the populist right-wing opposition.

9. Speaking time across the spectrum

If we divide the parties into the coalition (VVD, CDA, D66 and CU), the populist opposition (FvD, PVV and JA21) and the left-wing opposition (PvdA, GL, SP, PvdD), we see that the coalition got the most speaking time, more than 19 hours. The left-wing opposition got more than 12 hours speaking time and the populist opposition more than 2 hours (Figure 10). This probably has to do with the rejection of invitations to appear on the NPO.

Figure 11: Speaking time of coalition parties versus opposition

10. Speaking time within parties

If we look at who speaks the most within political parties then we see - logically - that the party leaders dominate.

Figure 12. Relative speaking time within parties.

to be continued…

We will continue our analysis up to and including 16th March and look at the subjects that the various politicians and parties discuss. In this we will also look at the differences between men and women. The results of this research will appear in the following data story.

Data

The data used for these analyses consist of automatic speech recognition (ASR), face recognition and voice recognition in approximately 45 programmes broadcast on NPO1, 2 and 3 and on Radio 1 in the period 1st February up to and including 12th March 2021. The ASR files were analysed to detect the complete names of cabinet members, members of the Tweede and Eerste Kamer, mayors and names of election candidates. Mayors and cabinet members were also counted when they were referred to by their title and surname (“Mayor [surname])”, and, in the case of cabinet members, also by their complete function title (“Minister of [department]”). The distribution men/women was also looked at.

Faces and voices were recognised in approximately 38 programmes. These were linked to 220 politicians in the Gemeenschappelijke Thesaurus voor Audiovisuele Archieven (GTAA), the thesaurus used by Sound and Vision. In this way it is possible to analyse the presence of the person as a voice or on-screen. It is also possible to compare how long someone speaks or appears on-screen. Caution: someone can appear on-screen without being on the programme, for example in a video clip or on a poster that is in view of the camera.

Team

Researcher: Willemien Sanders (UU and S&V)

Research assistants: Helene Ayar (VU), Edith Brooks (VU)

Developer and visualisations: Mari Wigham (S&V)

Advisor: André Krouwel (VU)

Appendices

• Programmes with speech transcripts
• Programmes with speaker and face labels
• Party categories