ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importance of various organizational and system-level factors in explaining frame production and frame variation on the part of journalists. Even though the focus will be on the widely accepted political news frames—strategy and issue frames—the chapter will emphasize and develop guidelines about the importance of including both meso- and macro-level factors in the investigation of any type of generic news frame. The chapter first outlines the significance of political news framing for democratic governance. After that, it reviews extant literature on election news coverage in a wide range of countries, including the US, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe. It concludes by summarizing the most important media and political system factors identified in the literature and emphasizing the importance of comparative, cross-cultural research, which can shed more light on the question: What determines news frames?
