Keyword – news management

Szabolcsi, Zsolt:

Political narratives hidden in commercials: The content analysis of the flashnews bulletin and the 6 p.m. news broadcast on Hungarian public service media channels

Political communication in Hungary has undergon significant changes in the 2010s. One element of the transformation is the rise of one-minute news on Hungarian public service broadcasters (flashnews). This media product was launched in March 2015, and since then 40–50 blocks are aired daily on five different television channels. Flashnews blocks are condensed news bulletins containing the summary of political narratives. The content of the flashnews reflects the main governmental narratives and, therefore, the flashnews is part of the agenda-setting capacity of political communication. It reaches media consumers who have limited knowledge and interest in politics, and their use of media products is not politically related. For this audience, the flashnews pops up in the same way as commercials. It activates existing knowledge constructs, builds up associational links and maintains their presence in a way that the recipient is not aware of. This research is aimed at examining the extent to which the flashnews and the main news narratives are identical in their content via a content analysis of the two news products, looking into the flashnews and the evening news during main sport events in the period 2016–2018. The initial hypothesis of the research is that the flashnews is a contribution to the news management technique for an efficient articulation of political narratives on public service media channels.

Keywords: flashnews, news management, one minute news, political marketing, priming