Differences between actors

The analyses of person-centred media reporting also revealed that the position that the political actor has in the system, the type of political system, and perhaps even the type of political party a politician is a member of, might be connected to the degree to which political leader is media visible.

With regard to the position that a political actor holds, all four indicators show

media visible than Prime Ministers who were head executives (Račan, Sanader, Kosor and Milanović). Specifically, Presidents who were head executives were mentioned in a larger number of articles per week (Figure 2), in a larger percentage of all published articles (Figure 3), contrary to Prime Ministers they were as visible or more visible than their parties (Figure 4), and they were mentioned on their own in more articles than Prime Ministers who were heads of the executive (Figure 5 and 6).

It might be tempting to ascribe these differences to the nature of the political systems in which these leaders ruled. In other words, Presidents in presidential systems might be more media visible than Prime Ministers in parliamentary systems since they as individuals might be considered more important and powerful than the collectives they head. However, other factors should not be overlooked. In the case of Tito, there are indications that communist journalists were often instructed to report the leader's activities (Plamper, 2004). This would mean that Tito's high visibility was not due only to his newsworthiness but was also partly an outcome of political strategy. In addition, he was the leader of the only party in the country, so his party leader role might have enhanced his prominence in the papers. Also, his powers and jurisdictions were almost infinite. Since his role was not restricted to, for example, foreign policy and army issues as is the case with post-2000 Presidents, he was shown as the voice of authority on all issues. Some of these factors might have influenced the prominence given to Tuđman too. In the first place, his presidency is considered to be „super-Presidential“ and not semi-Presidential as was officially proclaimed (Jović & Lamont, 2010). In other words, as with Tito, Tuđman was considered to have authority over everything from foreign policy to music, sports and culture. This wide remit might have enhanced his visibility in the media. Also, again similarly to Tito, he was the leader of the most powerful political party during the 1990s – the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Therefore, he did not appear in the papers only as the President, but also as the leader of the party that had the majority in parliament. It should also be noted that later Presidents Mesić and Josipović were not party leaders and had to resign from party duties once elected to office, which might have contributed to their lower levels of visibility.

Finally, the first years of Tuđman's presidency were characterized by war in which the President had even greater powers than in peace and was the central figure in negotiations, international peace conferences etc. Hence, the context surrounding his presidency might have also contributed to the high degree of his media visibility.

Furthermore, the reporting of Presidents and Prime Ministers developed in different ways in the transition from communism to post-communism. While the

Presidents lost a significant amount of media attention, the Prime Ministers had gained it. The data shows that the number of articles mentioning Presidents per week has continually decreased over time (r=-0,74), while the number of articles mentioning Prime Ministers has slightly increased (r=0,5). Similarly, the percentage of articles mentioning Presidents decreased linearly (r=-0,99), while Prime Ministers experienced a positive trend (r=0,79). In addition, both of these analyses show that Prime Ministers became more media visible than Presidents in the post-2000 period.

This is an important fact since the parliamentary system replaced a semi-presidential one in 2000, so it appears as though the media might have, by shifting the focus to Prime Ministers, depicted the new constitutionally set balance of power in the country. The amount of attention that different political actors received from the media while the semi-presidential system was in force during the 1990s also suggest that media reporting reflects the balance of power in the system.

Specifically, the 1990s Prime Ministers Nikica Valentić and Zlatko Mateša were significantly less media visible than President Tuđman (Figures 1 and 2). The media (in)visibility of the 1990s Prime Ministers and the prominence of the President seems to have accurately depicted the power holders in the young Croatian democracy in which President Tuđman ruled in a centralized and authoritarian way.

Finally, all four indicators of person-centred reporting point to the fact that the type of political party of which the leaders are members might also be an important factor contributing to the extent to which they are media visible. Specifically, the heads of the executive who were least media visible, on their own and in relation to their parties, are Ivica Račan and Zoran Milanović, leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a party of reformed communists. On the other hand, those leaders who were most media visible in the post-communist period were all leaders of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Also, according to Figure 5, the highest levels of party-centred reporting were noted in 2000, 2003 and 2011, years when the SDP either won parliamentary elections, or was acting as incumbent. This fact might be relevant for explaining different degrees of party- and person-centred media reporting. The HDZ since Tuđman has been a centralized, charismatic party focused on its leader, while the SDP is mostly seen as a programmatic party with decentralized and democratic party structures (Lamont, 2010; Šiber, 2003). Hence, it appears as though the type of party might be connected to the ways in which the party and its leaders are presented in the media. In the case of charismatic parties the media might focus its coverage on the leader since the party revolves around him/her and not around issues or programs, so there is limited information about

which promote specific policies and interests could be covered in a more party-centred way since they are providing the media with the kind of information that the media can then use to frame the coverage of politics.