Actors’ frames and advocacy coalitions in the CAP reform process 2013 in Austria’s agricultural media

Abstract

Actors use different frames to advance their interests in agricultural policy-making processes. Five frames and 25 subframes have been identified by a qualitative content analysis of 1,155 newspaper articles in Austria’s largest agricultural newspaper Bauernzeitung during the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform process 2013. However, it remains unclear which actors make selective or repeated use of the identified frames and subframes and who forms a coalition with other actors along their policy core beliefs in order to influence agricultural policies. Therefore, we link the Advocacy Coalition Framework with frame analysis to explore actors’ frames and advocacy coalitions in the CAP reform process 2013. Our results show that the actors can be divided into two advocacy coalitions, namely the Agricultural Coalition and the Environmental Coalition. The Agricultural Coalition mainly uses the social balance subframe, the national politics subframe, the negotiation subframe, and the financial regulations subframe. The Environmental Coalition mainly uses the societal concerns frame and its associated subframes. Journalists act as policy brokers and use almost all subframes. The results accentuate that media are a welcome device to participate in agricultural policy-making processes and provide useful insights for a diverse group of CAP actors on how to target their communication strategy.