"I dag må ingen sitte hjemme." : partilojalitet i tre Oslo-avisers ledere foran stortingsvalgene 1957-1973

Abstract

Resumè of History Major: "Today, nobody should abstain." Party loyalty as expressed in editorials in three Oslo newspapers during parliamentary election campaigns 1957-1973

By Arnhild Skre Institute of History University of Oslo, Norway Spring 2003

The purpose of the thesis is to identify changes in party loyalties in Norway´s three largest newspapers, as expressed in editorials during parliamentary election campaigns. Corpus is the editorials in Aftenposten, Arbeiderbladet and Dagbladet for the last week of campaigns from 1957 to 1973. At the beginning of the period Aftenposten was affiliated and expressing the views of Høyre, the conservative party of Norway, in the same way as Arbeiderbladet was loyal to the Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet) and Dagbladet to the Liberal party (Venstre). In studies using a similar kind of material from the parliamentary elections in Norway from 1949 to 1957 (Høyer 1959 and 1964), party loyalties were found to be tuned down during the first post-war period. This development was predicated by Høyer to continue due to developments in the newspaper market. The thesis aims to verify or falsify this predication. Except from Høyers groundbreaking work, political loyalties as expressed in editorials in this period have not been much studied. Høyer looked for political agitation and attacks to measure expressions of loyalties. A second aim of the thesis is to identify more "silent" changes in the editorials signalling party political closeness or distance. The thesis presents different rhetoric styles applied in the editorials, focuses on narrative traits and gives a survey of the topics covered, sources and references, and audiences addressed. The methods used are three different approaches to text analysis. Firstly the simple scoring of contentual traits as voting advices and political pro/contra arguments, secondly narrative theory used to identify the implicit reader and content of the editorial "we", thirdly theory of rhetoric used to identify the change in argumentative styles. The three newspapers are at the beginning of the period closely intertwined with their parties and serve as tools in the political campaigns. These loyalties are not found to be tuned down but to be tuned up before the three elections after 1957. All three papers urges the reader to vote for "its" party or the party's strategy before all five elections. Significant decrease in the newspapers agitation for the party and attacks versus the party's opponents are not found until the campaign in 1973. Such decrease is to a certain extent found in Aftenposten and most significantly in Dagbladet, but not in Arbeiderbladet. The close relationship between paper and party is also seen in the identification between the editorial "we" and the party. This is found in all three papers until the elections in 1961. Until the elections in 1969 the editorials in all papers express guarantees for the political promises given by the party in election campaigns. The most significant changes in the way the editorials express political loyalties, are found in Dagbladet before the 1969 elections and particularly before the elections in 1973. This change is seen as a consequence of the growing conflicts in the Liberal Party leading to the split few months after the 1972 referendum whereby a majority voted against Norway´s entry into the EEC. The increase in the newspapers' political campaigning during the 1960´s is mostly found to be a consequence of the increase in political temperature during the decade.