AUTNES Content Analysis of ORF TV Confrontations 2013

The AUTNES dataset on TV confrontations contains data collected from fifteen debates between pairs of top candidates in the 2013 national election campaign. The debates were televised by the Austrian national broadcasting company ORF between August 29th and September 24th, 2013. All statements spoken during the debates are part of the dataset. Natural sentences are the unit of analysis. The coding procedure applies the AUTNES relational approach of recording subjects, predicates, and objects to TV confrontations. The subject is defined as an actor that positions himself/herself towards an issue in the sentence. There are two types of objects: issues and object actors. The one issue that fits the content of the spoken  sentence best is selected by coders from the AUTNES issue coding scheme. The issue predicate numerically records whether the subject’s position towards the issue is one of support, rejection/criticism, or conveys a neutral stance. Up to three object actors are recorded per sentence, each with their name (if an individual is present), organizational affiliation and political relevance, as well as their evaluation by the subject actor (positive, negative or neutral). In addition to the basic subject–predicate–object structure we code character traits and party records for all subject and object actors as well as justifications for issue statements.

Topics: Variables referring to the debate and coded sentence: case-ID; debate-ID; sentence-ID; sender (TV station broadcasting the debate); date of the debate; begin time and end time of the debate; duration of the debate; party affiliation and name of discussant 1 und discussant 2; name of the debate’s moderator; organizational affiliation and name of the sentence’s speaker (various actors besides the participants of the debate, i.e. journalists, experts, etc.); sentence; sentence length in words; sentence length in characters; variables referring to the subject actor: organizational affiliation and name of the subject actor; characteristics of the subject actor (attributes: competence, character, leadership, appearance, not discernible); reference to subject actor’s record; record level (national level, regional, international, historical); subject actor established the record while in government or while in opposition; variables referring to issues: predicate (issue position of the subject actor: reject/criticize, neutral, support); issue on which the subject actor positions himself/herself; issue should be regulated on EU level; subject actor’s justification of his/her issue position (economy, welfare state: expansive / protective, environment, security, education, governance, ethnic-national, religious, universalistic, not discernible);variables referring to object actor: organizational affiliation and name of the object actor; political relevance of the object actor; predicate (relation of the subject actor towards the object actor) (reject/criticize, neutral, support); relationship between subject actor and object actor is related to the coded issue; characteristics of the object actor (attributes: competence, character, leadership, appearance, not discernible); reference to the object actor’s record; record level (national level, regional, international, historical); object actor established the record while in government or while in opposition.