Media coverage of reports published by the Québec Ombudsman: an automated content analysis
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Dominic Duval,Steve Jacob,Eric Montigny,Mathieu Ouimet |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852319870241 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Media coverage of
reports published by the
Que
´bec Ombudsman:
an automated
content analysis
Dominic Duval
Universite
´du Que
´bec a
`Montre
´al, Canada
Steve Jacob
Universite
´Laval, Canada
Eric Montigny
Universite
´Laval, Canada
Mathieu Ouimet
Universite
´Laval, Canada
Abstract
This article examines media coverage of reports published by the Que
´bec Ombudsman,
a body that upholds the rights of citizens and that goes by the name of ‘Public
Protector’. A large part of the Que
´bec Ombudsman’s mandate is to conduct inves-
tigations and issue recommendations following infringements by Que
´bec’s administra-
tive apparatus that affect one or several citizens. These infringements are reported to
the ombudsman by citizens, which means that it must be visible to the public.
Such visibility relies, to a great extent, on the media, hence the importance of analysing
the Que
´bec Ombudsman’s media coverage, a subject that has received little attention in
the academic literature. Our article reveals that media coverage of the ombudsman’s
reports is inconsistent. We also observe that, on average, newspaper articles adopt a
more negative tone than the reports themselves. However, contrary to our
Corresponding author:
Dominic Duval, De
´partement de communication sociale et publique, Universite
´du Que
´bec a
`Montre
´al, 405
rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montre
´al, Que
´bec, Canada H2L 2C4.
Email: duval.dominic.2@uqam.ca
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2021, Vol. 87(2) 347–363
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852319870241
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
expectations, reports with a more negative tone are not necessarily given more media
coverage. The best predictor of the presence or absence of media coverage and tone
congruence between reports and articles appears to be the presence of a press release
issued by the ombudsman.
Points for practitioners
This article examines media coverage of reports published by the Que
´bec Ombudsman.
Based on an automated content analysis, it appears that the media coverage of the
reports is not explained by the tone used in the documents published by the Que
´bec
Ombudsman. Reports that are more negative are not necessarily given greater cover-
age by journalists than positive reports. Direct communication efforts with the media
(e.g. a press conference and the publication of a press release) are more likely to lead to
media coverage.
Keywords
administrative reports, media coverage, ombudsman, Public Protector
Introduction
Administrative reports are tools to inform and communicate produced by public
organisations whose common denominator is that they ‘draw on the current state
of a sector, public policy or issue ... to propose avenues for reflection and/or
action’ (Dupuy and Pollard, 2012: 6). Since the reports are a ‘showcase’, the
requirements for producing these documents are often regulated by legislative
obligations or requirements specific to each public organisation (Maingueneau,
2002: 119). When it is made public, the administrative report remains ‘silent on
the hierarchies and successive rewritings which possibly contributed to it’ (Gayon,
2016: 92). As a general rule, bureaucratic writing is formalised by guidelines on
writing instructions and restrictive internal content validation conventions that are
based on a posture of impartiality, neutrality and objectivity in order to guarantee
its legitimacy (Fournel, 2007; Gayon, 2016; Laurent and Sanson, 1996). The ‘tone
[of the reports is] often very descriptive, even flat ... polarisation is avoided,
variations are tempered, dramatic adjectives are removed, categories and bureau-
cratic notions disseminated by the hierarchy are employed’ (Penissat, 2012: 56).
This material, which is essential in public administration research, is rarely the
subject of the exclusive analysis that we envisage this research to be: media analysis
of the reports produced by the Que
´bec Ombudsman (or the Protector). This insti-
tution, created in 1968, follows the classic Scandinavian model of Ayeni’s (1985)
typology. In practical terms, the ombudsman is a person appointed by the
National Assembly
1
whose mission is to ensure that individual rights are respected
by addressing the ministries and agencies of the government of Que
´bec, as well as
348 International Review of Administrative Sciences 87(2)
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