Field of greens: Issue competition between niche parties and mainstream parties in the news

Niche parties have emerged in many democracies worldwide. Various aspects of these parties have been studied, including the role of mainstream parties in their electoral success. Key to that success, arguably, is news media attention. Is the media attention that niche parties receive affected by mainstream parties as well? In this paper, we combine news value theory with party competition theory to argue that other parties influence niche party visibility. Focusing on green parties in 11 countries between 1992 and 2021, we find evidence that the salience of green policies in mainstream parties’ manifestoes enhance green party visibility in newspapers if these parties take an adversarial position. This positive effect turns negative as the mainstream party becomes greener, which suggests that it steals a niche party’s thunder. The insight that mainstream parties can influence media attention to niche parties opens up new lines of research on the emergence of niche parties.