Whether it is sex, money or power, the dirty details of political scandal have long made voters fume and comedians chuckle. They have also spelled the downfall of many politicians. The Watergate scandal of the early 1970s forced President Richard Nixon to resign after five men were indicted on charges that they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The bunga bunga lifestyle of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was caught paying for sex with underage girls and misusing his position to cover up embezzlement charges, ultimately led to his resignation in 2011.
In the scholarly literature on political scandal, scholars have focused on several aspects of these phenomena. For example, they have studied the different types of scandals (e.g., sex, financial), the way in which scandals blur the line between private and public life, and the electoral consequences of specific scandals (Banducci & Karp, 1994).
A central theme in political scandal research has been the mediation of scandals by news media. This phenomenon entails the fact that real or conjectured norm transgressions of political actors and institutions are reported on and framed as scandalous by news media in such a way that they threaten to delegitimize those in positions of power and influence (Entman & Stonbely, 2018). This is accomplished through various news features including headlines, images, and journalistic framing of these events.
The goal of this article is to extend the scope of the current literature on political scandals by studying how journalists’ narratives of political scandals can affect and trigger behavioural responses from politicians who are not directly involved in the scandal. This includes elected officials, party leaders, and those who are directly or indirectly associated with a politician through their affiliation to that politician’s political party.
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