It’s about amplifying the message

An example of this was seen in connection with the Danish parliamentary elections earlier this year. The Social Democratic Party launched a promise to reduce class sizes for the youngest pupils with a Facebook post starting: 

”Every child deserves a positive school experience 🍎Because our state schools are crucial for our children’s outcomes, well-being and learning. That’s why we want to invest massively in our children starting school. We want to cap class sizes at 14 for the youngest pupils.”

The party’s politicians quickly followed suit on social media, and before long the topic featured regularly in party leader debates and in the media in general. That was no coincidence, according to new research from Aarhus BSS. 

Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, an assistant professor in political science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, is presenting new research on how parties proactively can set the political agenda. His research has been published in the prestigious American Political Science Review.

For the party, it’s a matter of demonstrating that they are dedicated to the agenda they just launched.

^{Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science}

As part of his new model – the Issue Initiation Model – Daniel is also introducing two new concepts: initiation and elevation.

Initiation covers a party’s efforts to proactively direct attention towards an issue. Not in response to an ongoing debate, but as the starting point of a new debate. 

“The party launches a focus,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, before elaborating: 

“It can do so, for example, by holding a press conference or by posting on social media. The party makes a strategic decision to go out and say ‘this is what we would like to talk about now’, like we saw with the Social Democrats and their ‘small school’ (Lilleskolen) proposal.” 

The other element in the model is elevation, which is the concerted efforts of the party’s own politicians to promote the issue via social media, interviews, posts etc., thereby signalling: ‘This is important to us.’

“The politicians basically do their best to amplify the message. For the party, it’s a matter of demonstrating that they are dedicated to the agenda they just launched,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen.

5.5 million social media posts document the effect

Daniel Sandvej Eriksen tested his model on more than 5.5 million tweets from political parties and MPs, as well as 750,000 news articles and 419,000 questions to ministers in the UK and Denmark during the 2015–2022 period. A comprehensive dataset, where each post and each article is coded according to the political topics they address.

“Having analysed the dataset, I can see that politicians from the initiating party are very much contributing to keeping the communication going once it has been initiated by the party. And often in a very coordinated fashion,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, continuing:

“Once a party has launched its focus, its politicians typically start talking about it from early morning, and also a fairly large proportion of the posts on X about it are actually retweets of what the party had already posted. This makes it quite clear that there’s a certain degree of coordination going on, that the party has said ‘today we’re going to launch this agenda, and it’s important that we all promote and talk about it’.”

At this stage, it’s about maintaining momentum and making sure that both their political opponents and the news media remain interested in this.

_{Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science} 

Competitors enter the fray

In the research literature, there has been a focus for many years on the fact that, as a political party, you should ideally try to avoid engaging on issues where your opponents are seen as being stronger. It is typically better for a party in the pursuit of votes to talk more about issues where they themselves are perceived by voters as being the strongest.

In theory, you would therefore expect the opponents to stay silent, but in practice, they often do the opposite. One explanation for why a competing party may still talk about the agenda initiated by an opponent, according to Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, may be to criticise the proposal that has been put forward and attempt to reframe it. 

We saw this, for example, in the campaign leading up to the parliamentary elections on 24 March 2026. The Social Democrats launched their ‘small school’ proposal on 4 February, followed by significant Facebook activity from the party and its politicians.

“At this stage, it’s about maintaining momentum and making sure that both their political opponents and the news media remain interested in this,” explains Daniel Sandvej Eriksen. 

And indeed, reactions came from the competing parties.

In the first party leader debate of the 2026 election campaign, Lars Løkke said he thought it was a bad idea. He favoured a ‘school of freedom’ (Frihedsskolen). Likewise, Troels Lund Poulsen said in one of the later prime ministerial debates that he was all for a ‘school of trust’ (Tillidsskole). 

“They’re trying to introduce alternative concepts to the ones created by the Social Democrats. However, from an agenda perspective, it’s a victory for the Social Democrats that the competitors continue to talk about it. They may call it something else, but the focus is still on schools. And all things considered, it’s an advantage for the Social Democrats if the focus is on education rather than, for example, conditions for business and industry,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen.

All things considered, it’s an advantage for the Social Democrats if the focus is on education rather than, for example, conditions for business and industry.

_{Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science}

Arne pension: A textbook example of agenda-setting

The initiation marks the very starting point of the debate. This is clear when looking at activity levels on social media and the media coverage in general during the period leading up to the initiation. Daniel Sandvej Eriksen’s data shows that interest in the topic is generally low at this point. As soon as a press conference is held, the initiating party’s social media activity on the topic increases significantly if it is an important agenda for the party. And this increases the chances that both competing parties and the news media will start talking about the issue, too.

In Daniel’s data, effects are seen from a few minutes after the initiation and for a week afterwards, but according to the researcher, in some cases, the effect may be more long-lasting: 

“Take the debate about the Arne early-retirement pension, which started in 2019. We can see that approximately 18% of all posts by Social Democratic politicians in the following five months were about this proposal. This shows just how important it was for them to talk about it,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen.

It is also about trying to shift votes in the party’s direction.

_{Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, Assitant Professor, Department of Political Science}

The issue also received significant coverage in the news media, where there was at least a doubling in the number of pension-themed articles in the week following the presentation of the proposal compared to the week before.

The Social Democrats’ proposal on the Arne pension has been analysed in depth by Daniel Sandvej Eriksen as part of his research on agenda-setting. 

“Looking at the Arne pension proposal, there are several examples of how competing politicians try to pick apart specific components of the proposal to expose what the Social Democrats were really putting forward,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, presenting the following tweets from then Finance Minister Kristian Jensen (V): 

‘The Ministry of Finance has assessed the Social Democrats’ pension proposal. It is underfunded and lacks concrete solutions.’

And:

‘How is, for example, a 60-year-old today supposed to prove that they had an unskilled job back in the 1970s? Must they have kept their payslips to qualify for an early state pension?'

A look into the engine room

With his new research, Daniel Sandvej Eriksen fills a gap. 

“Existing research has predominantly focused on the constraints faced by political parties in their agenda-setting efforts. It is a constant struggle for attention. Parties must address crises and terrorist attacks, wars, climate reports, crime statistics and so on. This has meant that we know little about how parties can actually initiate a debate more proactively,” says Daniel Sandvej Eriksen.

With his new model on initiation and elevation, he opens the window into the engine room and the agenda-setting efforts of political parties. He demonstrates how political parties, through strategic planning and coordinated efforts, are able to proactively shift the attention of other parties and the media. 

Existing research has predominantly focused on the constraints faced by political parties in their agenda-setting efforts. 

_{Daniel Sandvej Eriksen, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science}

And what do the parties gain from this? 

There may be several motivations, according to Daniel Sandvej Eriksen. 

“Firstly, it is naturally an important goal for parties to influence the policies being pursued. We saw this, among other things, in connection with the Arne pension proposal, where the government adopted the Arne pension just after the election. This is a good example of something that ended up impacting a considerable number of people. Moreover, it is also about trying to shift votes in the party’s direction. However, it is important that we do not forget that a significant motivation for trying to set a new agenda is to highlight a problem in society that the party believes should be addressed – whether to do with pensions, state schools or an entirely different issue. There are plenty of problems that one could address politically, but if they are not put on the agenda, then nothing will happen.” 

Facts

We strive to comply with Universities Denmark’s principles for good research communication. For this reason, we provide the following information as a supplement to this article: