The PARTYPRESS Database: A new comparative database of parties’ press releases

Abstract

We present the PARTYPRESS Database, which compiles more than 250,000 published press releases from 68 parties in 9 European countries. The database covers the press releases of the most relevant political parties in these countries from 2010 onward. It provides a supervised machine learning classification of press releases into 21 unique issue categories according to a general codebook. The PARTYPRESS Database can be used to study parties’ issue agendas comparatively and over time. We extend a recent analysis in Gessler and Hunger (2022) to illustrate the usefulness of the database in studying dynamic party competition, communication, and behavior.