The political parties found it much more difficult to set the media agenda during this year's election campaign than five years ago, because the "old techniques did not seem to work", according to new research presented yesterday.
In their analysis of the coverage of this year's campaign, Dr Heinz Brandenburg, of Aberdeen university, and Zbyszek Zalinski, of TCD, also note that despite this year's election being much closer than five years ago, it did not generate any more print media attention than in 2002.
The authors say examples of the difficulties they faced included Michael McDowell's attempt to recreate his successful "lamp post" PR stunt from 2002, as well as the Fianna Fáil communications machine's inability to knock the "Bertiegate" controversy off the front pages.
Elsewhere, the authors note the increasingly influential role of the internet when compared to 2002.
But while the level of election coverage by broadsheet newspapers remained unchanged, they found that tabloids such as the Sunand the Irish Daily Stardevoted "hardly any front page headlines to the campaign", and their attention was considerably down on 2002.
In terms of content, health was the biggest story of the campaign, while the top three priorities were health, tax and housing, the research says.
The authors note that the economy was the fifth most covered topic, compared to 2002 when economic and welfare issues "dominated the media agenda".
The researchers used a range of sources to analyse, print and broadcast and internet coverage of this year's general election campaign.
They note that the 2007 campaign was overshadowed repeatedly by domestic and international events such as the restoration of devolved government in Stormont, the Miss D case and the nurses' strike.