Pub Date : 2023-04-09DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2196951
Maxim Alyukov
ABSTRACT To evaluate the credibility of political information, citizens rely on simple logical rules-of-thumb or heuristics based on various resources, such as personal experience and popular wisdom. It is often assumed that contrary to dependence on the media, personal experience and popular wisdom help citizens to build alternative understandings of political events. However, little is known about how citizens use heuristics in authoritarian settings. Relying on focus groups, this study uses Russian citizens’ reception of the regime propaganda regarding Ukraine in 2016–17 as a case study to investigate the credibility heuristics of citizens living in an autocratic state during war. Deploying both qualitative and quantitative analysis of citizens’ discourse, I identify the main heuristics used to evaluate the credibility of propaganda. I show that citizens perceive regime propaganda with distrust and often rely on popular wisdom and personal experience to identify bias. However, this does not necessarily guarantee a critical attitude toward regime propaganda. Citizens use these resources to evaluate propaganda’s credibility selectively depending on their political alignment. Indeed, their reliance on personal experience and popular wisdom undermines the authority of state media in general. However, propaganda resonates with the distrust toward media and politics that permeates citizens’ experiences. As a result, the reliance on these resources for interpreting political information can amplify, rather than erode, the credibility of specific news stories. These results contribute to the understanding of both how propaganda is received and credibility heuristics are used in an authoritarian environment.
{"title":"Harnessing Distrust: News, Credibility Heuristics, and War in an Authoritarian Regime","authors":"Maxim Alyukov","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2196951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2196951","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT To evaluate the credibility of political information, citizens rely on simple logical rules-of-thumb or heuristics based on various resources, such as personal experience and popular wisdom. It is often assumed that contrary to dependence on the media, personal experience and popular wisdom help citizens to build alternative understandings of political events. However, little is known about how citizens use heuristics in authoritarian settings. Relying on focus groups, this study uses Russian citizens’ reception of the regime propaganda regarding Ukraine in 2016–17 as a case study to investigate the credibility heuristics of citizens living in an autocratic state during war. Deploying both qualitative and quantitative analysis of citizens’ discourse, I identify the main heuristics used to evaluate the credibility of propaganda. I show that citizens perceive regime propaganda with distrust and often rely on popular wisdom and personal experience to identify bias. However, this does not necessarily guarantee a critical attitude toward regime propaganda. Citizens use these resources to evaluate propaganda’s credibility selectively depending on their political alignment. Indeed, their reliance on personal experience and popular wisdom undermines the authority of state media in general. However, propaganda resonates with the distrust toward media and politics that permeates citizens’ experiences. As a result, the reliance on these resources for interpreting political information can amplify, rather than erode, the credibility of specific news stories. These results contribute to the understanding of both how propaganda is received and credibility heuristics are used in an authoritarian environment.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"527 - 554"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44734709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-07DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2198986
Rohan Grover, Rachel Kuo
ABSTRACT How do social movement actors use consciousness-raising communicative practices to reconfigure political understandings of race? And how can such practices shape the analysis of political communication? We explore these questions by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival materials to examine two case studies: an historical example of Grace Lee Boggs’ structural guidelines for creating a revolutionary study group in the Asian Political Alliance and a contemporary example of Equality Labs’ anti-caste political organizing by engaging across racial and caste social hierarchies. These cases illustrate the analytic value of engaging alternative theoretical frameworks of race and politics from critical ethnic studies, feminist of color scholarship, and social movements as rich sites of political theory through cultivating political consciousness in service of radical political imaginations. This article offers two main contributions to the field of political communication. First, by looking at the creative work of racial theorizing within social movements, we destabilize the limits of race as a demographic category. Second, we demonstrate the analytic value of studying political education and consciousness-raising as communicative practices that emphasize relational reconfigurations of race. This article recasts racial political discourse from public opinion and campaign messaging measured quantitatively to political imaginations that must be interpreted within historical and material contexts. As our cases demonstrate, centering the shifting category of race within movement building opens up the field of political communication to the communicative processes of consciousness-building and also offers dynamic understandings of race and racialization.
摘要：社会运动参与者如何利用提高意识的交流实践来重新配置对种族的政治理解？这种做法如何影响对政治传播的分析？我们通过民族志田野调查、半结构化访谈、，以及档案材料，以审查两个案例研究：一个是Grace Lee Boggs在亚洲政治联盟中创建革命研究小组的结构指导方针的历史例子，另一个是平等实验室通过跨种族和种姓社会等级参与反种姓政治组织的当代例子。这些案例说明了通过培养为激进政治想象服务的政治意识，将批判性种族研究、有色人种女权主义学术和社会运动中的种族和政治替代理论框架作为丰富的政治理论场所的分析价值。这篇文章为政治传播领域提供了两个主要贡献。首先，通过观察社会运动中种族理论的创造性工作，我们破坏了种族作为一个人口类别的局限性。其次，我们展示了研究政治教育和意识培养作为强调种族关系重构的交际实践的分析价值。本文将种族政治话语从定量衡量的公众舆论和竞选信息重塑为必须在历史和物质背景下解释的政治想象。正如我们的案例所表明的那样，在运动建设中以不断变化的种族类别为中心，为意识建设的沟通过程开辟了政治沟通领域，也提供了对种族和种族化的动态理解。
{"title":"Destabilizing Race in Political Communication: Social Movements as Sites of Political Imagination","authors":"Rohan Grover, Rachel Kuo","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2198986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2198986","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT How do social movement actors use consciousness-raising communicative practices to reconfigure political understandings of race? And how can such practices shape the analysis of political communication? We explore these questions by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival materials to examine two case studies: an historical example of Grace Lee Boggs’ structural guidelines for creating a revolutionary study group in the Asian Political Alliance and a contemporary example of Equality Labs’ anti-caste political organizing by engaging across racial and caste social hierarchies. These cases illustrate the analytic value of engaging alternative theoretical frameworks of race and politics from critical ethnic studies, feminist of color scholarship, and social movements as rich sites of political theory through cultivating political consciousness in service of radical political imaginations. This article offers two main contributions to the field of political communication. First, by looking at the creative work of racial theorizing within social movements, we destabilize the limits of race as a demographic category. Second, we demonstrate the analytic value of studying political education and consciousness-raising as communicative practices that emphasize relational reconfigurations of race. This article recasts racial political discourse from public opinion and campaign messaging measured quantitatively to political imaginations that must be interpreted within historical and material contexts. As our cases demonstrate, centering the shifting category of race within movement building opens up the field of political communication to the communicative processes of consciousness-building and also offers dynamic understandings of race and racialization.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"484 - 503"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42192916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-30DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2195365
M. B. Harbin
ABSTRACT To what extent should scholars view competitive reality television series as a politically relevant medium for transmitting messages about race, racial identity, and politics in the United States? Cultivation theory argues that the depiction of social issues and groups on television influences how individuals perceive the world around them. Drawing on this theory, I argue that the increasingly diverse casts of American competitive reality series are a heretofore underexplored site for studying the transmission of narratives related to race and racial justice to ostensibly unsuspecting American television audiences. In this article, I analyze viewers’ reactions to Black contestants discussing their feelings of racialized social obligations when playing the game – what I refer to as narratives of racial duty. Employing a sentiment analysis as well as an inductive thematic content analysis of tweets reacting to four episodes from the 41st season of Survivor, I found that audience members overwhelmingly reacted negatively to embedding narratives of racial duty into the series. Specifically, they described the season as too political – the worst in the show’s history – and even vowed to stop watching. These findings suggest that broadcasting exemplars who challenge prevailing narratives of racial progress may stoke feelings of racial backlash that could ultimately prompt individuals to tune out of these entertainment programs at best, and stoke racial discord at worst. Thus, I conclude that bringing race to the center of communication research offers scholars in both traditions a new vantage point for studying trends in American racial attitudes.
{"title":"Don’t Make My Entertainment Political! Social Media Responses to Narratives of Racial Duty on Competitive Reality Television Series","authors":"M. B. Harbin","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2195365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2195365","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT To what extent should scholars view competitive reality television series as a politically relevant medium for transmitting messages about race, racial identity, and politics in the United States? Cultivation theory argues that the depiction of social issues and groups on television influences how individuals perceive the world around them. Drawing on this theory, I argue that the increasingly diverse casts of American competitive reality series are a heretofore underexplored site for studying the transmission of narratives related to race and racial justice to ostensibly unsuspecting American television audiences. In this article, I analyze viewers’ reactions to Black contestants discussing their feelings of racialized social obligations when playing the game – what I refer to as narratives of racial duty. Employing a sentiment analysis as well as an inductive thematic content analysis of tweets reacting to four episodes from the 41st season of Survivor, I found that audience members overwhelmingly reacted negatively to embedding narratives of racial duty into the series. Specifically, they described the season as too political – the worst in the show’s history – and even vowed to stop watching. These findings suggest that broadcasting exemplars who challenge prevailing narratives of racial progress may stoke feelings of racial backlash that could ultimately prompt individuals to tune out of these entertainment programs at best, and stoke racial discord at worst. Thus, I conclude that bringing race to the center of communication research offers scholars in both traditions a new vantage point for studying trends in American racial attitudes.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"464 - 483"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43952900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-28DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2193563
Patrícia Rossini
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 40, No. 3, 2023)
《政治传播》(第40卷第3期，2023年)
{"title":"Farewell to Big Data? Studying Misinformation in Mobile Messaging Applications","authors":"Patrícia Rossini","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2193563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2193563","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Political Communication (Vol. 40, No. 3, 2023)","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-23DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2192187
Deen Freelon, Meredith L. Pruden, Daniel Malmer
ABSTRACT Race has been a consequential factor in politics for centuries, yet our review of the political communication literature finds only sporadic interest in the topic. To examine systematically how and how much political communication research has addressed race, we analyze author-supplied keywords in nine journals within three broad categories (political communication, generalist communication, and critical communication) over 31 years. Combining computational methods and traditional content analysis, we find that political communication and generalist journals engaged with race substantially less than critical journals, and that this level of engagement has remained essentially flat since the mid-1990s. Political communication journals discussed racism least among the three journal types, and specific political communication theories appeared rarely across the board. Finally, addressing race did not predict journal impact factor.
{"title":"#politicalcommunicationsowhite: Race and Politics in Nine Communication Journals, 1991-2021","authors":"Deen Freelon, Meredith L. Pruden, Daniel Malmer","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2192187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2192187","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Race has been a consequential factor in politics for centuries, yet our review of the political communication literature finds only sporadic interest in the topic. To examine systematically how and how much political communication research has addressed race, we analyze author-supplied keywords in nine journals within three broad categories (political communication, generalist communication, and critical communication) over 31 years. Combining computational methods and traditional content analysis, we find that political communication and generalist journals engaged with race substantially less than critical journals, and that this level of engagement has remained essentially flat since the mid-1990s. Political communication journals discussed racism least among the three journal types, and specific political communication theories appeared rarely across the board. Finally, addressing race did not predict journal impact factor.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"377 - 395"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46563755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-21DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2193146
Philipp Müller, Chung-hong Chan, Katharina Ludwig, Rainer Freudenthaler, Hartmut Wessler
ABSTRACT News coverage plays a crucial role in the formation of attitudes toward ethnic and religious minority groups. On the attitudinal level, it is an established notion that individuals’ explicit and implicit judgments of the same groups can vary. Yet, less is known about the prevalence of implicit group judgments in news coverage. Focusing on a large variety of ethnic and religious minority groups in Germany, the present study sets out to fill this gap. We use semi-supervised machine learning to distinguish explicit and implicit stigmatization of ethnic and religious groups in German journalistic coverage (n = 697,913 articles). Findings suggest that groups that are associated with less wealthy countries, and with culturally more distant countries, face more stigmatization, both explicitly and implicitly. Yet, the data also show that groups associated with Islam and groups with large refugee populations living in the country of study are implicitly, but not explicitly stigmatized in news coverage. We discuss these and other resulting patterns against the backdrop of sociological and psychological intergroup theories and reflect upon their implications for journalism.
{"title":"Differential Racism in the News: Using Semi-Supervised Machine Learning to Distinguish Explicit and Implicit Stigmatization of Ethnic and Religious Groups in Journalistic Discourse","authors":"Philipp Müller, Chung-hong Chan, Katharina Ludwig, Rainer Freudenthaler, Hartmut Wessler","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2193146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2193146","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT News coverage plays a crucial role in the formation of attitudes toward ethnic and religious minority groups. On the attitudinal level, it is an established notion that individuals’ explicit and implicit judgments of the same groups can vary. Yet, less is known about the prevalence of implicit group judgments in news coverage. Focusing on a large variety of ethnic and religious minority groups in Germany, the present study sets out to fill this gap. We use semi-supervised machine learning to distinguish explicit and implicit stigmatization of ethnic and religious groups in German journalistic coverage (n = 697,913 articles). Findings suggest that groups that are associated with less wealthy countries, and with culturally more distant countries, face more stigmatization, both explicitly and implicitly. Yet, the data also show that groups associated with Islam and groups with large refugee populations living in the country of study are implicitly, but not explicitly stigmatized in news coverage. We discuss these and other resulting patterns against the backdrop of sociological and psychological intergroup theories and reflect upon their implications for journalism.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"396 - 414"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49099951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2188499
R. Wouters, J. Lefevere
ABSTRACT Media attention is both an important outcome and a resource for protest groups. This paper examines media-movement dynamics using television news coverage of 1,277 protests in Belgium (2003–2019). We situate protest coverage in media issue attention cycles and scrutinize whether features of protest or rather media issue attention fluctuations are key for protest’s agenda-setting effect. Our results show that while most protests fail to alter the attention cycle, a considerable share of protests is followed by a significant increase in media issue attention, especially when surfing issue attention already on the rise. Overall, media issue attention cycles rather than protest features affect protest’s agenda-setting effect, suggesting that protest agenda-setting is more a matter of exploiting discursive opportunities than of forcing one’s issue on the media agenda by signaling newsworthiness. These findings have serious implications for our understanding of protest group agency in news making and agenda-setting.
{"title":"Making their Mark? How protest sparks, surfs, and sustains media issue attention","authors":"R. Wouters, J. Lefevere","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2188499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2188499","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Media attention is both an important outcome and a resource for protest groups. This paper examines media-movement dynamics using television news coverage of 1,277 protests in Belgium (2003–2019). We situate protest coverage in media issue attention cycles and scrutinize whether features of protest or rather media issue attention fluctuations are key for protest’s agenda-setting effect. Our results show that while most protests fail to alter the attention cycle, a considerable share of protests is followed by a significant increase in media issue attention, especially when surfing issue attention already on the rise. Overall, media issue attention cycles rather than protest features affect protest’s agenda-setting effect, suggesting that protest agenda-setting is more a matter of exploiting discursive opportunities than of forcing one’s issue on the media agenda by signaling newsworthiness. These findings have serious implications for our understanding of protest group agency in news making and agenda-setting.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"615 - 632"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48726638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-08DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2187496
Matthew P. Motta, Dominik A. Stecuła
ABSTRACT Some might expect the promise of ending a global pandemic via vaccination to interrupt conventional partisan media effect processes. We test that possibility by bringing together sentiment-scored COVID vaccine stories (N > 17,000) from cable and mainstream news outlets, N > 180,000 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports, and six original surveys (N = 6,499), in order to investigate (1) whether partisan news outlets covered COVID vaccination in different ways, and (2) if differences in coverage increased vaccine hesitancy. We find that Fox News’ (FXNWS) coverage was significantly more negative than that of other cable and mainstream sources, and is associated with increased negative public vaccine sentiment. In the aggregate, adverse event reports tended to increase following periods of heightened negativity on FXNWS. At the micro-level, self-reported FXNWS exposure is associated with increased vaccine refusal. Collectively, the results provide new insights into the public health consequences of vaccine politicization.
{"title":"The Effects of Partisan Media in the Face of Global Pandemic: How News Shaped COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy","authors":"Matthew P. Motta, Dominik A. Stecuła","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2187496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2187496","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Some might expect the promise of ending a global pandemic via vaccination to interrupt conventional partisan media effect processes. We test that possibility by bringing together sentiment-scored COVID vaccine stories (N > 17,000) from cable and mainstream news outlets, N > 180,000 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports, and six original surveys (N = 6,499), in order to investigate (1) whether partisan news outlets covered COVID vaccination in different ways, and (2) if differences in coverage increased vaccine hesitancy. We find that Fox News’ (FXNWS) coverage was significantly more negative than that of other cable and mainstream sources, and is associated with increased negative public vaccine sentiment. In the aggregate, adverse event reports tended to increase following periods of heightened negativity on FXNWS. At the micro-level, self-reported FXNWS exposure is associated with increased vaccine refusal. Collectively, the results provide new insights into the public health consequences of vaccine politicization.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"505 - 526"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45855120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-06DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2185332
Josephine Lukito, Jacob Gursky, Jordan M. Foley, Yunkang Yang, Katie Joseff, Porsmita Borah
ABSTRACT As digitally organized, conspiratorial extremist groups gain more attention in the United States, researchers face increasing calls to better understand their in-group and out-group communication strategies. Using the QAnon conspiracy community as a case study, we use data from news coverage, social media, and ethnographic field work surrounding a prominent QAnon conference to analyze the uptake and aftermath of a controversial comment made by a public figure at the event. Our mixed methods analysis finds that QAnon’s efforts to use retroactive doublespeak produced mixed results, persuading some members to re-interpret the comment; however, there was a limit to its effectiveness. Our findings contribute to the literature on political extremism and digital media by elucidating how anti-publics within the QAnon movement reconstruct events and thread the rhetorical needle to reconcile contradictory messages. In particular, we highlight the factors that precede anti-publics’ use of retroactive doublespeak and discuss its use to negotiate the tension between in-group and out-group interpretations of events.
{"title":"“No Reason[.] [I]t /Should/ Happen here”: Analyzing Flynn’s Retroactive Doublespeak During a QAnon Event","authors":"Josephine Lukito, Jacob Gursky, Jordan M. Foley, Yunkang Yang, Katie Joseff, Porsmita Borah","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2185332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2185332","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As digitally organized, conspiratorial extremist groups gain more attention in the United States, researchers face increasing calls to better understand their in-group and out-group communication strategies. Using the QAnon conspiracy community as a case study, we use data from news coverage, social media, and ethnographic field work surrounding a prominent QAnon conference to analyze the uptake and aftermath of a controversial comment made by a public figure at the event. Our mixed methods analysis finds that QAnon’s efforts to use retroactive doublespeak produced mixed results, persuading some members to re-interpret the comment; however, there was a limit to its effectiveness. Our findings contribute to the literature on political extremism and digital media by elucidating how anti-publics within the QAnon movement reconstruct events and thread the rhetorical needle to reconcile contradictory messages. In particular, we highlight the factors that precede anti-publics’ use of retroactive doublespeak and discuss its use to negotiate the tension between in-group and out-group interpretations of events.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"576 - 595"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41841880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2023.2181896
M. Germann, Fernando Mendez, Kostas Gemenis
ABSTRACT Voting advice applications (VAAs) are online tools that provide voters with personalized information on the extent to which their policy views match those of political parties or candidates. These tools have proliferated across advanced democracies in recent years and become integral parts of electoral campaigns, especially in multi-party systems. However, it remains unclear to what extent voters actually make use of VAAs to inform their voting preferences. We present new field-experimental evidence on the short-term effects of VAAs on party preferences from five European countries. We find consistent evidence that exposure to VAA advice leads voters to update their party preferences in line with the information provided. Furthermore, we find partial evidence that VAAs more strongly influence less politically interested and undecided voters. Overall, our results point to the potential value of VAAs as a mechanism to strengthen democratic representation and accountability.
{"title":"Do Voting Advice Applications Affect Party Preferences? Evidence from Field Experiments in Five European Countries","authors":"M. Germann, Fernando Mendez, Kostas Gemenis","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2023.2181896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2181896","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Voting advice applications (VAAs) are online tools that provide voters with personalized information on the extent to which their policy views match those of political parties or candidates. These tools have proliferated across advanced democracies in recent years and become integral parts of electoral campaigns, especially in multi-party systems. However, it remains unclear to what extent voters actually make use of VAAs to inform their voting preferences. We present new field-experimental evidence on the short-term effects of VAAs on party preferences from five European countries. We find consistent evidence that exposure to VAA advice leads voters to update their party preferences in line with the information provided. Furthermore, we find partial evidence that VAAs more strongly influence less politically interested and undecided voters. Overall, our results point to the potential value of VAAs as a mechanism to strengthen democratic representation and accountability.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"596 - 614"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44012884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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