In 2017, the anticorruption #rezist protests engulfed Romania. In the context of mounting concerns about exposure to and engagement with political information on social media, we examine the use of public Facebook event pages during the #rezist protests. First, we consider the degree to which political information influenced the participation of students, a key protest demographic. Second, we explore whether political information was available on the pages associated with the protests. Third, we investigate the structure of the social network established with those pages to understand its diffusion within that public domain. We find evidence that political information was a prominent component of public, albeit localized, activist communication on Facebook, with students more likely to partake in demonstrations if they followed a page. These results lend themselves to an evidence-based deliberation about the relation that individual demand and supply of political information on social media have with protest participation.
{"title":"Student Participation and Public Facebook Communication: Exploring the Demand and Supply of Political Information in the Romanian #rezist Demonstrations","authors":"Dan Mercea, T. Burean, Viorel Proteasa","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3684089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3684089","url":null,"abstract":"In 2017, the anticorruption #rezist protests engulfed Romania. In the context of mounting concerns about exposure to and engagement with political information on social media, we examine the use of public Facebook event pages during the #rezist protests. First, we consider the degree to which political information influenced the participation of students, a key protest demographic. Second, we explore whether political information was available on the pages associated with the protests. Third, we investigate the structure of the social network established with those pages to understand its diffusion within that public domain. We find evidence that political information was a prominent component of public, albeit localized, activist communication on Facebook, with students more likely to partake in demonstrations if they followed a page. These results lend themselves to an evidence-based deliberation about the relation that individual demand and supply of political information on social media have with protest participation.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"132 1","pages":"24"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75126537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
States around the world are struggling with illegal and hate content online. As one of the first Western democracies to do so, Germany passed the Act to Improve Enforcement of the Law in Social Networks (NetzDG) to tackle illegal and hate content online. The idea of the Rechtsstaat played a decisive role in the preceding policy discourse . Building on discursive institutionalism, this study analyzes how different actors used the Rechtsstaat to support or oppose the NetzDG. For this, it conducted a thematic analysis of 68 documents produced during the policy-making process in Germany from 2015 to 2017. The study shows that political actors used five different facets of the Rechtsstaat idea to support or oppose the NetzDG.
{"title":"Governing Hate Content Online: How the Rechtsstaat Shaped the Policy Discourse on the NetzDG in Germany","authors":"Danya He","doi":"10.5167/UZH-188366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5167/UZH-188366","url":null,"abstract":"States around the world are struggling with illegal and hate content online. As one of the first Western democracies to do so, Germany passed the Act to Improve Enforcement of the Law in Social Networks (NetzDG) to tackle illegal and hate content online. The idea of the Rechtsstaat played a decisive role in the preceding policy discourse . Building on discursive institutionalism, this study analyzes how different actors used the Rechtsstaat to support or oppose the NetzDG. For this, it conducted a thematic analysis of 68 documents produced during the policy-making process in Germany from 2015 to 2017. The study shows that political actors used five different facets of the Rechtsstaat idea to support or oppose the NetzDG.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"88 1","pages":"23"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83824150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Universities have expanded their public relation (PR) departments in recent years. At the same time, news media have had to cope with reduced resources. This has led scholars to assume a growing influence of university PR on a weakened journalism. However, research on this phenomenon is scarce, and longitudinal research is missing entirely. The study at hand looks at the influence of university PR on science journalism in Switzerland by measuring the effects of media releases on media coverage. It uses large-scale, automated text comparisons combined with manual content analyses. The results show that an increasing amount of media coverage is based on media releases, and that the tone of this portion of media coverage is significantly more positive toward the university. Overall, our findings suggest an increasing influence of university PR on (science) journalism.
{"title":"Growing Influence of University PR on Science News Coverage? A Longitudinal Automated Content Analysis of University Media Releases and Newspaper Coverage in Switzerland, 2003‒2017","authors":"Daniel Vogler, Mike S. Schäfer","doi":"10.5167/UZH-196282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5167/UZH-196282","url":null,"abstract":"Universities have expanded their public relation (PR) departments in recent years. At the same time, news media have had to cope with reduced resources. This has led scholars to assume a growing influence of university PR on a weakened journalism. However, research on this phenomenon is scarce, and longitudinal research is missing entirely. The study at hand looks at the influence of university PR on science journalism in Switzerland by measuring the effects of media releases on media coverage. It uses large-scale, automated text comparisons combined with manual content analyses. The results show that an increasing amount of media coverage is based on media releases, and that the tone of this portion of media coverage is significantly more positive toward the university. Overall, our findings suggest an increasing influence of university PR on (science) journalism.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"59 1","pages":"22"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85419278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the notion of “fake news” and Russian election interference became somewhat interchangeable. We argue that “fake news” insufficiently describes the Russian disinformation campaign. Our analysis of Facebook ad texts shows that they incorporate emotional appeals differently at unique moments in the political campaign of 2016. We use sentiment analysis to demonstrate the use of positive and negative emotional messages. Sentiment ratings dipped to more negative scores before the November 2016 election and rose to new positive heights after the election. This provides some evidence that the varying uses of positive sentiment and negative sentiment may have been strategic.
{"title":"Good News, Bad News: A Sentiment Analysis of the 2016 Election Russian Facebook Ads","authors":"German Alvarez, Jaewon Choi, S. Strover","doi":"10.26153/TSW/9852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26153/TSW/9852","url":null,"abstract":"In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the notion of “fake news” and Russian election interference became somewhat interchangeable. We argue that “fake news” insufficiently describes the Russian disinformation campaign. Our analysis of Facebook ad texts shows that they incorporate emotional appeals differently at unique moments in the political campaign of 2016. We use sentiment analysis to demonstrate the use of positive and negative emotional messages. Sentiment ratings dipped to more negative scores before the November 2016 election and rose to new positive heights after the election. This provides some evidence that the varying uses of positive sentiment and negative sentiment may have been strategic.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"220 1","pages":"27"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84038001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-27DOI: 10.5771/9783748925415-76
Dennis Steffan
This study investigates the visual self-presentation of political candidates on different social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) in seven Western democracies (Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Drawing on Grabe and Bucy’s visual framing approach, I conducted a quantitative content analysis of visual social media posts ( N = 2,272) of the top two candidates who ran for the chief executive governmental office in the respective election campaigns. The results reveal that candidates are more likely to use the ideal candidate frame than that of the populist campaigner. The use of visual frames differs significantly among countries, but those differences are limited. It seems that differences among candidates within countries are more pronounced than among countries. The results also indicate that Instagram is the preferred platform for visual self-presentation. This study provides insights into the strategic use of visuals in social media campaigning.
{"title":"Chapter 3 Visual Self-Presentation Strategies of Political Candidates on Social Media Platforms: A Comparative Study","authors":"Dennis Steffan","doi":"10.5771/9783748925415-76","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748925415-76","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the visual self-presentation of political candidates on different social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) in seven Western democracies (Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Drawing on Grabe and Bucy’s visual framing approach, I conducted a quantitative content analysis of visual social media posts ( N = 2,272) of the top two candidates who ran for the chief executive governmental office in the respective election campaigns. The results reveal that candidates are more likely to use the ideal candidate frame than that of the populist campaigner. The use of visual frames differs significantly among countries, but those differences are limited. It seems that differences among candidates within countries are more pronounced than among countries. The results also indicate that Instagram is the preferred platform for visual self-presentation. This study provides insights into the strategic use of visuals in social media campaigning.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"21 1","pages":"23"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85040407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article develops a typology of anchoring practices of public connection to systematize how new forms of interaction, participation, and articulation in networked media now challenge the primacy of journalism to offer exclusive and authoritative representations of society. The first part offers a brief summary of core contributions and assumptions in practice theory, highlighting differences between strong and weak programs of practice-based research. The second part presents the concept of public connection and how it can be expanded to include media practice on a more general, analytic level. The third part discusses four sets of anchoring practices, which allow for very different intensities of public connection to emerge: practices of information retrieval, social orientation, (self-)representation, and public intervention. The concluding outlook section addresses challenges for the study of journalism, focusing on the relations between professional and nonprofessional practices of articulation, in which speaker and audience positions can alternate dynamically between different “layers of publicness.”
{"title":"Practicing Media—Mediating Practice | Anchoring Practices for Public Connection: Media Practice and Its Challenges for Journalism Studies","authors":"C. Raetzsch, Margret Lünenborg","doi":"10.17169/REFUBIUM-29830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17169/REFUBIUM-29830","url":null,"abstract":"This article develops a typology of anchoring practices of public connection to systematize how new forms of interaction, participation, and articulation in networked media now challenge the primacy of journalism to offer exclusive and authoritative representations of society. The first part offers a brief summary of core contributions and assumptions in practice theory, highlighting differences between strong and weak programs of practice-based research. The second part presents the concept of public connection and how it can be expanded to include media practice on a more general, analytic level. The third part discusses four sets of anchoring practices, which allow for very different intensities of public connection to emerge: practices of information retrieval, social orientation, (self-)representation, and public intervention. The concluding outlook section addresses challenges for the study of journalism, focusing on the relations between professional and nonprofessional practices of articulation, in which speaker and audience positions can alternate dynamically between different “layers of publicness.”","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"28 1","pages":"19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84262821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Previous research shows that power-sharing political systems are associated with (a) individual perceptions of political inclusiveness and (b) a more deliberative news media supply. Little, however, is known about the effect of this institutional feature on exposure to crosscutting views through the media. We posit that political systems provide different degrees of institutional power and public visibility to political parties and minorities, and this difference affects crosscutting news exposure. Survey data from three countries ( N = 5,500 individuals) show that media contribute more to crosscutting exposure in a consensus system (Italy) than a polarized pluralist variant of majoritarianism (Spain), or a hegemonic illiberal democracy (Mexico). Additionally, analyses reveal that minority views are positively correlated with crosscutting media exposure in a consensus system and a polarized pluralist variant of majoritarianism, but not in a hegemonic system. These findings suggest that certain political system characteristics can override the tendency for selective exposure.
{"title":"Political power sharing and crosscutting media exposure: how institutional features affect exposure to different views","authors":"Laia Castro, Lilach Nir","doi":"10.5167/UZH-196242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5167/UZH-196242","url":null,"abstract":"Previous research shows that power-sharing political systems are associated with (a) individual perceptions of political inclusiveness and (b) a more deliberative news media supply. Little, however, is known about the effect of this institutional feature on exposure to crosscutting views through the media. We posit that political systems provide different degrees of institutional power and public visibility to political parties and minorities, and this difference affects crosscutting news exposure. Survey data from three countries ( N = 5,500 individuals) show that media contribute more to crosscutting exposure in a consensus system (Italy) than a polarized pluralist variant of majoritarianism (Spain), or a hegemonic illiberal democracy (Mexico). Additionally, analyses reveal that minority views are positively correlated with crosscutting media exposure in a consensus system and a polarized pluralist variant of majoritarianism, but not in a hegemonic system. These findings suggest that certain political system characteristics can override the tendency for selective exposure.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"34 1","pages":"21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79135827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chung-hong Chan, Hartmut Wessler, E. M. Rinke, Kasper Welbers, W. Atteveldt, Scott L. Althaus
This study looks into how the combination of Islam, refugees, and terrorism topics leads to text-internal changes in the emotional tone of news articles and how these vary across countries and media outlets. Using a multilingual human-validated sentiment analysis, we compare fear and pity in more than 560,000 articles from the most important online news sources in six countries (U.S., Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, and Lebanon). We observe that fear and pity work antagonistically—that is, the more articles in a particular topical category contain fear, the less pity they will feature. The coverage of refugees without mentioning terrorists and Muslims/Islam featured the lowest fear and highest pity levels of all topical categories studied here. However, when refugees were covered in combination with terrorism and/or Islam, fear increased and pity decreased in Christian-majority countries, whereas no such pattern appeared in Muslim-majority countries (Lebanon, Turkey). Variations in emotions are generally driven more by country-level differences than by the political alignment of individual outlets.
{"title":"How Combining Terrorism, Muslim, and Refugee Topics Drives Emotional Tone in Online News: A Six-Country Cross-Cultural Sentiment Analysis","authors":"Chung-hong Chan, Hartmut Wessler, E. M. Rinke, Kasper Welbers, W. Atteveldt, Scott L. Althaus","doi":"10.17605/OSF.IO/A4DQP","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/A4DQP","url":null,"abstract":"This study looks into how the combination of Islam, refugees, and terrorism topics leads to text-internal changes in the emotional tone of news articles and how these vary across countries and media outlets. Using a multilingual human-validated sentiment analysis, we compare fear and pity in more than 560,000 articles from the most important online news sources in six countries (U.S., Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, and Lebanon). We observe that fear and pity work antagonistically—that is, the more articles in a particular topical category contain fear, the less pity they will feature. The coverage of refugees without mentioning terrorists and Muslims/Islam featured the lowest fear and highest pity levels of all topical categories studied here. However, when refugees were covered in combination with terrorism and/or Islam, fear increased and pity decreased in Christian-majority countries, whereas no such pattern appeared in Muslim-majority countries (Lebanon, Turkey). Variations in emotions are generally driven more by country-level differences than by the political alignment of individual outlets.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"99 1","pages":"26"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80939945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
By common understanding, media events attract a “huge audience—the whole world watching” (Katz & Liebes, 2007, p. 158). Despite its conceptual importance, however, there is hardly any research on the size of global audiences. In a critical review of the state of research, this article shows that scholars studying media events obtain their information on audiences of billions primarily from media coverage. This coverage also influences the potential users of media events and stimulates imagined communities. It is therefore important to investigate how and on what basis news media report on global audiences. By means of a qualitative content analysis of the British coverage of Diana Spencer’s funeral, this study reveals that the global response is reported and defined even before a media event takes place and can thus be regarded as a myth. This leads to conceptual considerations on media events and suggestions for future studies.
{"title":"“The whole world watching”? How news media create the myth of an audience of billions and foster imagined communities","authors":"Silke Fürst","doi":"10.5167/UZH-186374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5167/UZH-186374","url":null,"abstract":"By common understanding, media events attract a “huge audience—the whole world watching” (Katz & Liebes, 2007, p. 158). Despite its conceptual importance, however, there is hardly any research on the size of global audiences. In a critical review of the state of research, this article shows that scholars studying media events obtain their information on audiences of billions primarily from media coverage. This coverage also influences the potential users of media events and stimulates imagined communities. It is therefore important to investigate how and on what basis news media report on global audiences. By means of a qualitative content analysis of the British coverage of Diana Spencer’s funeral, this study reveals that the global response is reported and defined even before a media event takes place and can thus be regarded as a myth. This leads to conceptual considerations on media events and suggestions for future studies.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"4 1","pages":"18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86080160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the everyday practice of online communication, we observe users deliberately reporting abusive content or opposing hate speech through counterspeech, while at the same time, online platforms are increasingly relying on and supporting this kind of user action to fight disruptive online behavior. We refer to this type of user engagement as online civic intervention (OCI) and regard it as a new form of user-based political participation in the digital sphere that contributes to an accessible and reasoned public discourse. Because OCI has received little scholarly attention thus far, this article conceptualizes low- and high-threshold types of OCI as different kinds of user responses to common disruptive online behavior such as hate speech or hostility toward the media. Against the background of participation research, we propose a theoretically grounded individual-level model that serves to explain OCI.
{"title":"Online Civic Intervention: A New Form of Political Participation Under Conditions of a Disruptive Online Discourse","authors":"Pablo Porten-Cheé, Marlene Kunst, Martin Emmer","doi":"10.17169/REFUBIUM-26779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17169/REFUBIUM-26779","url":null,"abstract":"In the everyday practice of online communication, we observe users deliberately reporting abusive content or opposing hate speech through counterspeech, while at the same time, online platforms are increasingly relying on and supporting this kind of user action to fight disruptive online behavior. We refer to this type of user engagement as online civic intervention (OCI) and regard it as a new form of user-based political participation in the digital sphere that contributes to an accessible and reasoned public discourse. Because OCI has received little scholarly attention thus far, this article conceptualizes low- and high-threshold types of OCI as different kinds of user responses to common disruptive online behavior such as hate speech or hostility toward the media. Against the background of participation research, we propose a theoretically grounded individual-level model that serves to explain OCI.","PeriodicalId":51388,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Communication","volume":"398 1","pages":"21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80571016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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