Democratic Discourse Research Articles

The democratic quality of political depictions in fictional TV entertainment. A comparative content analysis of the political drama Borgen and the journalistic magazine Berlin direkt

Abstract The quality of political reporting in the news media is a focal point of communication research. Politics, however, is not only conveyed via traditional sources of information, but via fictional sources. In particular, political dramas (e. g., The West Wing, Borgen) enjoy great popularity and are often acknowledged for their realistic depiction of politics. Still, little is known about the democratic quality of such fictional depictions. This paper aims to fill the gap by contrasting the depiction of politics in the fictional TV series Borgen with political reporting in a traditional TV magazine (Berlin direkt). The comparative content analysis is based on ten issues that are covered in both formats and focuses on the quality criteria of relevance, pluralism, and democratic discourse norms. Findings show no significant differences between Borgen and Berlin direkt for any of the three criteria, clearly indicating that fictional TV series can offer the same content quality as political reporting.

The Discourse of Anti-Instrumentalism: Exploring a Conceptual Model Through the Case Study of the We Won't Let Belgrade D(r)own Initiative

The main focus of our paper is on a specific form of democratic discourse, used in different types of social engagement actions (petitions, speeches, intellectual engagement, ad hoc citizens' protests, social movements etc.), that attempts to politicize a certain issue by challenging the principle of which argues that democratic procedures can legitimately be abandoned in the name of the greater efficiency of socio-economic development. Therefore, we start from identifying the discourse of neoliberal instrumentalism and its relative success in delegitimizing the welfare state and mechanisms of democratic decision making and we formulate a conceptual model of a democratic counter-narrative named anti-instrumentalist discourse. Through empirical analyses of discourse used by We Won't Let Belgrade D(r)own initiative, that mobilized against the Serbian government's urban project Belgrade Wa-terfront we try to illustrate the applicability and the heuristic value of the proposed model. The data for the analyses were collected through 1) desk analysis of available secondary data on the Belgrade Waterfront project, 2) official statements and proclamations of the We Won't Let Belgrade D(r)own initiative, 3) semi-structured interviews with four core members of the initiative.

Political advertising revisited: digital campaigning and protecting democratic discourse

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the legal and regulatory control of electoral campaigning online, in particular ‘microtargeting’. There has been a longstanding consensus in the UK on how to control political advertising, yet the shift of expenditure to the online environment, together with innovations in digital campaigning tools, are exposing tensions and gaps in the current regime. One central harm associated with microtargeting is its potential to undermine meaningful democratic deliberation. The paper interrogates the issues through the lens of electoral law and regulation, and questions the extent to which a recalibration is necessary to deal with the challenges of digital campaigning.

How Shall We Judge Agri-Food Governance? Legitimacy Constructions in Food Democracy and Co-Regulation Discourses

The food democracy discourse has emerged as a normatively grounded critique of an increasingly transnational agri-food system and its dominant co-regulatory mode of governance, where private and public norms and standards interact with public policy and regulation in complex ways. Analyzing competing agri-food discourses through a legitimacy lens can contribute to understanding how authority is transferred from traditional, hierarchical and state-centered constellations to a range of novel agri-food governance arrangements. This article reconstructs and compares the legitimacy constructions articulated in the co-regulation and the food democracy discourses, generating three key findings: first, there are two distinct articulations of food democracy discourse, which we label liberal and strong food democracy; second, while conceptualizations of legitimacy in the liberal food democracy and the co-regulatory discourse share many commonalities, legitimacy in the co-regulatory discourse relies more heavily on output, while the liberal food democracy discourse is more sensitive to issues of input and throughput legitimacy; third, the strong food democracy discourse articulates a critical counter-model that emphasizes inclusive deliberation which in turn is expected to generate a shared orientation towards the common good and countervailing power.

The Role of User Comments in Estimation of the Public Opinion Climate and Perceived Support for One’s Opinion

Abstract This article examines how user comments influence assessment of public opinion climate and perceived support for one’s opinion. The effects of user-comment sentiment (positive vs. negative) and of user-comment content (with or without personal exemplification) were tested with an online experiment (n = 1,510). Results show that user-comment effects on estimates of public opinion depend mainly on the sentiment of the comments and not on their framing as opinions with or without personal exemplification. Negative comments significantly reduce readers’ estimation of public opinion support of the issue dealt with by the article and affect the perceived support of one’s opinion. Study results refer to the possible dangers in user comments deliberate manipulation in democratic public discussion.

'Your light switch is your vote'

This paper applies some of the major concepts and methods that Ron Scollon developed in order to analyse how discourses of environmental citizenship, sustainability and climate change are mediated in a global media event. ‘Earth Hour’ began in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, and in 2009 it was proclaimed a successful global event. The event focused primarily on citizen awareness, participation and solidarity in mitigating climate change. In its sister campaign (‘Vote Earth’), the discourse of representative democracy was deployed to constitute an imaginary global electorate. The paper focuses on the analysis of: (a) the intense drive to visualize and spectacularize (mediational means) the simple act of switching off the lights and the consequences of such an act; (b) the massive infrastructure of discourse to synchronize the collective performance of a global ‘climate public’; (c) the discursive ‘memory work’ to archive and memorialize the hour, e.g. on YouTube; (d) the attempt to inculcate a ‘global citizen’ who is concerned with the environment/climate and whose anticipatory mediated actions in relation to it are prefigured by the event; and (e) the resistance to the circulation of this new mediated discourse.

Taking a Knee: Neoliberalism, Radical Imaginaries, and the NFL Player Protest

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the National Football League (NFL) player protests against institutionalized racism as a means of radical democratic discourse. Players elected to sit/kneel during the playing of the national anthem on the sidelines of nationally televised football games precisely because this constitutes a radical democratic practice that runs counter to liberal democratic norms. While this strategy enabled players to move their discontents into the national discourse, the evolution and expansion of neoliberal reason into new domains undermines opportunities for radical democratic imaginaries. The NFL protests demonstrate that individuals are able to utilize radical democratic tactics, but their viability is imperiled as liberal democracy is supplanted by the economization of politics including that the protests themselves have been economized. The expansion of neoliberal reason is manifesting as a new mechanism for policing public discourse and space that works to the detriment of racial and ethnic minorities seeking transformative change.

Twitter, incivility, and presidential communication: A theoretical incursion into spectacle and power

ABSTRACT By approaching civility as an operational logic for democracy, we ask how incivility is a strategy related to power and domination, particularly from the president of the United States. We propose that Twitter is part of an infrastructure of incivility, through which structures and discursive mechanisms contribute to a devaluation of normative democratic discourses. Spectacle provides a theoretical framework to contextualize the forces at play in mediating our relations. Using President Trump’s Twitter use as a case study, we offer four propositions that together formulate a framework for theorizing the strategic use and deployment of incivility as an increasingly legitimate, yet problematic tool for democratic governance.

A construção de capacidade estatal de comunicação pelo Partido dos Trabalhadores: intenções e resultados

O artigo parte de entendimentos teóricos sobre capacidades estatais para desenvolver o conceito de capacidade estatal de comunicação, instrumento pelo qual o governo divulga suas ideias e ações à sociedade através de veículos de mídia de massa de propriedade do Estado. Em seguida, analisa-se como essa capacidade foi pensada pelo Partido dos Trabalhadores antes de ocupar o governo federal brasileiro (1980- 2002) e como foi implementada durante as presidências de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) e Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016). Verifica-se que um discurso de democratização dos meios de comunicação, favorável a uma melhor distribuição de poder entre os setores estatal, público e privado de mídia, muito presente nas décadas iniciais do partido, foi amenizado nos treze anos de exercício do poder federal em favor de ações de conciliação com a grande imprensa privada. Desse modo, ações tomadas no sentido de aumentar a capacidade estatal de comunicação foram insuficientes para reduzir a hegemonia do setor privado no sistema brasileiro de mídia, o que compromete ideais democráticos.

The return of the repressed: populism and democracy revisited

This article revisits the vexed relationship between populism and democracy. The article identifies and analyzes a persistent split in the discourse of democracy between the politically fit and unfit, and argues that populism is best seen as effecting a reversal of this ancient binary. Using analytical tools from the strong program in cultural sociology, this binary is theorized as a symbolic code organizing our sense of and sensibilities for the sacred and the profane in democracy, a symbolic code that political science research on populism tends to reproduce rather than explicate. Pursuing this, the article outlines a cultural explanation of populism as well as of shortcomings and blind spots in the latest wave of research on the subject. It argues by example the need to cross over between political, social, and cultural theory in order to better understand populism and democracy and their contentious interrelationship.

The AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) Scale: Measuring Antisemitism as Expressed in Relation to Israel and Its Supporters

This paper reports on the development and testing of the AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) scale: a six-item questionnaire instrument for measuring antisemitic attitudes as articulated in the language of hostility to Israel and its supporters. It is important to be able to recognize and measure this kind of antisemitism because it is often embedded within ostensibly democratic discourse. The identification of this antisemitism is frequently contested even by those who are in broad agreement on the recognition of older forms of antisemitism. The scale contains a balance of protrait and contrait items, and achieved a satisfactory level of internal consistency when piloted on a sample of US-based respondents recruited through the Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing market (N = 122). There appears to be no relationship between scores on the scale and the subjective political position of respondents (as measured on a left-right self-report scale). We suggest that the AzAs scale will be of general use in measuring antizionist antisemitism because (a) it collects several familiar and demonstrably antisemitic ideas expressed in relation to Israel and its supporters and (b) it exhibits good psychometric properties.

COLETIVIZAÇÃO DO CONTROLE JUDICIAL DE POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS: CONCRETIZAÇÃO IGUALITÁRIA E RACIONAL DE DIREITOS SOCIAIS

O texto, que é um resultado da análise bibliográfica, jurisprudencial e dos números disponíveis, intenta demonstrar a necessidade de coletivização do controle judicial das políticas públicas relacionadas a direitos sociais, para viabilizar a aferição da reserva do possível à luz do princípio da igualdade (possibilidade de universalização do direito), com a prolação de decisões erga omnes, e ante outras características do processo coletivo: ampliação da discussão democrática por meio de audiências públicas e intervenção de amicus curiae, possibilidade de reflexão mais profunda e embasada sobre temas complexos, notadamente quanto à forma de execução da decisão e suas consequências.

Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign

Until recently, social media were seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication ecosystem has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. A case in point is the ongoing U.S. Congress investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, with Russia accused of, among other things, using trolls (malicious accounts created for the purpose of manipulation) and bots (automated accounts) to spread propaganda and politically biased information. In this study, we explore the effects of this manipulation campaign, taking a closer look at users who re-shared the posts produced on Twitter by the Russian troll accounts publicly disclosed by U.S. Congress investigation. We collected a dataset of 13 million election-related posts shared on Twitter in the year of 2016 by over a million distinct users. This dataset includes accounts associated with the identified Russian trolls as well as users sharing posts in the same time period on a variety of topics around the 2016 elections. We use label propagation to infer the users’ ideology based on the news sources they share. We are able to classify a large number of the users as liberal or conservative with precision and recall above 84%. Conservative users who retweet Russian trolls produced significantly more tweets than liberal ones, about 8 times as many in terms of tweets. Additionally, trolls’ position in the retweet network is stable overtime, unlike users who retweet them who form the core of the election-related retweet network by the end of 2016. Using state-of-the-art bot detection techniques, we estimate that about 5% and 11% of liberal and conservative users are bots, respectively. Text analysis on the content shared by trolls reveal that conservative trolls talk about refugees, terrorism, and Islam, while liberal trolls talk more about school shootings and the police. Although an ideologically broad swath of Twitter users were exposed to Russian trolls in the period leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, it is mainly conservatives who help amplify their message.

Diversity in Canadian election-related Twitter discourses: Influential voices and the media logic of #elxn42 and #cdnpoli hashtags

ABSTRACTUsing qualitative and quantitative content analysis of Twitter, this study examined 5,209 tweets with popular hashtags #elxn42 and #cdnpoli to determine what was discussed on the social media platform one week preceding the 2015 Canadian federal election. Searching for diversity-related issues, researchers asked whether diverse groups were represented among the most influential accounts. It also identified the most common topics shared, and whether the shared content represented democratic discussion. Finally, the study looked at how much election-relatedsharing among influencers conformed to a media logic or social media logic framework. Researchers found that Twitter use during the election campaign did not provide a level playing field for political discussion. Instead, data suggested individual celebrity users were more likely to be amplified than others. Despite this, however, it appears that issues that were relevant to diverse groups made it into the Twitter conversation, making up a meaningful portion of tweets related to the election. These findings suggest that if diverse voices were not retweeted, at least issues were still being discussed, and thus contradict the popular idea of online echo chambers on Twitter.

Analysing a discussion on an online university forum: A communicative approach to discursive democracy

This paper explores academics’ interaction in an online forum, where perceptions of racism are debated. The communicative model of democratic discourse directs the interpretation of an emancipatory discursive interaction, following a deductive textual analysis of the forum and interview texts from selected participants. The communicative model discourages normative judgements of others and focuses on an understanding of difference. The findings indicate that participants who engage in a deliberative demonstration of power, do not appreciate diverse social-historical contexts. Discursive interactions which indicate an understanding of participants’ contexts are marked by a mitigating and sympathetic approach which allows for doubt in the judgements of participants. These mitigating interactions do however not persuade all participants to critically reflect on limiting opinions, attitudes and ways of interaction. An online curator who invites participants from diverse contexts might make the discourse more nuanced, create the opportunity to understand multiple realities and facilitate a transformative discussion.

Transformation concept "Information technologies" in modern scientific discourse

The purpose of the study is to reveal the objective transformations that have occurred in information technology. Conceptualization of these transformations is also important. System, information, network and cognitive approaches allow to reveal the main aspects of the development of information technologies - technical and technological, software and hardware, network, communication, cognitive. The article considers the evolution of information technology. The relationship of information technology with its increasing role and importance of information in the life of man and society is analyzed. Information technologies are disclosed as technologies to create, store, record and process information. Technical and technological direction of information technology development is analyzed. The connection of the information technology concept transformation and development of the information society theory, in particular, the theory of post-industrial society, information society, network society, knowledge society and the digital world is revealed. The connection of the information technology concept transformation and the emergence of the media civilization and global information space is also revealed. The article shows that the development of information technology is an important factor in the development of the information society. Technology transition (the electronic computer as a machine) to the modern stage of development of digital technologies is characterized by the formation of a single technical and technological basis for the formation of the information society. The classification of information technology according to its application scope is proposed. Information and communication technologies characterize subject-to-subject interactions, among which pedagogical and political technologies are primarily distinguished. Information space is separate area of information technology application. Information processing technologies in the information space are the basis of modern democratic discourse. An important area of information technology is the information sphere. Information sphere is the sphere of information activity, information exchange and information relations, the regulator of which is the information law. Information security technologies ensure the protection of human rights, society and the state in obtaining objective information. Cybersecurity technologies protect critical infrastructure. The technologies of reality – virtual, cognitive, and augmented – provide the ability of a person’s consciousness and thinking to process and create new information. Identifying the social significance of the technical and technological development of information technologies becomes the basis of recommendations for the implementation of a strategies for the formation of the information society in Ukraine.

Using Dewey's Conception of Democracy to Problematize the Notion of Disability in Public Education

In this paper I examine ways in which students with disabilities have the capacity to be full, contributing citizens within a participatory, communicative, and pluralistic democracy. In many instances, institutions such as schools provide barriers that disallow and dissuade students with disabilities from full participation in society and their education, which prevents them from becoming co-creators of their educational experience. I argue that in a Deweyan democracy, all students must have not just the right, but be allowed to grow in their capacity to develop into fully participating, contributing citizens. My hope is that by situating disability and special education within the Deweyan democratic discourse it will be possible to render that discourse more genuinely inclusive of all students, so that the needs of all are met and the unique contributions of each become a part of the educational process.

Princesses Versus Maids: Domesticating Electricity in the Early Republican Period in Turkey

This article is concerned with the question of how electricity was introduced into the home in Turkey during a period when electrification of the country ran in parallel with the establishment of the new republic. Republican discourses of modernization and progress attributed electricity a symbolic transformative power. Yet, the robust power of electricity had to be domesticated before it was introduced into the homes to comply with the ideal of modern home. Visual representations of electricity constituted a crucial step in this process of domestication. To figure out the visual strategies of domestication the study focuses on the representations of electricity produced by prominent mediators of domestic electricity during the period. These include the bi-monthly publication of İstanbul’s electric provider Société Anonyme d’Installations Eléctriques (SATIE) named Ameli Elektrik and prominent women’s and family magazines of the period, which are Yedigün and Ev-İş. Dwelling on advertisement images, cover illustrations and promotional pieces, this article identifies two main visual strategies of domestication, namely mythification and anthropomorphization. Throughout the text it is argued that visual representations of electricity for residential users undermined the quasi-neutral definition of electricity as a modern power and rather worked to frame electricity as a means of distinction and pictured a pretentious modernity.

Circumlocution in King Abdullah II’s Discussion Papers

This article studies circumlocution in King Abdullah II's Discussion Papers in light of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus-based analysis. The analysis aims to investigate the role of using this strategy in identifying the ideologies embedded in the discourse of democracy and reform adopted by the Jordanian Monarch. The study relied on a small corpus of the seven Royal Discussion Papers published between December 2012 and April 2017. The study demonstrated that King Abdullah II considerably employs circumlocution in his Discussion Papers to convey his vision, ideas, and ideologies about democracy and reform in Jordan by repeating a set of keywords to accentuate his vision of the enactment of reform and democracy in Jordan. These keywords are found to reflect the King’s ideologies on the basis of four key assumptions: the Partakers, Reform, My Nation, and Optimism and Sanguinity.

Circumlocution in King Abdullah II’s Discussion Papers

This article studies circumlocution in King Abdullah II's Discussion Papers in light of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus-based analysis. The analysis aims to investigate the role of using this strategy in identifying the ideologies embedded in the discourse of democracy and reform adopted by the Jordanian Monarch. The study relied on a small corpus of the seven Royal Discussion Papers published between December 2012 and April 2017. The study demonstrated that King Abdullah II considerably employs circumlocution in his Discussion Papers to convey his vision, ideas, and ideologies about democracy and reform in Jordan by repeating a set of keywords to accentuate his vision of the enactment of reform and democracy in Jordan. These keywords are found to reflect the King’s ideologies on the basis of four key assumptions: the Partakers, Reform, My Nation, and Optimism and Sanguinity.