Political Blogs Research Articles

On Political Epunditry

The concept of ePunditry is developed as a lens through which to view the important phenomenon of political blogging. Three conceptual frameworks were selected for their relevance to the idea of computer-enhanced commentary: the information society thesis, the notion of the fifth estate and its relationship with the fourth, and the increasingly celebrated ideal of deliberative democracy. The empirical content of the inquiry comprised interviews with 27 political bloggers, ranging from prominent British figures such as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale to lesser-known practitioners located as far afield as Lebanon and Trinidad. The article evaluates their responses in light of the conceptual frameworks. It deduces that, while not giving rise to a knowledge class or a fifth estate, the new forms of punditry have made a significant contribution to a technologically enabled democratic politics. The conclusion is that ePunditry represents a useful construct for journalism studies.

Pray for the fatherland! Discursive and digital strategies at play in nationalist political blogging

ABSTRACTPolitical blogs have come to constitute important channels for expressing nationalist and anti-immigration political views. The new forms that this rhetoric may take, comprising an intricate intermingling of verbal, digital, (audio-)visual, and communicative elements, present challenges for qualitative research. In this article we propose a way for analysing this “new” nationalist political discourse from a qualitative social psychological perspective. The suggested approach combines analytical procedures form critical discursive and rhetorical psychology with social semiotic and rhetorical studies of images, completed with analytical tools and concepts from narrative psychology and research into online political communication. Using two empirical examples of nationalist and anti-immigration political blog-entries written during the 2015 “refugee crisis,” we show this approach enables the researcher to adequately study how such political messages are conveyed through the multitude of elements provided by the blogs. In so doing, our ultimate goal is to contribute to the analytical capacity of qualitative social psychological research into contemporary political communication and persuasion.

Blogging about the Affordable Care Act: A rhetorical analysis of weblogs kept by the Democratic and Republican Parties and the White House

Political parties in the United States have used public relations tools to promote their opinions about health care reform since the subject first entered the lexicon in the 20th century. As the Affordable Care Act was introduced and debated in Congress in 2008 and 2009, political parties’ public relations teams used political weblogs or ‘blogs’ to disseminate their messages. The language used in those blogs illustrated attitudes underlying the explicit messages, including assumptions of victimhood and villainy, which were used to support party positions regarding the law. This rhetorical analysis examines content of the blogs within the ‘zones of meaning’ Heath proposed as models of effective public relations. Differences between the parties’ content and the administration’s is particularly noticeable in the uses of humor and sarcasm, the social positioning of women and families, and the villainy or victimhood inherent in many of the social roles depicted by the uses of language.

On Shifting Grounds of ‘Citizen Journalism’ in Egypt

Before and after the January 25 uprisings in Egypt, public and scholarly attention moved from the early political bloggers to today’s citizen journalists who use not only blogs but any available means to disseminate alternative information. The use of new ‘information and communication technologies’ (ICTs) is no longer an asset for the secular-civil opposition only. Since 2011, various groups, including the Salafists and the military, have resorted to the use of ICTs to establish their influence in public life. In this article, I offer an examination of citizen journalism as political practice and public debate in the Middle East and North Africa. This research may shed light on the everyday appropriations of this traveling concept and the meanings it engenders through actual practices in given socio-cultural contexts. I also argue that the ambiguities around the Arabic translations of citizen journalism provide a way to examine the uneasy processes of state transformation in today’s Egypt.

Co-clustering directed graphs to discover asymmetries and directional communities

In directed graphs, relationships are asymmetric and these asymmetries contain essential structural information about the graph. Directed relationships lead to a new type of clustering that is not feasible in undirected graphs. We propose a spectral co-clustering algorithm called di-sim for asymmetry discovery and directional clustering. A Stochastic co-Blockmodel is introduced to show favorable properties of di-sim To account for the sparse and highly heterogeneous nature of directed networks, di-sim uses the regularized graph Laplacian and projects the rows of the eigenvector matrix onto the sphere. A nodewise asymmetry score and di-sim are used to analyze the clustering asymmetries in the networks of Enron emails, political blogs, and the Caenorhabditiselegans chemical connectome. In each example, a subset of nodes have clustering asymmetries; these nodes send edges to one cluster, but receive edges from another cluster. Such nodes yield insightful information (e.g., communication bottlenecks) about directed networks, but are missed if the analysis ignores edge direction.

Monitory institutions, social activism, and the fifth estate: the case of David Hicks

ABSTRACTDuring the early years of the blogosphere the fifth estate was conceptualised as networks of individual citizen bloggers who were independent of the structures and constraints of institutionalised power – and the other estates – and whose primary function was media criticism. An examination and analysis of the David Hicks’ case, makes it evident, however, that the fifth estate was more complex than these early theorisations.By drawing upon the media coverage of Hicks’ arrest, detention, and repatriation back to Australia, which played out in the mainstream media, political blogs, and special interest publications between 2002 and 2007, it becomes evident that the fifth estate during this period also consisted of networks of ‘extra-parliamentary power monitoring institutions’ (Keane 2009, p. xxvii). Human rights groups, political parties, and professional associations used the communicative power of both mainstream and digital media to monitor and critique power, and engage in debates about ethical accountability. These debates exposed how technology had ruptured the theoretical boundaries between the grassroots activism of citizens and the political advocacy of monitory institutions, and blurred the divide between citizen bloggers and journalists, producing the fifth estate as a politically potent and heterogeneous space.

Boomers versus Millennials: Online Media Influence on Media Performance and Candidate Evaluations

Facebook posts, YouTube videos, tweets and wooing political bloggers have become standard practice in marketing political campaigns. Research has demonstrated the effect of new media on a host of politically-related behavior, including political participation, knowledge acquisition, group formation and self-efficacy. Yet, issues related to media trust, media performance and candidate evaluations have not been fully explored. In addition, much of the political marketing research looks exclusively at the Millennial age cohort, ignoring other age groups, particularly Baby Boomers. This case study addresses whether attention to traditional (i.e., television, hard-copy newspapers and radio) and online media sources (i.e., political candidate websites, television network websites, online newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and political blogs) about the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign influences Millennials and Baby Boomers’ media trust and performance ratings, as well as candidate evaluations. Panel surveys were completed by both age cohorts, Millennials (n = 431) and Baby Boomers (n = 360), during the last two weeks of the presidential election. Findings indicate that traditional sources, specifically television, rather than online sources are significantly linked to media trust and performance ratings among both Boomers and Millennials. Attention to traditional media for campaign information predicts Boomers’ candidate evaluations, whereas Millennials’ candidate evaluations are influenced by online sources, such as Facebook and candidate websites.

Examination of Blog Discussion about the Beheading of Two American Journalists by ISIS

This study utilizes the beheading of two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014. The content analyses of 980 comments from three political blogs (Townhall - conservative, Daily Kos - liberal, and The Moderate Voice - moderate) reveal that the majority of blog users exhibited their subjective thoughts and opinions rather than engaging in deliberative communication based on deep reasoning. Blog users also did not show a reciprocal attitude, mostly ignoring different voices. Most comments were made based on one-sided perspectives.

Racial Discourse and Partisan Blogs

This article focuses on racial discourses on political blogs during one of the first racial controversies of Obama’s presidency. I examined the interactional dynamics in the comment sections of posts from left and right blogs during the controversy. I found that the majority of participants on partisan blogs either racialized the controversy to promote a racial claim or deracialized the controversy to protect a racial claim from potentially threatening aspects of a controversy. I focus on the ambiguous challenges to racialization and deracialization that occurred in the course of internal debate over the specifics of the case and over nonracial claims. I argue that blog participants preserved racial frameworks by managing the ambiguity that arises from debates. This article contributes to the literature on racial discourse and political polarization by identifying processes that help explain how each “national conversation on race” maintains and perhaps expands the partisan divide on race.

User-orientated perspective of social media used by campaigns

Campaigns have increasingly resorted to Facebook because it has the highest number of users among social media platforms. The question as to whether Facebook is a more favorable choice of social media than a blog for political purposes must be addressed. In this comparative study, cross-sectional data collected in the 2009 and 2014 Taiwan local elections were used for exploring the differences among voter motivations, perceived credibility, and dependency between the use of political blogs and Facebook. In addition, the impact factors regarding the relationship between blogs and Facebook dependency were analyzed. The findings indicate that voter motivations, perceived credibility, and dependency were higher for political blogs than they were for Facebook, suggesting that in a political context, people prefer blogs to Facebook. The results of regression analyses indicate that the motivation for debating political topics was a significant predictor of the dependency on blogs, whereas motivations for general information and entertainment were related to Facebook use. The perceived credibility was not related to blog use; however, accuracy and information depth were significant factors for the use of Facebook. The reasons for the differences between peoples’ use of political blogs and Facebook are discussed in this paper. This study advances our understanding on the variations in people’s use of different social media platforms in a political context, and few studies have investigated this topic from a user-oriented perspective.

TimeArcs: Visualizing Fluctuations in Dynamic Networks

AbstractIn this paper we introduce TimeArcs, a novel visualization technique for representing dynamic relationships between entities in a network. Force‐directed layouts provide a way to highlight related entities by positioning them near to each other Entities are brought closer to each other (forming clusters) by forces applied on nodes and connections between nodes. In many application domains, relationships between entities are not temporally stable, which means that cluster structures and cluster memberships also may vary across time. Our approach merges multiple force‐directed layouts at different time points into a single comprehensive visualization that provides a big picture overview of the most significant clusters within a user‐defined period of time. TimeArcs also supports a range of interactive features, such as allowing users to drill‐down in order to see details about a particular cluster. To highlight the benefits of this technique, we demonstrate its application to various datasets, including the IMDB co‐star network, a dataset showing conflicting evidences within biomedical literature of protein interactions, and collocated popular phrases obtained from political blogs.

Racial Discourse Networks: Race Blogs, Media Influence & the Possibilities for Collective Action

In this paper I analyze the network structure of race blogs in relation to the broader political blogosphere and traditional media landscape. Findings show that race blogs exhibit a multi-level, homophilous link structure with respect to non-race blogs, and among race blogs. Race blogs also frame their content in racial terms, unlike their non-race blog counterparts. I argue that these differences set race blogs apart from political blogs and warrant using a different theoretical lens to understand their nature and role within the U.S. political and media landscape. Specifically, I argue that race blogs should be viewed not only through the theoretical lens of political and media influence, but also through the lens of collective action.

Intertextual references in British, German and Russian political interviews and blogs

Intertextual references in British, German and Russian political interviews and blogs

The feminine style, the male influence, and the paradox of gendered political blogspace

ABSTRACTThis article explores gender differences in political communication among blogging politicians. The article sets out to explore two baseline questions: (1) Are distinct gendered ‘blogstyles’ to be found among political representatives? and (2) How do gender and gendered blogstyles interplay and affect the impact of political blogs? The empirical study draws on a survey targeting blogging politicians in Sweden (N = 523). The analysis identifies substantial differences in how female and male politicians communicate in the blogosphere as well as the outcomes in terms of feedback and impact. Female politicians, to a greater degree than their male counterparts, utilize blogging for the purpose of fostering a stronger connection with their readers as well as to enquire about ideas and policy perspectives. This strategy seems to be successful for fostering qualitative feedback from readers; yet, female bloggers have far less impact than their male colleges. We discuss two potential understandings of these results: relating to gender stereotypes and the network power structure of the blogosphere.

Political Science in Real Time: Engaging the Middle East Policy Public

A decade ago, very few political scientists had either the opportunity or the incentive to engage with the political public in a direct, unmediated way. Today, there is a dense and eclectic ecosystem of political science and international relations-focused blogs and online publications, where good work can easily find an audience through social media. There are multiple initiatives dedicated to supporting academic interventions in the public sphere, and virtually every political or cultural magazine of note now offers a robust online section featuring commentary and analysis in which political scientists are well represented. This has transformed publication for a broader public from something exotic to something utterly routine. I discuss how these changes have affected individual scholars, the field of political science, and the political world with which we are engaged.

Blog Consumption and International Relations

ABSTRACTInternational relations professors have sought to incorporate current events into their curriculum through various mechanisms. A traditional way to incorporate the news into the classroom is to have students either subscribe and read a particular newspaper or watch the nightly news and hold them responsible for that information. However, with the growing body of professional political science blogs available to the general public, we now have access to immediate current-event updates framed through the lens of political science. This article tests to see if having students regularly read professional political science blogs increases student achievement on multiple-choice exams when compared to students that were not following blogs in introductory to international relations courses. While controlling for other factors, the regression models demonstrate a 5% increase in performance on later exams by blog-consuming students over those who were not required to read blog posts. These results indicate that, in addition to other factors, there are pedagogical reasons to encourage (rather than prohibit) political science scholars from blogging.

Network Politics and the Arab Spring

Network politics is examined in the context of the Arab Spring. Network politics refers to politics and networks. These networks include the Internet, private networks, cellular networks, telephone networks, radio networks, television networks, etc. Network politics includes the applications of networks to enable one or more individuals or organizations to engage in political communication. Furthermore, network politics includes government regulation of networks. Finally, network politics includes the accompanying issues that arise when networks are used for political communication or when there is government regulation of networks. The domain of network politics includes, but is not limited to, e-politics (social networking for driving revolutions and organizing protests, online petitions, political blogs and vlogs, whistleblower websites, online campaigning, e-participation, virtual town halls, e-voting, Internet freedom, access to information, net neutrality, etc.) and applications of other networks in politics (robocalling, text messaging, TV broadcasting, etc.). Network politics has played a crucial role in the Arab Spring.

Neocolonial Biopolitics in Southern Arizona: Lessons Learned from the SB 1070 Boycott

During April 2010, in response to Arizona Senate Bill (SB) 1070 (a bill that allows law enforcement to initiate deportation processes during routine traffic stops, for example), a national boycott of Arizona was implemented by local and national non-profit organizations, grassroots groups, celebrities, musicians, activists, and other stakeholders. However, one year after its very successful inception, the SB 1070 boycott was suddenly called off by its more mainstream participants. In this article, I analyze the SB 1070 boycott as discussed in newspaper and television coverage, community and activist group websites, and political blogs in an attempt to understand why this boycott lost its momentum. Ultimately, I find that the SB 1070 boycott became a productive site from which the violent regime of neocolonial governance in the US Southwest was reaffirmed and rearticulated—especially the raced, classed, and gendered logics of this regime. I conclude by summarizing some of the “lessons” from the SB 1070 boycott in terms of consolidating insurgent geopolitical power in the US Southwest and beyond. Specifically, due to the various forces that co-opted and neutralized the insurgent potential of the SB 1070 boycott, I argue for abolition as a central grassroots political project or primary organizing goal.

More than popularity matters: How would voters like to get social networking with candidates?

An online survey was conducted to assess motivations for using, reliance on, and perceived credibility of political blogs and microblogs during both the Taiwanese general election of 2009 (the blog epoch) and the presidential elections of 2012 (the microblog epoch). Results indicated higher reliance on and motivation for using political blogs than microblogs. Blogs were also perceived to be more credible than microblogs. Respondents who primarily engaged in blogging for information purposes were more likely to judge candidate blogs as highly credible, whereas interest in entertainment emerged as the strongest predictor of the perceived credibility of microblogs. This research also provided quantitative evidence showing how users viewed blogs and microblogs differently in the context of political campaigns. The aim is to explore the pros and cons of blogging and microblogging as a tool for political communication.

Need for orientation predicts reporters’ reliance on blogs

A survey of political reporters covering the 2008 presidential election shows that Washington-based reporters with limited journalism experience are the most likely to rely on political blogs. The reporters appear to rely on bloggers more for their opinions about the presidential race than for factual information or interpretation.