Political Communication Literature Research Articles

Exposure to diverse political views in contemporary media environments

Exploring the nexus between digital media and citizens’ exposure to diverse political views is imperative for understanding contemporary democratic engagement. This study builds upon Mutz and Martin’s (2001) seminal research, integrating digital communication channels previously unexamined. Our findings suggest that the interpersonal character of media interactions, rather than the mere distinction between offline and online platforms, significantly influences the diversity of political views to which individuals are exposed. Contrary to the prevalent theories of “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles,” our analysis reveals a nuanced media landscape where digital platforms facilitate both homogeneous and heterogeneous political exposures, depending on their specific affordances. This study contributes to the political communication literature by offering a comprehensive overview of exposure dynamics in the digital age.

Argumentation strategies in lobbying: toward a typology

PurposeThis paper develops a typology of argumentation strategies used in lobbying. Unlike in other strategic communication functions such as crisis or risk communication, such typologies have not been proposed in the sub-field of public affairs.Design/methodology/approachThe article synthesises the strategic communication, political communication and policy studies literature and employs exchange theory to explain the communicative-strategic exchange in public affairs. It showcases its explanatory potential with illustrative examples from Big Tech lobbying.FindingsThe paper describes that categories of argumentation strategies that a public affairs professional will choose are based on the contingency of the issue, policy objective and lobbying objective. The descriptive typology will require empirical testing to develop further.Social implicationsThe paper describes how public affairs professionals influence public policy through their argumentation strategies, which sheds light on the usually opaque activities of lobbying.Originality/valueThe proposed typology is the first of its kind for the field of public affairs. Beyond, it contributes communication-scientific insights from a rhetorical tradition to strategic communication research and other social science fields where lobbying is studied, e.g. policy studies.

#politicalcommunicationsowhite: Race and Politics in Nine Communication Journals, 1991-2021

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.

All About Feelings? Emotional Appeals as Drivers of User Engagement With Facebook Posts

Political campaigns routinely appeal to citizens’ emotions, and there is evidence that such appeals influence political behaviour. Social media, an important arena through which political actors communicate with voters, provide a rich source of data for investigating not only which communication strategies they use but also which of these engage followers. Building on political psychology and political communication literature, the present study investigates the relationship between appeals to specific emotions (fear, anger, enthusiasm, and pride) and the engagement that such posts generate on Facebook. We created an engagement index sensitive to the Facebook page follower count and employed multilevel modelling techniques. We conducted a manual content analysis of posts by British political parties and their leaders (<em>N</em> = 1,203) during the Brexit referendum debate on Facebook. We found that engagement with a post substantially increases when appeals to anger, enthusiasm, and pride are present. Conversely, there is no relationship between appeals to fear and engagement. Thus, the results indicate with observational data what we know about the effects of emotions from experimental research in political psychology. Emotions of the same valence (e.g., fear and anger) have a different relationship with user engagement and, by extension, political behaviour and participation online. This indicates that to fully understand the role of emotions in generating user engagement on Facebook, we must go beyond the positive and negative dichotomy and look at discrete emotions. Lastly, British political actors used Facebook communication to generate online political participation during the Brexit debate.

INDEXING AND AMERICAN PRESIDENCY: PAKISTANI MUSLIM SOCIETY ON THE FRONT-PAGES OF MAINSTREAM U.S. NEWSPAPERS

Mr. Joe Biden quoting a saying from Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.), vows to lift the Muslim ban from day one in the Oval office. This study shows how the U.S. mainstream liberal and the conservative printed press gave Pakistan and Pakistani society coverage in the first year of Biden's Vice Presidency under President Obama when the U.S. military interests were high in the South Asian region. Employing thematic analysis with indexing theory, the study analyzes three leading U.S. dailies from January 2009 to January 2010. The study finds media frames, issues, and sources that confirm the practical implementation of indexing theory in American news reporting on crucial foreign policy issues. About Pakistan Muslim society, the U.S. media conclude that terrorism is in the “DNA” of Pakistani people, and militants will take over Pakistan and its nuclear bomb. This study adds to the indexing theory, propaganda, political, international, and strategic communication literature. Key Words: Islamic extremism, Sharia law, Pakistani nuclear bomb, al Qaeda, Vice President Joe Biden, American print media, War on Terror, Indexing, Liberal, Conservative.

Talking about what would happen versus what happened: Tracking Congressional speeches during COVID-19

In counterfactual thinking, an imagined alternative to the reality that comprises an antecedent and a consequent is widely adopted in political discourse to justify past behaviors (i.e., counterfactual explanation) or to depict a better future (i.e., prefactual). However, they have not been properly addressed in political communication literature. Our study examines how politicians used counterfactual expressions for explanation of the past or preparation of the future during COVID-19, one of the most severe public health crises. All Congressional speeches of the Senate and House in the 116th Congress (2019-2020) were retrieved, and counterfactual expressions were identified along with time-focusing in each speech, using recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The results show that counterfactuals were more practiced among Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House. With the spread of the pandemic, the use of counterfactuals decreased, maintaining a partisan gap in the House. However, it was nearly stable, with no party differences in the Senate. Implications of our findings are discussed, regarding party polarization, institutional constraints, and the quality of Congressional deliberation. Limitations and suggestions for future research are also provided.

Increased Media Choice and Political Knowledge Gaps: A Comparative Longitudinal Study of 18 Established Democracies 1995-2015

ABSTRACT We investigate the often-stated, but disputed claim in the political science and political communication literature that increasing media choice widens inequalities in political knowledge. The assumption is that in a high-choice media environment, the politically interested will consume more news while the uninterested will avoid such content, leading, in turn, to widening differences in political knowledge. Although previous studies show that high media choice increases political knowledge gaps in the United States, comparative longitudinal evidence is currently lacking. To fill this gap, we draw on data from four rounds of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Overall, we do not find general support for the high-choice knowledge gap thesis. In most countries, there is no indication that inequality in political knowledge has increased over time. Building on recent insights from political communication research, we question key assumptions of the high choice knowledge gap thesis.

Discovered and Undiscovered Fields of Digital Politics : Mapping Online Political Communication and Online News Media Literature in Hungary

The article reviews the main theoretical and empirical contributions about digitalnews media and online political communication in Hungary. Our knowledge synthesis focuses on three specific subfields: citizens, media platforms, and political actors. Representatives of sociology, political communication studies, psychology, and linguistics have responded to the challenges of the internet over the past two decades, which has resulted in truly interdisciplinary accounts of the different aspects of digitalization in Hungary. In terms of methodology, both normative and descriptive approaches have been applied, mostly with single case-study methods. Based on an extensive review of the literature, we assess that since the early 2000s the internet has become the key subject of political communication studies, and that it has erased the boundaries between online and offline spaces. We conclude, however, that despite the richness of the literature on the internet and politics, only a limited number of studies have researched citizens’ activity and provided longitudinal analyses.

Political Communication and Popular Literature: An Analysis of Political Jingles in Nigerian Electoral Discourse

To win the support of the electorates, Nigerian politicians engage diverse resources during electoral campaigns. Some of these resources include political jingles. This study examines political discursive practices and their socio-cognitive functions in the political jingles of the 2015 general elections in Nigeria. This is to illuminate the politicians’ sociopolitical evaluations of the electorates. The data for this study comprise 50 political jingles of the presidential campaigns of the two major political parties in the country, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the main opposition party, the All Progressive Congress (APC). This study is anchored on linguistic and literary theoretical perspectives using Critical Discourse Analysis and Sociology of Literature, respectively, to reveal the inherent meanings in, and socio-cultural implications of, the discourse of the sampled political jingles. Data analysis identifies political jingles as face-saving, assertive and educative acts. It also notes that implicatures, names, lexemes, religious allusions, evidentiality and code-switching are ideologically employed in the political jingles to enhance the politicians’ personalities and acceptance among the electorates.

Expanding the Field of Political Communication: Making the Case for a Fresh Perspective Through “Propaganda Studies”

Understanding how power is exercised through communication is central to understanding the socio-political world around us. To date, however, political communication research has been limited by an over-emphasis on 'problem solving' research which, by and large, reflects the interests and concerns of more powerful political actors. Even the marginalised critical political communication literature is limited by is focus on only media. To resolve these limitations, this paper argues that critical propaganda studies can help to widen and deepen the reach of existing political communication research. It can do so by alerting us to the wide range of actors involved in propaganda production and dissemination, including governments, academics, NGOs, think tanks and popular culture, as well as the manipulative and non-consensual modes of persuasive communication, including deception, incentivization and coercion. As such, a research agenda based on critical propaganda studies can provide a fuller and more accurate understanding of the role of communication in the exercise of power, serving better the objectives of speaking truth to power, holding power to account and facilitating better, more democratic, forms of organised persuasive communication. A research agenda based upon critical propaganda studies is

The frame changers: journalists, the conflict, and peace process

ABSTRACTThis paper explores some of journalists’ struggles in gathering and framing news during the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process. Based on interviews with eight journalists who covered both periods, it details how they navigated what has been called a ‘propaganda war’ or what I call ‘frame wars’ that ran parallel with the physical conflict. These frame wars became complicating factors with which journalists grappled when seeking to produce meaningful news that fit both their professional standards and their own humanity. The processes that they revealed offers a window into three levels of social construction: First, on the level of the individual, journalists – like all people – come to understand political realities from a barrage of competing information, frames, and narratives. The journalists’ humanity arising from real experiences interacted with professional expectations to deliver news. Secondly, while traditional media’s norms, structures, and ideologies shaped newsgathering and story framing, their jobs were complicated by opposing narratives, choice of language, and subjects. Third, group dynamics and peer pressure influenced some journalists’ reportage. Placed within the context of the political communication literature, the interviews reveal thought processes among some leading journalists about the difficulties of reporting in a divided society.

Serving the Media Ministers: A Mixed Methods Study on the Personalization of Ministerial Communication

The personalization of politics has received much attention in both the political science and political communication literature, but the focus has almost entirely been on party leaders and prime m...

Perceived Influence of Opposition Political Campaign Materials on Voters

This article focuses on how political attitudes of voters are shaped and affected during election campaigns. The study is constructed on the third person effect paradigm that posits that negative messages will have a greater impact not on ‘me’ or ‘you’ but on ‘them’. Concurrently, perceived positive messages will have a greater influence on themselves compared to others, often referred to as the first-person effect or reverse-third person effect (Duck, Terry & Hogg, 1995; Perloff 1999). The present study was undertaken to understand how political communication messages can have a positive effect on own party supporters while the same message can be perceived to be biased and partisan to opposing party supporters. The current study is grounded on the research done by Idid & Souket (2014) that investigated the effects of Malaysia’s largest political party, Barisan Nasional (BN) political communication literature on two Malaysian voter groups (BN voters and opposition voters), one of which regarded the message as partisan and the other as congenial. The present study attempts to investigate the effects of each of the opposition party political communication literature on two Malaysian voter groups (BN party supporters and the particular opposition party supporter).

Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues

A large literature argues that public opinion is vulnerable to various types of framing and cue effects. However, we lack evidence on whether existing findings, which are typically based on lab experiments involving low-salience issues, travel to salient and contentious political issues in real-world voting situations. We examine the relative importance of issue frames, partisan cues, and their interaction for opinion formation using a survey experiment conducted around a highly politicized referendum on immigration policy in Switzerland. We find that voters responded to frames and cues, regardless of their direction, by increasing support for the position that is in line with their pre-existing partisan attachment. This reinforcement effect was most visible among low knowledgeable voters that identified with the party that owned the issue. These results support some of the previous findings in the political communication literature, but at the same time also point toward possible limits to framing effects in the context of salient and contested policy issues.

Satire as uncertain territory: Uncertainty expression in discussion about political satire, opinion, and news

AbstractThis study integrates satire literature and uncertainty-based theories in order to introduce more theoretical organization into the political communication and discussion literature. In doing so, the main goals of this study are (1) to bring conceptual organization to various types of political messages (i.e., satire and news), (2) to show how and why satire, in particular, is linked with uncertainty, and (3) to examine the extent to which satire and news can arouse uncertainty and encourage discussion of uncertainty in political conversations. Four types of political media messages (traditional news, opinion news, juvenalian satire, and horatian satire) are used in a computer-mediated discussion experiment to answer the study’s hypotheses. Results show that uncertainty differed across political messages (i.e., satire aroused more uncertainty) and uncertainty was expressed in discussion.

Effects of Political Campaign Materials on Party and Non-Party Voting Supporters

Political parties would normally claim that their campaign and communication materials have effects voters, be it their supporters or their opponents during election campaigns. However, such effects are assumed effects by the parties unless voters are themselves assessed about the effects of such materials themselves. The supporters of the parties are likely to regard such campaign materials as congenial to them but this may not be so with the opposition supporters who would regard such materials as negative. Taking the third-person effect to analyze effects the audience as the theoretical framework, this study posited that opposition members would regard the materials as negative and thus would claim that they would not have any effect them but they would likely say that such campaign materials would have effects own party supporters. Davison (1983) posited that individuals will perceive that negative mediated messages would have their greatest impact not on me or you but them,- the third person. Research suggests that people judge others to be more influenced than they are by media, advertising, libelous messages, media violence, pornography, and television drama. The theory referred to as the Third-person effect developed the postulation that audience members would not admit that media had any direct effect them, but would instead believe that the media influenced others, the third person (Tewksbury, Moy, & Weis, 2004; Price, Tewksbury, & Huang, 1998). On the other hand, while people would discount the effects of negative or biased messages themselves, they would, under the notion of the First Person Effect, readily admit to being influenced by such messages. This study was based studying the effects of political literature party and opposition party supporters taking the messages to be positive to one group and biased and partisan to another group. The study focuses the assumed effects of political literature own party and opposition party supporters. It traces the degree of influence of Malaysia's largest political party, Barisan Nasional (BN) political communication literature its own supporters and non-BN party supporters. While the third-person effect assumes a null or minimal effect one's self and some or strong effect others, the question that arises are welcoming favorable media effects oneself and assuming unfavorable effects others.

Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues

A large literature argues that public opinion is vulnerable to various types of framing and cue effects. However, we lack evidence on whether existing findings, which are typically based on lab experiments involving low salience issues, travel to salient and contentious political issues in real-world voting situations. We examine the relative importance of issue frames, partisan cues, and their interaction for opinion formation using a survey experiment conducted around a highly politicized referendum on immigration policy in Switzerland. We find that voters responded to frames and cues, regardless of their direction, by increasing support for the position that is in line with their pre-existing partisan attachment. This reinforcement effect was most visible among low knowledge voters that identified with the party that owned the issue. These results support some of the previous findings in the political communication literature, but at the same time also point toward possible limits to framing effects in the context of salient and contested policy issues.

Journalistic Slanting Of the Governor Chris Ngige and Chris Uba Prebendal Political Conflict in South-Eastern Nigeria, 2004-2006

Prebendal political conflicts are crises of the ruling and political class, owing to disagreement in respect of appropriation and sharing of resources and wealth of a nation state, as personal needs and entitlements, Prebendalism, which is a strong concomitant of political godfatherism, has disturbed Nigeria’s democracy. The period between 2004 and 2006 has recorded a ruinous prebendal political conflict in the South-Eastern geo-political zone of Nigeria. The conflict, which involved an erstwhile Governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Ngige and a political chieftain in the state, Chief Chris Uba, occurred with attendant violence. However, empirical studies on the role played by the press in this type of conflict situation are faint in political communication literature. This study therefore was conducted to investigate how selected newspapers reported the Ngige and Uba prebendal political conflict in South-Eastern Nigeria between 2004 and 2006. Four Nigerian national newspapers were chosen for the study, namely: Daily Champion, Daily Trust, Nigerian Tribune and The Guardian. Purposive sampling was used to select 84 journalistic genres out of 72 editions of the newspapers. The study was organized within hermeneutical framework. All the newspapers reported scenarios that aided escalation of the conflict. The coverage reflected partisanship. Most particularly, Daily Champion took side blatantly and unprofessionally with Ngige against Uba. The reportage predicted destruction of lives and properties and violent acts that were perpetrated by the supporters of the conflicting parties in Anambra State of Nigeria between 2004 and 2006. The journalistic slanting of the conflict contravenes the tenets of a socially responsible press. Newspapers in Nigeria must be socially responsible in reporting political conflicts so as to bring about a peaceful political order in the country.

Rethinking the Logics: A Conceptual Framework for the Mediatization of Politics

This article suggests a conceptual framework for the mediatization of politics. It critically discusses the concepts of “media logic” and “political logic” emanating from the political communication literature and argues that “normative logic” and “market logic” are more appropriate concepts for the theoretical understanding and empirical analysis of the behavior of mass media and political actors. These two logics guide media and political actors' issue selection and presentation to different degrees. The mediatization of politics in this account takes place when both media and political actors adapt their behavior to the audience-oriented market logic. This process works in parallel with the economic integration and technological progress comprised by the term globalization, thereby challenging established institutional mechanisms in advanced democracies.

A New Purpose for International Broadcasting: Subsidizing Deliberative Technologies in Nontransitioning States

In failed or failing states, deliberation as it is operationalized in much of the political communication literature is inapplicable. These states lack advanced communication infrastructures, press systems and public spheres, which require high literacy rates, education, the rule of law and other elements of an enabling regulatory environment. Rather than imagining deliberation as a series of exchanges over focused issues, a scaled down standard of deliberation is appropriate. Such a model could simply involve enhanced communication and information sharing among the citizenry, spreading political norms that aid some level of quasi-governance or simply improving the quality of life in challenging circumstances. Even in both starkly repressive countries and states where governments barely exist, some new communication technologies are increasingly available and they facilitate deliberative exchange. At the same time, foreign international broadcasters are complementing their traditional broadcasting with the development and promotion of deliberation technologies. This paper suggests international broadcasting agencies can find new purpose by utilizing emerging ICTs for the purpose of deliberative development in failed and failing states where public deliberation is under-developed.