Political Communication Research Articles

The defectiveness of propaganda

Abstract We argue that political propaganda is a negative phenomenon, against a recent strain of philosophical theorizing that argues that political propaganda can sometimes be neutral or even positive. After an exploration of the sense and connotation of the word ‘propaganda’ in ordinary use and in the scholarly literature, we discuss Ross's initial account of propaganda as an epistemically defective form of political communication. We claim that, with some refinements, it is an explanatorily useful analysis. We then assess two prominent attempts that aim at classifying legitimate cases of public communication as cases of propaganda, namely Ross's revision of her previous model and Stanley's influential account. We show that some of the cases in contention are problematic and that the arguments the authors offer for classifying other non-problematic cases as propaganda are inconclusive. We also argue that the idea of considering legitimate public communication as propaganda is unmotivated.

Political familiarity vs. journalism background: insights from three Israeli prime ministers on social media

PurposeTo explore a potential relationship between politicians’ media background and social media success through an analysis of content and engagement strategies adopted by three consecutive Israeli prime ministers on their official Facebook pages.Design/methodology/approachA detailed comparative content analysis of a total of 1,242 posts published by three Israeli prime ministers – Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett – on the same official Facebook account, “the Prime Minister of Israel,” during their respective terms. Metrics like engagement rates, content distribution and media type utilization were considered.FindingsAll analyzed prime ministers exhibited consistent messaging strategies, suggesting a standardized approach to digital political communication. However, we found no correlation between a politician’s media background and their success on social media. Instead, decisive determinants of engagement outcomes were factors like longstanding political exposure and familiarity.Practical implicationsThe observed uniformity in leaders’ messaging strategies indicates a prevalent standardized approach in digital political communication, revealing potential avenues for innovation and diversification.Originality/valueThis research challenges the prevailing notion that background in media inherently benefits digital political engagement, emphasizing the significance of political experience. The results provide new insights into the evolving landscape of political communication. Using signaling theory to evaluate how digital content reveals leaders’ intentions and credibility, our findings provide new insights into political communication in the digital era.

Exploring the Impact of Media Content on Social Media Engagement Through Comment Analysis

This study investigates audience participation on the social media platforms of Kantipur Daily, Sagarmatha Radio, and Nepal Television using survey data collected in 2024. A review of comments on Facebook and X(Twitter) indicated that positive feedback is primarily focused on sports and social/health/lifestyle news Moreover, opinions and economic news receive relatively less attention than political news. The study highlights particular areas that need more research and offers insightful information about audience dynamics in the context of digital communication. This finding emphasizes the value of social media as a political communication tool, which is especially clear from the positive comments on Political News. Additionally, despite certain restrictions, the results show how the communication landscape is changing and how social media is improving news accessibility and content quality. The finding indicates that social media has become a new arena for public affairs, and its results show that Facebook is more widely used than X.

Divisive Issues, Polarization, and Users’ Reactions on Facebook: Comparing Campaigning in Latin America

Economic, social, and health crises have shaken and polarized contemporary politics. An element fueling this polarization is the dissemination of divisive topics on social media platforms. While these polarizing social media tendencies are increasingly studied, research exploring digital political communication in South America remains scarce. This study aims to analyze the electoral campaigns in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Peru to define the features that trigger polarized emotional reactions on Facebook. The corpus comprises a sample of 2,930 posts published by candidates and political parties during the first round of the presidential elections held in these countries between 2021 and 2022. We hypothesize that users are more likely to react in a polarized way to content focused on divisive issues. In addition, we examine how these patterns differ across countries and the influence of the level of political polarization. Finally, the role played by party-level characteristics in the emotional reactions of users is also analyzed. By means of quantitative content analysis, these questions are addressed using multilevel negative binomial regressions to identify what predicts Love and Angry reactions. The bandwagon effect seems to work positively on users’ moods since the most popular political actors receive significantly more Love reactions, irrespective of the post’s subject. In more polarized countries, there is a tendency to react more negatively to certain divisive issues, generating greater visibility of these issues on social networks and thus promoting more polarization. These findings expand knowledge about the dynamics of digital political communication in the Global South.

Evolution of Brazilian Democracy: Unveiling Election Dynamics in Political Issues, Negativity, and Acclaim

In recent years, Brazil, as the world’s fourth-largest democracy, witnessed the dominance of polarized and symbolically charged electoral campaigns on social media, culminating in the election of a populist political figure in 2018 and his subsequent defeat in 2022. Extensive research has indicated that political campaigns often sidelined substantive policy proposals in favor of negative and divisive issues. However, a critical gap remains in the absence of temporal investigations contrasting the prevalence of negativity and acclaim campaigns on social media platforms during elections. This study addresses this gap by examining associations between political issues and negative and acclaim campaigns across two Brazilian electoral campaigns. Drawing upon a sample of messages posted on Twitter (n = 1,191) during the presidential elections of 2018 and 2022, our study reveals associations between substantive political issues, such as education and health, and acclaim campaign strategies, while the divisive issues of Covid-19 and corruption are associated with negative campaign strategies. Moreover, the results suggest that gender policy is related to both acclaim and negative messages since it is a polarizing issue in Brazilian politics. Our study also shows an increased negativity trend, with the 2022 presidential election campaign more likely to be negative than in 2018. By conducting a temporal analysis of Brazil’s political context, our study sheds light on the evolving dynamics of political communication in the age of social media, contributing substantially to the literature on negativity in political campaigns.

Images, clusters and types – Making sense of (large) image corpora and related practices in and with digital media

In November 2021, the Visual Communication Division of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) celebrated its 20th anniversary at the University of Trier with a one-year pandemic delay. Marion G. Müller, Katharina Christ and Christof Barth organized an excellent conference to mark the occasion and to reflect on past and current trends, topics, and challenges in visual communication research. Resuming the thematic scope of the division’s first conference held in Hamburg in 2000, the conference focused on “The power of images – Images of power. On visual political communication in digital contexts.” While analyses of press photography in the tradition of political iconology were the main approaches twenty years ago, the program of the anniversary conference demonstrated diversified thematic foci and methodological approaches. The presentations examined a broad range of visual digital media and visual communication exerted by various actors ranging from the press to politicians to activists and citizens. Concurrently, we also saw a considerable diversity concerning methodological approaches and a rising influence of computational methods for analyzing the increasingly large numbers of images in digital media environments. With the panel “Image type / image cluster analysis as an approach to analyzing large numbers of images in online environments,” a discussion on diverse methodological approaches and their potentials and challenges among our members started. After the conference, we decided to open up our internal discussion and reach out to international colleagues working on similar questions. The long-term result is this Thematic Section on diverse methods for structuring image data corpora drawing on different traditions of visual analysis.

China-Russia Cooperation Exchanges in Retrospect and Cultural Communication in Prospect

The year 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia. Over the past ten years, the China-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination has become increasingly close and deeply rooted in people's minds. The paper reviews the exchanges between China and Russia in the areas of political communication, economic cooperation and cultural exchanges since the 18th CPC National Congress (2012), as well as with the guidance of the strategy of Comprehensive Revitalization of Northeast China and under the background of Harbin’s Booming Winter Tourism, Northeast China makes full use of geographic advantages and resource endowments to play the role of "transfer station" and "bridgehead" in China-Russia economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges. What’s more, the paper discusses recommendations of Northeast China in terms of expanding the influence of culture and tourism, creating regional brand characteristics, and optimizing the main body, media and activities of external communication, to put forward a Chinese proposal with characteristics of the Northeast region from the perspective of China-Russian friendly exchanges and cross-cultural communication.

An Ethics of Political Communication, written by Alexander Brown

An Ethics of Political Communication, written by Alexander Brown

Politics at Play: TikTok and Digital Persuasion in Zimbabwe's 2023 General Elections

Zimbabwe's August 2023 elections were held against the backdrop of outcry over the outcomes of previous elections, which opposition political parties accusedthe ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party of rigging. Access to the public media is among the issues of contestation. Opposition political parties claim that they are not given equal space for campaigning purposes. Social networking sites such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook have recently provided spaces for political communication, where all parties have unfettered access to the electorate. Recently, TikTok has emerged as a popular social networking site, rivaling established applications in terms of its uptake, particularly among youths. Research on the social media application suggests that it is largely used for trivial purposes and does not contribute to critical dialogue. However, lately there is evidence that TikTok is being used for “serious” purposes, including activism. The study sought to find out how political actors in Zimbabwe used the TikTok platform for political communication in the run-up to the 2023 elections. The paper also examines the nature of digital persuasion on TikTok and how this enriches or trivialises political discourse. Findings show that TikTok was used to urge Zimbabwean youths to register to vote as well as to provide visual evidence of the good and the bad associated with particular political parties, as they competed for voters. It was used as a politainment tool, combining political messaging with the entertainment affordances of TikTok.

Думи на водещия

Editor Words DOI 10.55206/EBMA3053 Prof. Dr Ivanka Mavrodieva, DSc Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” Email: mavrodieva@phls.uni-sofia.bg Issue 59 (April 2024) of the Rhetoric and Communication Journal includes eight publications, which announce the results of research, among which surveys of parliamentary rhetoric and communication, which has manifestations in media and on the Internet, in politics and in society. The section “Media and Internet Communication” brings together four articles that contribute to the derivation of concepts, the delineation of the boundaries of new fields of academic research and the renewal of the categorical and conceptual apparatus in several scientific fields, for example through the terms “media culture”, “media transformation”, “cultural software” and “infor¬mation aesthetics”, “cancel culture”, “digital oral histories”, “hybrid risks and threats”. Simeon Vassilev outlines various scientific approaches to the definition of the term “media culture”; he presents theories, concepts, approaches and ad¬vo¬cates the need for a coherent theory of media transformation and media culture; the author draws conclusions about the phenomenon of media culture as a social practice. Desislava Dobreva explores a topic that is characterized by topicality and social sensitivity and examines the notion of “cancel culture”; she studies the phenomenon theoretically and historically; the author analyses current events and identifies rhetorical aspects in this specific virtual communication. Nikolina Ivanova-Bell examines the development of digital oral histories, as well as the opportunities they offer in the field of university education and academic libraries; on the basis of analyses she establishes the potential for enriching research and teaching experience in an academic environment. Andrey Velchev examines hybrid warfare from an interdisciplinary perspective; he analyses the role of the media and the Internet; the author presents the activities of institutions in identifying and neutralising hybrid threats, and in formulating and implementing strategic tasks regarding hybrid warfare. In the section “Political Communication and Parliamentary Rhetoric” two articles are included; they are written on the basis of a theoretical observation and include results of research into concepts in the fields of political science, political communication and parliamentary rhetoric in contemporary Bulgaria. Atanas Zhdrebev’s publication is devoted to populism; he discusses Takis Papas’s concept of populism as democratic illiberalism; the author gives examples of contemporary political phenomena and processes from different countries. Sofia-Nikol Nikolova examines the argumentation and rhetorical figures used by MPs during debates on significant domestic political issues and votes of no confidence and presents the results of an analysis of parliamentarian rhetoric in the 49th National Assembly in Bulgaria. The issue has a section “Contemporary Studies” in which there are options for presenting not only books, but also their contributions at the theoretical, methodological and research levels. The review of Professor Danail Danov’s book “Foundations of Media Pedagogy. A guide to the world of digital culture and its tools” is metaphorically entitled “a guide to the digital modus vivendi” by Simeon Vassilev. Professor Angel Angelov introduces Radeya Gesheva’s book “Enigmas and Paradigms in Some Twentieth-Century Italian Women Writers”. Prof. Dr. Ivanka Mavrodieva is a lecturer in rhetoric, argumentation, PR and virtual communication at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She is the author of 15 books (including “Virtual rhetoric: from diaries to social networks”, “Political rhetoric in Bulgaria: from rallies to Web 2.0 (1989 - 2012)”, “Rhetoric and Public Re¬lations”, “Online Course on Rhetoric”) and 120 articles. Her research interests are in the fields of contemporary rhetoric, virtual communication, argumentation, PR and business communication. Rhetoric and Communications Journal, issue 59, April 2024 Read the Original in Bulgarian and English

Editorial: Policy Framing and Branding in Times of Constant Crisis

This editorial serves as an introduction to <em>Media and Communication</em>’s thematic issue Policy Framing and Branding in Times of Constant Crisis. Crises cast challenges for political actors and concurrently create opportunities for policymaking, public reflections, and political competition. In times of crisis, when it comes to communicating policymaking but also framing the crisis itself, issues close to political communication (including political marketing and political branding) become of paramount relevance. The eight articles of this issue cover a broad array of subjects, expanding the understanding of the relevance of communication when it comes to policymaking in times of crisis, through the lens of policy framing and policy branding.

Trump Goes to Tulsa on Juneteenth: Placing the Study of Identity, Social Groups, and Power at the Center of Political Communication Research

ABSTRACT The increase in elites’ use of racial appeals has compelled some scholars of political communication to tell a more comprehensive story about political identity in the United States and elsewhere around the world . This occurred alongside the field of communication’s , and subfield of political communication’s , longstanding failures to develop a racial analytic – a clear reflection of the field’s overwhelming whiteness. In this forum essay, we contextualize and review some strains of new literature on identity in political communication, with a focus especially on the U.S. context and the intersection of race and political power. Our aim is to call attention to what we see as an emerging approach to centering power, identity, and social groups in the field. These works are diverse theoretically and methodologically, and their authors may or may not recognize themselves as doing work in political communication at all. But we see tremendous value in what they share analytically, substantively, and normatively, and aim to mark the emergence and – we hope – flourishing of this work.

Cable news advertising: Applying formal analysis to uncover current trends in self-promotional marketing

The emergence of 24/7 cable news channels within the US revolutionized news consumption, offering viewers accessibility beyond fixed broadcast schedules. While the phenomenon began with CNN, competitors quickly emerged, targeting different political ideologies and mirroring the heightened polarization that has altered American society. Cable news channels must market themselves effectively to their audiences through distinctive product differentiation strategies. Understanding these approaches provides insights into information dissemination, political communication, and audience engagement dynamics. This paper aims to conduct a formal media analysis of current self-promotional advertisements across the big three cable news networks within the US to derive insights into contemporary differentiation strategies crucial for monitoring the industry’s technological transition. As the rest of the world has begun to wrestle with increased polarization, this analysis will be relevant to anticipating how non-US news sources use ideology and values to position themselves within highly competitive markets.

Hate-sharing: A case study of its prevalence and impact on Gab

This article brings frameworks from literary and cultural studies and methods from network science to bear on a central topic in political communication research: polarization. Recent studies have called into question the argument that digital “echo chambers” exacerbate polarization by preventing members from encountering a diversity of information and opinions. Using Gab, a far-right social media platform, as a case study, we offer further evidence that even members of highly polarized publics do engage in “cross-cutting.” However, we develop a distinct concept of hate-sharing, or sharing content for the purpose of disagreeing with or denigrating it. We show that hate-sharing is common on Gab. Moreover, it is associated with stronger community structure than other kinds of sharing and appears to confer substantially greater influence on those who engage in it. We interpret these findings as evidence that social networks incentivize the production of networked outrage—where “hating on” linked content merges with hate.

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.

The Impact of Ambivalence on Persuasion: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis

This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between ambivalence and persuasive outcomes in communication. The meta-analysis included 22 studies with 51 effect sizes based on 14,173 (68–1,604) participants. When all the persuasive outcomes were considered together, ambivalence had a significant but small negative overall impact, r = -0.134, 95% CI [-0.192, -0.076], k = 33, z = -4.471, p < 0.001. Specifically, ambivalence had a small influence on attitude and intention. Its impact on perception and behavior were less pronounced. There was significant heterogeneity across effect sizes in overall persuasion, as well as specific persuasive outcomes. The ambivalence targeting behavior had a stronger influence on attitude than did ambivalence targeting other objects. Methodology significantly moderated the magnitude connecting ambivalence and behavioral intention, studies using experiments yielded greater sizes compared to those using surveys. With respect to context, the influence of ambivalence on attitude was stronger in advertising and health communication, compared to political communication. Studies in advertising yielded significantly greater effect sizes on behavioral intention compared to those in health communication. This study suggests that the implication of ambivalence in communication is likely a complicated and nuanced matter. Limitations and future research have also been outlined.

You change the way you talk: Examining the network, toxicity and discourse of cross-platform users on Twitter and Parler during the 2020 US Presidential Election

This study examines code-switching behaviours of cross-platform social media users specifically between Twitter and Parler during the 2020 US Presidential Election. Utilising social identity theory as a framework, we examine messages related to voter fraud by users who migrated from Twitter to Parler following Twitter bans. Our analysis covers 38,798 accounts active on both platforms, analysing 1.5 million tweets and more than 100,000 parleys. The key findings of the study are as follows: First, we discovered differing levels of network homophily between high degree centrality and low-degree centrality cross-platform users, illustrating how individuals with varying degrees of influence engage differently across platforms. Second, we observed higher toxicity levels in heterogeneous networks, which include both in-group and out-group members, compared with homogeneous networks that are primarily composed of in-group members. This suggests the level of toxicity in online spaces correlates with the level of group diversity. Third, we found that cross-platform users created distinctive discourse community with in-group and out-group members, indicating that content and discussions within these networks are influenced by the social identity dynamics of the users. Our study contributes to the current research in political communication and information science by proposing comparative user analyses across multiple social media platforms. Focusing on a critical period of platform transition during a contentious political event, our study offers insights into the dynamics of online communities and the shifting nature of political language used by social media users.

Hayder Aliyev's Perspective of the Turkic World: A Qualitative Research on the Concept of Savior Leadership in Political Communication

Subject: Individuals, who form the building blocks of society, can play different roles within their structure. Although it has a controversial and comprehensive terminology, one of the most prominent roles is leadership. Leadership is a crucial role within society, often associated with authoritarian, participatory, and charismatic concepts. The leadership of Heydar Aliyev, the founding leader of Azerbaijan, is often referred to as savior leadership. Despite the Soviet Union's long rule, Azerbaijan quickly built its identity and gained independence in 1991. Various names have been used to describe his leadership style. Purpose: In this regard, in the relevant study, the meaning categories related to the concept of savior leadership towards Haydar Aliyev will be determined and its relationship with this concept at the discourse level will be questioned. In this context, the summit declarations published regularly every year by the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking Countries (Turkic Council), which was established in 1991, constitute the sample of this study. Method: In the study, an attempt was made to comparatively analyze Haydar Aliyev's relationship with savior leadership in the context of his discourses and policies, in the declarations of the council established under the leadership of Turkey in order to integrate the newly independent Turkic Republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus into each other and into the international system. In addition, while content analysis was conducted based on qualitative data to determine which research model they reflect in terms of their content and to what extent they meet the dialogical principles, qualitative content analysis was conducted based on thematic coding to describe the topics included in the papers. MAXQDA 20 package program was used while making the analyses. Results: In the seven summit reports made between 1992-2002; Content analysis was conducted with thematic coding of regional and international integration, cultural integration, political integration and dialogue. As a result of the analysis, "One nation, two states", used by Haydar Aliyev for Turkey and Azerbaijan at the relevant summits, stands out as the most frequently used discourse under the theme of cultural integration. In addition, the Turkic World discourse, which the Republic of Azerbaijan sees in parallel with its own identity construction, is another prominent concept in regional and international integration. Under the theme of political integration, he underlined that Azerbaijan should develop friendly relations with both the region and other countries, and maintained its pro-peace attitude until the last moment, even in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which started with Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijani lands in the early 1990s. This situation also shows us the importance Aliyev attaches to dialogue. As a result, as seen in the content analysis of the summit declarations, Haydar Aliyev displayed a common attitude with Turkish President Suleyman Demirel in the integration process of the Turkic World with a policy prioritizing the full independence of Azerbaijan, but due to both the Karabakh War and the difficulties experienced in Azerbaijani domestic politics afterward, Turkey and other The economic crisis that started in 1994 in the Turkic republics caused the targeted integration to be postponed to another period. In this process, it can be said that Haydar Aliyev gave priority to cultural integration towards the Turkish world.

Possibilities and limits of political humour in a hybrid regime

This article focuses on the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP), which can be defined as a joke party. MKKP uses humour to criticise the corruption flourishing around the governing party Fidesz as well as its simplified and racist form of political communication. However, MKKP’s critical stance extends to Hungarian politicians and the political system in general. This visual ethnographic research focuses on the activities that MKKP organised during national days in Hungary between 2017 and 2022, which included a space launch, a peace march and an alternative national day celebration on 20 August. The events can be defined as parody performances. The field material is complemented by a semi-structured interview with the party activists. MKKP’s humour is critical and revealing in nature, aiming to expose the powerholders’ agenda. However, instead of ridiculing, MKKP’s humour is primarily corrective and supportive. As such, it has the potential to alleviate polarisation. In MKKP’s activism, creativity and cynicism exist in close proximity to one another. Humour also functions as a powerful antidote against simplified populist truths that rely on fearmongering and enemy images. In a hybrid regime, absurd humour can be used to reveal the inherent absurdities of the political reality. MKKP has occasionally succeeded in entering the state-controlled public sphere. During recent years, the party has started to address societal matters more seriously, without abandoning its roots as a humour party.

Institutional and political communication on TikTok: Systematic review of scientific production in Web of Science and Scopus

After the Covid-19 pandemic, political parties and international public institutions consolidated the use of TikTok as a communication tool in order to reach a young audience, which requires dynamic formats and more flexible languages. This study aims to reflect on the characteristics of institutional and political communication research in TikTok, the suitability of its methodologies, conclusions and limitations, and its future prospects. To this end, a systematic review of the scientific literature (SLR) for the period 2018-2023 is carried out, following the standards of the PRISMA Statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria to 1.186 scientific documents, 21 articles published in the Scopus and Web of Science databases were analysed. The findings indicate that Spain concentrates the highest number of publications, that the phenomenon was not studied until 2021 and that 2022 was the year of highest production. The conclusions suggest that the study of TikTok is in an incipient phase and that content analysis is the predominant methodology, although its samples are small. They also suggest that there is little bidirectionality in communication strategies, that interaction is not related to adaptation to the multimodal language of the platform and that the focus should be on studying the community rather than the messages disseminated from official profiles.