Political News Research Articles

Fact-checking information from large language models can decrease headline discernment

Fact checking can be an effective strategy against misinformation, but its implementation at scale is impeded by the overwhelming volume of information online. Recent AI language models have shown impressive ability in fact-checking tasks, but how humans interact with fact-checking information provided by these models is unclear. Here, we investigate the impact of fact-checking information generated by a popular large language model (LLM) on belief in, and sharing intent of, political news headlines in a preregistered randomized control experiment. Although the LLM accurately identifies most false headlines (90%), we find that this information does not significantly improve participants' ability to discern headline accuracy or share accurate news. In contrast, viewing human-generated fact checks enhances discernment in both cases. Subsequent analysis reveals that the AI fact-checker is harmful in specific cases: It decreases beliefs in true headlines that it mislabels as false and increases beliefs in false headlines that it is unsure about. On the positive side, AI fact-checking information increases the sharing intent for correctly labeled true headlines. When participants are given the option to view LLM fact checks and choose to do so, they are significantly more likely to share both true and false news but only more likely to believe false headlines. Our findings highlight an important source of potential harm stemming from AI applications and underscore the critical need for policies to prevent or mitigate such unintended consequences.

Édouard Dolléans: First Modern Historian of Chartism?

Though Édouard Dolléans (1877–1954) was described by Malcolm Chase as Chartism’s first modern historian, his writings on the subject have never been translated into English and are largely unfamiliar to current historians of the movement. This paper discusses the two editions of Dolléans’s history of Chartism, published in 1912–13 and 1949, and the uses that Dolléans made of these materials in his wider labour histories and political journalism. It locates Dolléans within a first phase of Chartist historiography that was international in character and resonates with current concerns with a transnational labour history. It also situates Dolléans within distinctively French intellectual traditions as his perspectives on Chartism were shaped and reshaped in turbulent political times amidst influences that ranged from syndicalism and the Popular Front to wartime collaboration and the labour movement’s Cold War polarization. Though Dolléans was a flawed historian, he provides a notable case study in the interactions of past and present in the writing of labour history and both influenced and anticipated the concerns with activist biography of a later generation of French labour historians.

Reviewer Acknowledgements for Journal of Politics and Law, Vol. 17, No. 4

Reviewer acknowledgements for Journal of Politics and Law, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2024

Impacts of Donald Trump's tweets on volatilities in the European stock markets

This study investigates whether political news from Donald J. Trump affects European stock markets. We use realized volatility and the HAR-RV model to examine the effect of Trump's tweets on the stock market volatility in Germany, France, and the UK during his last presidential term. Results indicate that Trump's tweets positively impact volatilities in European stock markets, with these impacts increasing as attention to his tweets rises. The effect on the UK stock market is relatively weaker. The empirical results indicate that Trump's tweets influence global stock markets beyond the US.

Framing in media and communication studies: A bibliometric analysis

This paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of framing and frame theory in media and communication studies, utilizing Web of Science (WOS) data from 2014 to 2023. Framing, as a critical concept in media discourse, shapes public perception by highlighting specific aspects of information while downplaying others. Despite its central role in political communication, news framing, and social media research, there is a notable gap in better incorporating linguistic perspectives, particularly metaphor framing, within the existing literature. Using VOSviewer, this study analyzes co-occurrence networks and thematic clusters to map the evolving landscape of framing research. The results reveal key areas of focus, including political communication, science communication, and identity politics on social media platforms, while also highlighting the underrepresentation of linguistic approaches. This analysis not only identifies influential authors and institutions but also underscores the need for further integrating cognitive linguistic theories, such as metaphor framing, to deepen our understanding of how media discourse constructs reality. The paper concludes by suggesting directions for future research, calling for more interdisciplinary studies to explore the complex mechanisms underlying media framing.

Fiscal Forecasting Rationality Among Expert Forecasters

ABSTRACTMacroeconomic theories attribute rigidities in expectations formation to two mechanisms: sticky or noisy information. Recent advances in testing time variations in forecast dispersion—using the fluctuation rationality test—allow detecting departures from forecaster rationality over time. Relating individual forecaster behavior to economic or political factors on a panel of budget balance forecasts from Consensus Economics, a large panel of individual expert forecasters in four major OECD countries between 1993 to 2023, we find evidence for forecaster behavior in line with noisy information. Traditional full‐sample tests show that forecasters are not rational, but this is due to an overly pessimistic reaction to sudden big shifts, like the global financial crisis or the pandemic. In normal times, forecasters do systematically incorporate economic and political news in budget forecast revisions.

Patterns and Factors of Political Disconnection on Social Media: A Cross-Platform Comparison

There is a growing body of literature on the use and selection of social media platforms for political activism. However, less attention has been given to identifying citizens who are politically disconnected—those registered on social media platforms but not engaging in political activities. Additionally, whether patterns of non-use of social media for politics vary across different platforms remains understudied. Based on an online survey of 1,978 respondents conducted after the 2022 French presidential election campaign, this article aims to address these questions by examining the patterns and factors contributing to political disconnection from social media, particularly across six platforms: Facebook, private social networks, Instagram, Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. Our findings indicate that three main factors explain political disconnection: digital skills, interest in politics (except for platforms less frequently used for politics), and social media efficacy. These results provide significant and original contributions to the broader debate on how and why individuals disconnect socially and technologically on social media platforms. While many studies focus on the variables that account for political participation in the age of social media, ours examines the conditions that explain non-use in the context of political disconnection. We also contribute to the existing literature by analysing the phenomenon of non-use holistically, addressing platform type, demographics, digital literacy, and political traits (e.g., interest and competence).

The role of social media in the political construction of identity: Implications for political dynamics and democracy in Indonesia

This research explores the role of social media in the political construction of identity, analyzing how these platforms mediate the expression and formation of individual and group political identities. The focus is on how social media changes the dynamics of communication and social interaction, facilitating the formation of “echo chambers” and increasing political polarization. Additionally, this study highlights challenges such as disinformation and the implications of social media for the health of democracy. As a researcher, I aim to highlight the broader implications of using social media in identity politics. By analyzing the impact of social media on political dynamics in Indonesia, this study reveals how social media influences public perception and political decisions. This study identifies how social media can be used as a tool to mobilize political support, but also how these platforms can spread disinformation and reinforce political polarization. Based on these concerns, researchers have not yet found research results that examine how social media specifically impacts the construction of political identity. This research aims to highlight how social media not only acts as a communication tool but also as a medium that influences the way individuals view and express their political identity. Through a qualitative approach, this study provides new insights into the impact of social media in contemporary political dynamics and the importance of digital literacy in addressing issues of identity politics in the digital era.

News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

Abstract This article examines the information sharing behavior of U.S. politicians and the mass public by mapping the ideological sharing space of political news on social media. As data, we use the near-universal currency of online information exchange: web links. We introduce a methodological approach and software to unify the measurement of ideology across social media platforms by using sharing data to jointly estimate the ideology of news media organizations, politicians, and the mass public. Empirically, we show that (1) politicians who share ideologically polarized content share, by far, the most political news and commentary and (2) that the less competitive elections are, the more likely politicians are to share polarized information. These results demonstrate that news and commentary shared by politicians come from a highly unrepresentative set of ideologically extreme legislators and that decreases in election pressures (e.g., by gerrymandering) may encourage polarized sharing behavior.

What’s on and who’s Watching? Combining People-Meter Data and Subtitle Data to Explore Television Exposure to Political News

ABSTRACT Understanding television viewing behavior is highly relevant, as it remains an important source of political news for many. Nowadays, viewers can choose between a growing diversity of formats covering political news, varying from traditional news broadcasts to late-night talk shows and satire. Yet, we have little to no information about the specific political content provided by television programs; and much less how this can be connected to viewing behavior and audience characteristics (political interest, ideology). Moving forward, using unique Dutch audience-meter data (3,672 viewers from 1,761 different households) from July 2017 to July 2018, we explore who is exposed to which (political) topic in what type of television program. We use automated content analysis to analyze the subtitles of television programs (N = 21,480). Our results indicate that situational factors, such as lead-in and lead-out effects affect news exposure. We also found that political interest does not only shape the volume but also the composition of audiences’ political information diets. Results show that higher political interest was associated with television audiences receiving a greater proportion of their news from public affairs and opinion programs. There does not appear to be any difference in patterns for political ideology; similar proportions of each type of program make up the information diets for both left and right viewers.

Correction to: Partisanship and Older Americans’ Engagement with Dubious Political News

Correction to: Partisanship and Older Americans’ Engagement with Dubious Political News

Fake News Detection in Hausa Language Using Transfer Learning Method

Fake news poses a significant threat to societies worldwide, including in Hausa-speaking regions, where misinformation is rapidly disseminated via social media. The lack of NLP resources tailored to this language exacerbated the problem of fake news in the Hausa language. While extensive research has been conducted on counterfeit news detection in languages such as English, little attention has been paid to languages like Hausa, leaving a significant portion of the global population vulnerable to misinformation. Traditional machine-learning approaches often fail to perform well in low-resource settings due to insufficient training data and linguistic resources. This study aims to develop a robust model for detecting fake news in the Hausa language by leveraging transfer learning techniques with adaptive fine-tuning. A dataset of over 6,600 news articles, including both fake and truthful articles, was collected from various sources between January 2022 and December 2023. Cross-lingual transfer Learning (XLT) was employed to adapt pre- trained models for the low-resource Hausa language. The model was fine-tuned and evaluated using performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F-score, AUC-ROC, and PR curves. Results demonstrated a high accuracy rate in identifying fake news, with significant improvements in detecting misinformation within political and world news categories. This study addresses the gap in Hausa- language natural language processing (NLP) and contributes to the fight against misinformation in Nigeria. The findings are relevant for developing AI- driven tools to curb fake news dissemination in African languages.

Ideological Manipulation in Aljazeera Live News Interpretation: A Normative Study

Translation and Interpretation has long been scrutinised from the linguistic, social, and cultural perspectives, with a recent emphasis on the impact of social, cultural, and ideological factors on translation. Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), pioneered by Gideon Toury, prioritise understanding translations within social and cultural contexts rather than prescribing norms. Political news translation and interpretation, particularly in conflict contexts, underscores the sensitive and controversial nature of translation decisions as they are influenced by political and ideological stances. This study investigates the dominant norms shaping the interpretating of international news on Al-Jazeera’s Live Channel. Through qualitative content analysis guided by Toury’s framework, the prevailing interpreting norms were identified. Analyses revealed the dominance of target-oriented norms in Al-Jazeera’s interpreters, reflecting adherence to the target culture's social, cultural, and ideological norms. The study contributes to our understanding of interpreting as a socially-embedded practice and its implications for political discourse and ideological representation.

Заперечення Голодомору як наукова проблема: методи та перспективи дослідження

The study of the history and methods of Holodomor denial is an important scientific issue. The denial of the Holodomor began already during its implementation and did not stop until the collapse of the USSR. The first to deny the Holodomor were its organizers and perpetrators, the Bolshevik leaders of the USSR. The communist regime of the Soviet Union stubbornly and consistently refused to recognize the fact of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine and tried to conceal its catastrophic demographic consequences. To accomplish this task, not only the propaganda apparatus and special services were involved, but also cultural figures, educators, and scholars. Western intellectuals and journalists who belonged to the left or liberal ideas made a significant contribution to the silencing and later denial of the Holodomor. It was only in the late 1980s, under pressure from changes in the domestic political and international situation, that the Communists had to recognize the famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. However, as an official explanation for those events, the authorities immediately offered a version that absolved the Kremlin of responsibility for the multimillion human victims of the Holodomor. At the same time, the Communists continued to deny that the artificial famine was anti-Ukrainian. The denial of the Holodomor did not end with the collapse of the USSR. After Ukraine declared its independence, Russia became the main opponent of the dissemination of information about the Holodomor and the organizer of the campaign to deny its recognition as an act of genocide. In contrast to Ukraine, in Western historiography, the study of the history and theory of genocide denial has long been the focus of research by a number of scholars. In Western countries, research on the denial of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and other cases of mass extermination of civilians began in the 1980s and 1990s. At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a consensus was formed that genocide denial is a separate genre of political journalism and pseudo-scientific literature, and thus a separate subject of study. The application of the research findings of Western scholars of twentieth-century genocide denial will provide an opportunity to better understand the policy of Holodomor denial that was used in the past by the USSR and is now used by Russia in its information war against Ukraine. All of this gives reason to believe that the study of the history and theory of Holodomor denial has great scientific prospects. By studying the Holodomor denial, Ukrainian scholars have the opportunity to use the work of their foreign colleagues. This will facilitate the integration of Ukrainian science into the global scientific community. Keywords: Holodomor, genocide, Holodomor denial, genocide denial, propaganda, USSR, Russia.

Leaving a Legacy: Shifting Media Use and American Democratic Attitudes

AbstractLocal political news is losing consumers over the past decade at a faster rate than other political media, while online news consumption is growing. Previous research shows that local news can slow polarization, encourage political participation, and reduce government and business corruption, but not whether changes over time can affect political attitudes. Is this consequential shift in the media environment associated with changes in Americans’ perceptions of electoral integrity and their system of government? We use a three-wave panel survey from 2012 to 2014 to assess the relationship between changes in self-reported news diets and opinions about American elections and democracy. Switching out of local newspapers is associated with a significant decrease in faith in elections but does not appear to influence support for the broader U.S. system of government. We conclude by discussing the implications of declining local and legacy media news use for Americans’ attitudes toward U.S. elections and democracy in the aftermath of the 2020 elections.

From femcels to ‘femcelcore’: Women’s involuntary celibacy and the rise of heteronihilism

This article analyses the shifting media visibilities of femcels: women who self-identify as being involuntary celibate. It first considers the ‘original’ femcel community which emerged on Reddit in 2018, and which was based on often-despairing, even nihilistic, text-based discussion. It then considers the more recent shift to ‘femcelcore’: a social media aesthetic or ‘vibe’, communicated through short, apparently ironic videos on TikTok. We contextualise ‘original’ femceldom within the ‘femosphere’, a complex ecology of female-centric online communities that mirrors the deeply fatalistic, gender-essentialist, ‘red-pilled’ logics of the manosphere, and we situate ‘femcelcore’ within recent histories and aesthetics of ‘sad girl’ culture. Despite their differences, both iterations of mediated femceldom ostensibly reject patriarchal notions of feminine ‘perfection’; they seem to offer a critique of neoliberal feminism, and to comprise a potentially feminist online community, and as such, we consider whether this phenomenon may signal a radical break with the hegemonic postfeminism of recent decades. However, we argue that both iterations of femceldom ultimately provide a weak and highly problematic basis for collective feminism. Drawing on Robyn Marasco’s concept of ‘womanly nihilism’ we argue that, rather than pursuing a feminism of solidarity and collective strength, these mediated femceldoms are rooted in logics of pain and fatalism; they mobilise strategies of self-numbing, dissociation and irony, coupled with the rejection of social hope. They signify not a collective feminist movement, but a fatalistic, dissociative, ‘anti-hope’ retreat from transformative politics, and a turn to the individualising dynamics of TikTok ‘vibes’. Building on Asa Seresin’s notion of ‘heteropessimism’, we introduce the concept of ‘heteronihilism’ to make sense of the widespread mood of ‘giving up’ that is increasingly entwined with, and expressed through, the radicalisation of negative heterosexual experience. We therefore introduce a new theoretical lens for analysing the politics of gender, sexuality and popular media, in a context of a growing and complex backlash against ‘liberal feminism’.

Examining the Interconnectedness of State High Court Twitter

AbstractJudges are not the first political officials that come to mind when one considers the role of social media in modern politics. Following in the wake of some prominent judicial personalities adopting Twitter, however, a growing number of state high court judges have adopted and established more public personas on the platform. Judges use Twitter in substantively different ways than traditional elected officials (Curry and Fix 2019); however, little is understood about how the use of such social media platforms affects broader judicial networks. Recognizing that judges, like typical social media users, may aspire to expand their networks to build and appeal to broader audiences, we contend that active participation in judicial Twitterverse could yield personal and professional advantages. Here, we address a currently unexplored question: To what extent have judges formed a distinctive “judicial network,” on Twitter, and what discernible patterns present in these networks? Leveraging the unique structure of social media, we collect comprehensive network data on judging using Twitter and analyze what institutional and social factors impact greater power within the judicial network. We find that early adoption, electoral concerns, and connective links between judges all impact the strength of the judicial network, highlighting the complex motivations driving judicial Twitter engagement, and the significance of network building in judges’ social media strategies and its potential impact on career advancement.

The Private Life of QAnon: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Americans' Exposure to QAnon Content on the Web

The QAnon movement has been credited with spreading disinformation and fueling online radicalization in the United States and around the globe. While some research has documented publicly-visible communications and engagements with the QAnon movement, little work has examined individuals' actual exposure to QAnon content. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which Americans are exposed to QAnon websites, in what contexts, and to what effect. We employ a mixed methods review of 21 million website visits collected from a nationally representative sample of 1,238 American adults across laptops, smartphones, and tablets during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Quantitative techniques reveal overall levels of exposure to QAnon and who is more likely to be exposed, and qualitative techniques provide rich information about how participants came to be exposed to QAnon and how it fit within their broader media diets. We find that: (1) exposure to QAnon websites is limited and stratified by political ideology and news consumption; (2) exposure tends to occur within right-wing media ecosystems that align with QAnon beliefs; and (3) mixed methods approaches to analyzing digital trace data can provide rich insights that contextualize quantitative techniques. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of interventions to lessen exposure to problematic material online and future research on the spread of disinformation and extremist content.

Through The Looking-Glass: The Representation of Jordan and Portugal in Online-Media of Both Countries

Objectives: This article examines the media coverage in Jordan and Portugal about each other over four years (2018-21) to find out what are the subjects that the media of each country focus on, the most published stories, and the sources of these stories. Methods: A descriptive analysis method was used to evaluate 628 stories published in three online news outlets of both countries. Results: The study found that the Jordanian media published more stories about Portugal than the Portuguese media and the Jordanian media focused on sports subjects, especially football. On the other side, the Portuguese media focused on political subjects, but news about the Middle East referred to Jordan more than news related to Jordan, in particular. The dispute within the Jordanian royal family received the attention of the Portuguese press in its coverage of news from inside Jordan. In both countries, news agencies are the first source of stories. Conclusions: The results showed that the Jordanian media focused heavily on sports news related to the Portuguese national team and the player Cristiano Ronaldo, while political, economic, and even health news during the Covid-19 epidemic were few compared to sports. The Portuguese media focused more on political news than others, and the news related to the Middle East referred to Jordan more than the news about Jordan in particular, and this is linked to Jordan’s geographical location as a country located in the Middle East that shares its history and borders with Iraq, Syria, and Palestine.

The use of poll aggregators in political journalism during Brazilian 2022 presidential campaign

The present research aims to understand how Brazilian media outlets use electoral forecasting methods in journalistic articles within the scope of coverage of the 2022 presidential elections. The year 2022 was remarkable due to the launch of several poll aggregation tools by the press, which have been used as an alternative to traditional polls to reinforce the demanding electoral coverage. In this context, we collected data from journalistic articles of selected media outlets that cite their own poll aggregators from January 1, 2022, to July 31, 2022. The research maps the utilization of aggregators in newspapers and presents an analysis of the articles that use the poll aggregators. To do so, we classified the articles into three distinct categories, identified according to patterns found in the way they use the aggregator. Finally, it underlines the innovative character of the research on the use of poll aggregators by media outlets.