Political News Research Articles

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.

The specifics of media consumption of political information by students: a regional aspect (based on the results of a sociological study)

The article presents the results of a sociological study conducted by a survey in the period from March 2022 to March 2024 by the Department of Public Relations and Applied Political Science of Kazan Federal University in order to identify the level of student interest in politics, youth preferences regarding the choice of sources of political news in the QMS, including in the media, and trust in them. Thus, based on the purpose of the study, its object is the student youth, and the subject is the specifics of the media consumption of political information by the student youth. The data obtained from the study of students' requests for the consumption of political content, its impact on the attitude of young students to politics and the institution of elections in the context of digitalization of everyday media practices are described. The methodological basis of the research was based on the analysis of media consumption by young people, as well as the level of interest in political information, its sources, and forms of presentation in social networks. The empirical base is the data from a survey of KFU students in the period from March 2022 to March 2024. The increasing influence of media systems, digital industries and technologies on all processes taking place in society has actualized the problem of optimizing interaction in the communication space in all its segments, including in the field of politics, in the processes of legitimization of power. The formation of a model of interaction between the younger generation and the government, its communication with the political elite and public administration institutions is particularly difficult. This problem is connected, on the one hand, with the high integration of young people into the digital environment, the mediatized format of socialization, and the growing multi-level demand of the younger generation for social media. On the other hand, the difficulty of establishing communication between young citizens and the authorities is due to their certain detachment from the world of politics. The results obtained indicate a low level of interest among young people in it, which is largely situational in nature, usually associated with some major events. In general, a rather low social and political activity of the new generation has been revealed, which is also recorded by numerous other researchers, since there is undoubtedly a potential interest of the younger generation in politics.

The Argumentative Structural Shifts in English-Arabic Translation of BBC News Reports: A Sociolinguistic And Cultural Perspective

The socio-cultural and ideological features of translation have become so prominent that many studies have investigated the translation shifts resulting from the linguistic transference from the source language (SL) into the target language (TL). It is the primary aim of the present article to demonstrate the nature of the structural (morpho-syntactic) shifts in the Arabic written translation of English political British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news, which may be attributable to differences in cultural, ideological and sociolinguistic backgrounds of the target language speakers (Arabic). The heterogeneity of the socio-cultural context in which the English and Arabic political discourses are communicated is reflected in the syntactic shifts in the sentential and phrasal structure in the translation process of BBC News. The target texts (TT) exhibit a substantial tendency to conform to the socio-cultural and ideological context of the target language (TL) at the expense of the morphosyntactic structure of the ST. The research methodology involves analyzing some English BBC news extracts (ST) and their Arabic translation to investigate the structural shifts in translation. The data analysis, conducted with meticulous attention to detail, shows that the Arabic translation alters the (ST) linguistic structures and shifts the socio-cultural and ideological conceptions of the target text (TT) readers. A key aspect of the methodology is the adoption of a comparative approach, which allows for a thorough examination of the structural differences and similarities and their corresponding content. The article also takes cognizance of Hatim's (1997) ideas on translation across different cultures and those of Fishman (1972) on the sociolinguistic reflections of language. The study concludes that the target readers' cultural background, ideological make-up and sociolinguistic perception can be altered due to the structural shifts in translating political news into Arabic. It shows that the structural shifts lead to specific deviations in the argumentative structure of the source text (ST) through argumentation or counter-argumentation.

In Punishment We Trust: Analyzing Characteristics and Credibility of Rumor-Debunking Messages on Chinese Social Media

Research on fact-checking journalism has predominantly centered on Western countries, often overlooking how distinct political media systems in non-Western countries might influence its practices and effectiveness. This article addresses this gap by focusing on government-led fact-checking in China, referred to as “rumor-debunking,” and we argue that compared to the Western mode of fact-checking, rumor debunking differs significantly with its unique motives, targets, and outcomes within the context of an authoritarian regime. Employing content analysis (Study 1) and a conjoint experiment (Study 2), we empirically examined the characteristics and credibility perceptions of rumor-debunking messages on Chinese social media Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of Study 1 reveal that rumor-debunking efforts in China were primarily driven by government-affiliated accounts and mainly targeting ordinary citizens. Study 2 shows that message specificity mattered in that detailing the rumors being debunked, providing evidence for the debunking, and including punitive actions against rumormongers significantly enhanced perceived credibility among the Chinese public. Additionally, we found messages that received higher social endorsement—reflected by a greater number of reposts, comments, and likes—boosted credibility. However, the presence of “recommended comments,” which indicate that the account holders curated the user comments under their debunking messages, did not affect credibility. The social and political implications of rumor-debunking in authoritarian regimes were also discussed.

Exploration of Blended Teaching Mode for Ideological and Political Courses in Universities

In the era of “Internet plus,” the hybrid teaching model has injected new vitality into the reform of ideological and political education in colleges and universities, promoted the connection between online and offline teaching, built an air cloud classroom, promoted the sharing of high-quality educational resources, and enabled the reform of ideological and political education, which is conducive to stimulating students’ interest in learning ideological and political courses and improving the quality of ideological and political education. College ideological and political education teachers should actively learn the concept of blended learning, create micro lessons based on teaching content, introduce current political news, and use micro lessons to guide students’ pre-class preparation. Universities can carry out online live teaching, conduct interactive sessions, group discussions, and online testing to improve the quality of online teaching, collect online teaching data, conduct precise offline teaching, and optimize the connection between in-class and out-of-class teaching, utilizing big data to conduct teaching evaluation, collect student teaching suggestions, and comprehensively improve the quality of blended learning in ideological and political courses.

Comparison of Hugo Chavez and Donald Trump within the framework of populism. Journal of Law and Politics

Comparison of Hugo Chavez and Donald Trump within the framework of populism. Journal of Law and Politics

Constructivism and Euro-Atlantic integration perspectives: the case of Montenegro's accession to NATO and the EU. Journal of Law and Politics

Constructivism and Euro-Atlantic integration perspectives: the case of Montenegro's accession to NATO and the EU. Journal of Law and Politics

Motivation across terrorism: ideological, strategic and tactical objectives of terrorist attacks. Journal of Law and Politics

Motivation across terrorism: ideological, strategic and tactical objectives of terrorist attacks. Journal of Law and Politics

The Point of No Return: A Review Essay

Abstract Thomas Byrne Edsall is one of America's finest political journalists and a foremost amplifier of the work of political scientists and other scholars. Academic research bolsters his argument in virtually every chapter of The Point of No Return. The book is a collection of his New York Times columns, bookended by a new introduction and conclusion, spanning the period from Donald Trump's rise in the 2016 election to his attempt to overturn the presidential election four years later. A remarkable feature of Edsall's columns is how quickly he diagnosed emerging developments that would come to define our politics, including the Republican Establishment's rapid descent, Trump's unwavering and cult-like following, the pernicious effects of disinformation, the Democratic Party's inept response to social and cultural change, and the likelihood that Trump would not surrender power peacefully if he lost the 2020 election. A running theme throughout the book is the danger that Trump poses to the nation's democracy. The Point of No Return is the latest book in the four-decade career of a journalist who regularly has enlarged our understanding of American politics.

Methodology of Strengthening Students’ Media Literacy

In today’s digital age, media literacy has become an essential skill for students. The rise of social media, fake news, and information overload necessitates that students critically evaluate and understand media messages. Media literacy involves the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and communicate using various forms of media. It is not merely about learning to use digital tools, but about understanding how media influences perceptions and behavior. The growing role of media in shaping political, social, and cultural realities makes it essential to adopt methodologies that strengthen students' media literacy skills. This article explores key methodologies that educators can implement to enhance media literacy in students.

Partisanship and Older Americans’ Engagement with Dubious Political News

Abstract Studies based on digital trace data show that older Americans visit and share dubious news sources far more often than younger cohorts, tendencies often attributed to lower levels of digital literacy. At the same time, survey experiments show that older Americans are no worse, if not better, at discerning between false and accurate news. If older Americans can identify misleading news content equally well, why are they still more likely to engage with it in observational settings? In this article, we combine survey measures and digital trace data for three nationally representative samples (N = 9,944) to argue that the existing literature overemphasizes the importance of factors like digital literacy relative to standard political variables such as political interest and partisanship, factors known to increase across the lifespan. Calcified partisanship in particular makes older Americans vulnerable to hyperpartisan news—which is highly slanted but not verified as explicitly false. High rates of engagement with this category of content, which has been examined in survey studies of older citizens less regularly in the literature, may partially explain the high rates of engagement with dubious news domains in behavioral trace data. In all, our findings have important implications for how we understand—and might intervene to reduce—high engagement among this cohort with dubious news.

The Austrian Political Advertisement Scandal: Patterns of “Journalism for Sale”

Mounting concern surrounds the influence of political actors on journalism, especially as media outlets face increasing financial pressures. These circumstances can give rise to instances of media capture, a mutually corrupting relationship between political actors and media organizations. However, empirical evidence substantiating such mechanisms and their consequences remains limited, particularly in the context of Western democracies. This chapter investigates a recent case in which a former Austrian chancellor allegedly colluded with a tabloid newspaper to receive better news coverage in exchange for increased ad placements by government institutions. We employ automated content analysis to investigate political news articles from seventeen prominent Austrian news outlets spanning 2012–2021 ( n = 222,659). Adopting a difference-in-differences approach, we find a substantial increase in media visibility of the former Austrian chancellor within the news outlet that is alleged to have received bribes, as well as a decrease in favorability for challenger candidates. Although this study does not aim to prove or disprove the involvement of specific political actors or media organizations in unethical or illegal activities, it introduces an innovative method for detecting unusual patterns in media reporting. Findings are discussed in the context of current threats to media independence and underscore the crucial need to protect journalistic integrity and ensure unbiased information for the public.

Political Labeling on Social Media: a Netnographic Study of “SDM Rendah” in Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election on X (Twitter)

The 2024 presidential election campaign in Indonesia has produced various unique phenomena, including the emergence of the "Low Human Resources'' (SDM Rendah) label directed at the supporters of candidate pair 02 by the supporters of candidate pairs 01 and 03. The existence of this label has become a spotlight because it reflects the dynamics of politics and social interaction within the community. In conducting the netnographic research strategy in this study, the primary focus is on gaining a deep understanding of the underlying reasons for this labeling, as well as how it affects public perception and the overall political dynamics. The social media platform X was selected as the research subject due to its crucial role in facilitating communicative interaction, including the labeling process. It is expected that the results of this research can provide deeper insights into the phenomenon of labeling in the political realm on the X social media platform, as well as provide a better understanding for politicians and the public regarding the importance of using social media platforms wisely in the political context. This research also has significant academic implications in the field of communication science, particularly in the theory of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), which can contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of social media in contemporary politics. The practical implications cannot be overlooked either, especially in the efforts to raise awareness of the power and impact of social media platforms in the political context during the 2024 presidential campaign in Indonesia.

Spanish (Neo-)Party Press: The Case of the Digital Native Newspaper La Última Hora and Podemos

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the traditional party press model is currently making a comeback, due to social polarisation, digital technologies and the online-only press, whose partisan and ideological nature provides a favourable context for media outlets acting at the service of a specific political party. In Spain, the consolidation of the online-only press has coincided with the breakdown of the two-party system, leading to the appearance of La Última Hora Noticias (LUH), a digital native newspaper that defines itself as independent, but whose discourse is identifiable with the position of political party Podemos, in what can be regarded as a sort of “neo-party press”. This paper aims to shed light on this trend by analysing LUH in terms of the characteristics of the traditional party press, the topics that it covers, the frequency with which it mentions Podemos and its leaders and how it represents them, and the different parties that it defends or criticises. The results reveal that LUH uses party-press techniques, clearly identifies with Podemos’ political interests, and resorts to formulas that are closer to propaganda than to political journalism.

“He is the riskiest candidate standing on this stage”: social, verbal, and nonverbal aggression in the 2020 Democratic primary debates

U.S. presidential debates remain among the most watched political media despite their increasing levels of incivility. The 2020 Democratic primary debates were distinct as a record number of candidates sought to unseat a controversial Republican incumbent and fought against perceived party outsiders. This study content analyzes how Democratic candidates engaged in social aggression, a form of incivility attacking self-esteem and reputation with the goal to get ahead. Specifically, I examine how social, verbal, and nonverbal aggression were used by frontrunners and trailing candidates, whether populist candidates perpetrated aggression differently from non-populists, and differences by gender. Results revealed no significant differences in perpetrated aggression between the frontrunner and trailing candidates, nor between populists and non-populists. However, female candidates engaged in proportionally more social aggression than male candidates, who engaged in proportionally more verbal aggression than female candidates.

Potential of elites in consolidation of public opinion in eastern and western approaches

The authors proceed from the classical understanding of the elite as a social group endowed with power and capable of influencing public opinion. The paper represents the examination of the role of elites – political, economic and social – in the formation of public ideas, values and political attitudes. The problem is conditioned, on the one hand, by the intensification of geopolitical confrontation and the formation of polar ideological concepts on both sides of the ocean, on the other hand – by the dynamic change in characteristics of media environment, which lead to increased centrifugal processes and polarization of public opinion on current events, values and ideology. The authors take into account the widely accepted hypothesis of relative homogeneity of elites (Huntington, Sklair) in the sense that cultural differences and stereotypes influence decision-making in this environment the least. This assumption became the starting point in choosing the topic, predetermined the search for possible points of contact in building a public dialogue, and, in general, served as the basis for a conceptual assessment of the ability of elites to resolve insurmountable contradictions between different segments of the political media space. The authors identified similarities and differences in the understanding of the social and political role of elites in the East and West and proposed possible routes for the development of dialogue. The study is based on the works of the classics of the theory of elites, as well as on modern research in the field of social communication and media.

Ganjar Pranowo's Branding Politics Through Instagram Media in the 2024 Presidential Election Contestation

This research is motivated by the use of social media by political actors to build political branding which is one of the strategies to increase the electability of one of the presidential candidates in the 2024 presidential election contest, namely Ganjar Pranowo. The purpose of this research is to find out the political branding displayed by Ganjar Pranowo on Instagram social media as a political media in strengthening his electability in the Contestation of the 2024 Presidential Election of the Republic of Indonesia. The method used in this research is a qualitative research method with a descriptive approach. The data collection technique in this research uses observation and documentation. The results showed that political branding carried out on Instagram @ganjar_pranowo, consisting of 4 categories, namely policy, person, party, and presentation.

Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs’ Paths to Freedom Between Journalism and Popular Fiction in the Novel "Anā Ḥurra" (I Am Free)

Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs (1919-1990) is one of the best-known journalists in the history of Egyptian political journalism. He began his career at Rūz al-Yūsuf magazine, founded by his mother, the celebrated actress and journalist who named the journal after herself. He was also a famed author of popular fiction, which was serialised in Egyptian mainstream weeklies from the late forties through the eighties. His name is associated with mass readership and sentimental novels and short stories whose protagonists often are young women struggling for freedom in a traditional and patriarchal society. In this article we will analyse his first success, the novel Anā Ḥurra (I Am Free), which was written a year after the 1952 Egyptian revolution. The aim of this study is to re-evaluate the underrated field of popular and middlebrow Arabic literature. We will focus on the relation between female liberation and politics in the novel, in particular how the story of the young protagonist’s search for freedom reflects the failures of the 1952 revolution. Keywords: Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs, Rūz al-Yūsuf, Anā Ḥurra, Journalism, Popular literature, Rebellion, Freedom.

The Periodical as Political Educator

Abstract This essay discusses how forms like political magazines, cultural journals, and party newspapers produced by twentieth-century anticolonial, left, and oppositional movements instituted practices of alternative pedagogy and political education across the Global South. These “revolutionary papers” served as a pedagogical infrastructure encompassing a critical curriculum drawn from ongoing movements, alternative histories, and regional literary production, to be used for collective practices of debate and inquiry. The essay introduces a series of digital teaching tools featured in the issue that study revolutionary periodicals such as the Cairo-based Afro-Asian literary magazine Lotus and underground pamphlets from the Mau Mau movement in Kenya. These teaching tools are accessible, interactive resources that provide archival, literary, and historical insights on movements and associated print cultures and are designed as pedagogical aids for the classroom and for political education in community settings. Along the way, the essay reflects on anticolonial periodicals as a resource for ongoing debates around decolonizing the university, and the possibilities presented by digital humanities approaches for the study of anticolonialism and Global South cultures.