Partisan News and Political Participation: Exploring Mediated Relationships

This study examines mediators of the relationship between news consumption and political participation in the contemporary news environment. We test the differential effects exerted by pro- and counter-attitudinal news compared with balanced news on intended participation. Our primary objective is to model three paths that may link news exposure and participation: cognitive (i.e., perceived issue understanding), affective (i.e., emotions evoked by a news story), and attitudinal (i.e., attitude strength). We compare these paths across four issues, testing which is strongest. Relying on a large survey-based experiment on a representative sample of the American population (N = 2,300), we find that pro-attitudinal exposure increases intended participation relative to balanced news exposure, while the effects of counter-attitudinal news do not differ from those exerted by balanced news. Issue understanding, anger, positive emotions, and attitude strength all mediate the relationship between pro-attitudinal exposure and intended participation, with the route via attitude strength being strongest. These effects do not depend on whether exposure is self-selected or experimentally assigned.     

The Mix of Media Use Matters: Investigating the Effects of Individual News Repertoires on Offline and Online Political Participation

In contemporary high-choice media environments, people increasingly mix and combine their use of various news media into personal news repertoires. Despite this, there is still limited research on how people compose their individual news repertoires and the effects of these news repertoires. To address this and further our understanding of how media use influences political participation, this study investigates (a) how people combine the use of offline and online media into personal news repertoires and (b) the effects of different news repertoires on both offline and online political participation. Based on a two-wave panel study covering the 2014 Swedish national election, this study identifies five news repertoires, labeled minimalists, public news consumers, local news consumers, social media news consumers, and popular online news consumers. Among other things, the results show that social media news consumers are more likely to participate in politics both offline and online.     

Opinion Formation in Social Media: The Influence of Online News Dissemination on Facebook Posts

ABSTRACT

This study aims to explore the influence of online news dissemination on public opinion in social media and examine what factors determine the influence. Online news stories (N=51) from 37 sources and Facebook posts (N=317) on the construction of Africa’s first modern international railway line, the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway line, were retrieved between June and November 2017 for the period April 11, 2012 to November 30, 2017. Comparative content analysis of online news and Facebook posts revealed that there was positive correlation between frame repetition by news media and prevalence of the frame in social media opinion. The results showed that there were statistically significant associations in the presence of positive as well as negative frame tones between news articles and Facebook posts. However, the relationship in the use of neutral frame tone between news and opinion was not significant. Regarding composition, short news stories exert more influence on social media opinion than longer news articles, as indicated by negative correlation between news article length and its influence on opinion. Overall, the results suggest that online news dissemination strongly influences opinion formation in social media.     

Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage

The proportion of votes cast before election day has risen steadily over the last two decades. Previous research asked how early voting has impacted voter participation. In this article, we ask how early voting has affected the flow of information to voters through the mass media. By increasing the number of days voters are able to vote, are we also increasing the number of days that candidates and campaigns continuously disseminate campaign-related information to the news media? Is news coverage of campaigns quantitatively and qualitatively different when opportunities to vote early are available and utilized? Our expectation is that early voting significantly influences the volume and nature of campaign news coverage. We study the effects of early voting on campaign news coverage of gubernatorial and Senate races in 2006 and 2008. Our findings reveal that the volume and content of campaign news coverage is significantly influenced by early voting.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: Appendix for Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage—Alternative Model Specifications.]     

Communicating to an Ideal Audience: News and the Notion of the 'Informed Citizen"

The news genre presupposes an ideal audience type-the ''informed citizen." Here, I will address what it means to ''be informed." How should audiences be addressed to enable them to become informed citizens, compared to addressing them as consumers? I will argue that when going beyond the official status attributed to news, one might find that viewers have contradictory feelings regarding the genre. I will provide examples of such news-related ambivalences and frustrations from my own research.     

News Media Use and Political Engagement Among Adolescents: An Analysis of Virtuous Circles Using Panel Data

This study analyzes reinforcing spirals between news media use and two manifestations of political engagement: political interest and participation intention. Drawing on a three-wave panel study among adolescents, we test the Virtuous Circle Thesis (VCT) in both an online and an offline setting, by distinguishing between selection effects and media effects as key ingredients of the VCT. Overall, the findings lend mixed support to the general argument. While the relationship between specific forms of news media use and political interest appears to be driven primarily by selection effects, reciprocal relations were found mainly between television news and participation intention. The VCT assumption of reciprocal influences was supported most clearly when adolescents’ total news media use was considered. Taken together, virtuous circles appeared to operate rather similarly online and offline.     

Emerging political narratives on Malawian digital spaces

Social media platforms are being considered new podiums for political transformation as political dictatorships supposedly convert to overnight democracies, and many more people are not only able to gain access to information, but also gather and disseminate news from their own perspective. When looking at the situation in several sub-Saharan African countries, it becomes clear there are various challenges restricting social media and its palpable yet considerably constrained ability to influence political and social changes. Access to the internet, or lack thereof, is a recognised social stratification causing a “digital divide” thanks to existing inequalities within African and several other societies throughout the world. This article reports on a study that analysed a popular Facebook page in Malawi using a discursive online ethnographic examination of interactions among social media participants seeking to determine the level of activism and democratic participation taking shape on the Malawian digital space. The study also examined potential bottlenecks restraining effective digital participation in Malawi. The article argues that while social media's potential to transform societies is palpable, keeping up with the pace of transformation is no easy task for both digital and non-digital citizens. The study demonstrated social media's potential but also highlighted the problems facing online activists in Malawi, including chief among them digital illiteracy. Therefore, the digital sphere is not a political podium for everyone in Malawi as shown by the analysis of digital narratives emerging from the country's online environment, which opens its doors to only a tiny fraction of the population.     

Wolfowitz Conjecture: A Research Note on Civil War and News Coverage

How news coverage is affected by dangerous security environments is an important issue for political scientists who rely upon journalistic accounts of political events. It is also a controversial issue in the policy arena. In June of 2004, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz attributed the American public's pessimism regarding U.S. efforts at stabilizing Iraq to the manner in which Iraq was covered by the U.S. media, suggesting that journalists in Iraq were holed up in hotels rather than in the field. This statement was conjecture, but if there is indeed a link between news coverage and violence, then this would be important for social scientists to understand. In this article, I probe this link by examining how conflict intensity and journalist deaths affect both the volume and length of news coverage in civil wars from 1992 to 1999. This paper shows that news coverage is largely unaffected by violence, except in the most extreme circumstances.     

A Matter of Context: A Comparative Study of Media Environments and News Consumption Gaps in Europe

Research has shown that individual-level characteristics such as socioeconomic status and political interest are becoming more important as predictors of news consumption in a rapidly changing media environment. Despite this general trend, this article argues that the importance of individual-level predictors of news consumption varies between national media environments. We use extensive survey data from 16 European countries and multilevel modeling in order to investigate both contextual-level and cross-level effects on news consumption. The results show that media environment characteristics have additional effects on news consumption beyond the effects of individual-level characteristics such as education and political interest, but also moderating impacts on these individual-level predictors of news consumption. More specifically, national media environments characterized by higher levels of newspaper-centrism are related to smaller gaps in newspaper reading between those with high and low levels of education and political interest. Lower degrees of newspaper-centrism are, on the other hand, related to a weaker “lower-class bias” of television news and larger gaps in news consumption between those with and without high political interest. These findings are discussed in light of previous research on news consumption, knowledge, and participation gaps as well as cross-national comparative research.     

Citizen participation and democracy in the Netherlands

Although citizen participation is regarded widely as vital to democracy, some wariness may also be observed towards it in cases where democracy is equated with representative democracy. This article investigates the dominant view of the Dutch political–administrative and academic elites on the meaning of participation with respect to the quality of democracy. The analysis shows that various forms of participation that might improve the quality of democracy have been discussed in recent years, without, however, subjecting either the existing political institutions or the traditional hierarchical approach to policymaking to any form of critical review. Citizen participation is seen mainly as an instrument to strengthen and support the way representative democracy now works. Although citizen participation is thought to encompass more than merely voting in elections, participation is not seen as an essential feature of democracy, but at best, as an instrument to improve the current functioning of representative democracy.     

Citizen journalism as a contestant in the history of journalism

This article looks at citizen journalism as a contestant in the history of journalism. It reports on a study that employed a qualitative research approach through a qualitative questionnaire and a focus group discussion (FGD). Through purposive sampling, the participants in the study were drawn from the citizen journalists contributing news content to the citizen journalism websites Sahara Reporters and Iindaba Ziyafika from a Nigerian and a South African perspective, respectively. For diversity purposes, other participants were drawn from the Global Voices online, which is popular for engaging citizen journalists from different parts of the African continent: Tanzania, Cameroon, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya, to mention a few. The questionnaire was distributed through the technical teams of the websites for self-completion by the citizen journalists. The FGD participants were drawn from those who contributed news content to Iindaba Ziyafika in South Africa where the researchers are based. The questionnaire and the FGD were addressed in English. The study findings showed that mainstream journalism acknowledges the importance of the phenomenon of citizen journalism and the people involved, but it still stands firm that objectivity is a precondition of journalism. The study aimed to cultivate an appreciation of the relationship between traditional and citizen journalism as the field of journalism endures major transformations.     

中国新闻出版业向东盟“走出去”发展研究

中国新闻出版业向东盟"走出去"极具重要性,但当前存在受文化差异影响较大、出版单位文化创新能力较差、人才缺乏和认识上的不足等方面的问题。在政策支持进一步加强、中国—东盟自由贸易区建成等有利条件下,应充分响应国家相关政策,增强向东盟"走出去"的主动性;发挥广西的平台作用,增强新闻出版整体实力;增强新闻出版业"走出去"的能力;加强新闻出版人才培养;为新闻出版业"走出去"提供法律和机制保障。     

Assessing the Democratic Debate: How the News Media Frame Elite Policy Discourse

This article examines the way in which the news media frame public policy issues and the extent to which other political players (e.g., interest groups, politicians) influence this issue framing process. Our analysis focuses on the issue of gun control, comparing the rhetoric generated by interest groups and public officials on the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban with actual network news coverage of this legislation from 1988 to 1996. Results indicate that both sets of political players employed several interpretative issue frames and worked hard to put their preferred themes on the agenda. However, at times, the media intervened in the framing process, especially as the debate matured. Specifically, the news media (a) structured the overall tone of the gun control debate, (b) adopted a distribution of framing perspectives different from that of politicians and interest groups, and (c) packaged policy discourse more often than not in terms of the "culture of violence" theme. These findings point toward previously ignored media effects and attest to the potential role the media play in shaping public policy debates.     

International Plug 'n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet, and Global Public Policy

One of the most dramatic changes in world politics has been the rise to prominence of citizen networks. Among the many factors responsible for their emergence are new communication technologies, and in particular the World-Wide Web. Opinions on the nature and significance of these citizen networks, however, are mixed. Some applaud citizen networks as potential counter-hegemonic forces and expressions of democratic participation. Others see them, on the contrary, as undemocratic and largely destructive. Straddling both of these views is a third argument that suggests "real" communities cannot be sustained on the Internet, hence calling into question the long-term viability of citizen networks as actors on the world political stage. To help push these debates further, this article examines the case of the citizen networks that emerged to lobby against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, focusing in particular on how the Internet played a part in the opposition movement. The case suggests that, contrary to those who see new media as an obstacle to global citizen etworks, the Internet and World-Wide Web greatly facilitated their activities. As a consequence, citizen networks will likely continue to grow and expand, intruding into international policymaking processes. The article concludes by examining several global public policy issues that are raised by this shift in the landscape of world politics that will have to be addressed by practitioners of international relations in years to come.     

Framing Controversies: Television and the 2002 Presidential Election in Brazil

This article investigates the role of television in the first round of the 2002 Brazilian presidential election. Content analysis and survey data are used to show that TV news and political advertising led to important framing effects. On the one hand, exposure to the most watched newscast, TV Globo's Jornal Nacional, led voters to support the interpretive frame that was promoted by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration and by financial markets. This frame emphasized the need to keep inflation under control and to protect the stability of the economy. On the other hand, exposure to political advertising led voters to reject this frame, since opposition candidates used their programs to emphasize Brazil's social problems, especially poverty, hunger, and social inequality, as the most important issues.     

How Political Elites Process Information From the News: The Cognitive Mechanisms Behind Behavioral Political Agenda-Setting Effects

Political agenda-setting studies have shown that political agendas are influenced by the media agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament’s (MP) individual, cognitive attention for specific news stories. Drawing upon a survey of Belgian MPs administered shortly after exposure to news stories, the study shows that MPs are highly selective in exploiting media cues. They pay more attention to both prominent and useful news stories, but a story’s usefulness is more important for cognitive processes that are closely linked to MPs’ real behavior in parliament. In other words, aggregate political agenda-setting effects are a consequence of the way in which individual MPs process media information that matches their task-related needs.     

The quality of civil society in post-communist Eastern Germany: a case-study of voluntary associations in Leipzig

Quantitative data show the weakness of civil society in the post-communist countries of East-Central Europe by using such indicators as membership in voluntary associations. Building on this data, this research offers an in-depth case-study of voluntary associations in the Eastern German city of Leipzig in order to examine the quality of the existing civil society. Due to structures put in place by the local government to encourage citizen input in policy decisions and widespread democratic participation both before and after the fall of communism, Leipzig presents an interesting case-study in assessing the vibrancy of civil society, and thus democracy, in a post-communist city that appears to embrace ideals of citizen participation. The study, based on data from 23 qualitative interviews with members of citizen associations, local parliamentarians and city officials, explores three main issues that are found in the theoretical literature on associations and civil society: the development of civic competence; the creation of a public sphere; and the relationship between civil society and the state. The qualitative nature of this study offers a more nuanced assessment of civil society in Eastern Germany than the quantitative data allow. I conclude that there are clear deficits but also strengths in the development of civil society.     

Presidential Agenda-Setting of Traditional and Nontraditional News Media

The president’s ability to influence the news agenda is central to the study of American politics. Although there is a large literature that examines presidential agenda-setting vis-à-vis traditional news sources, such as newspapers or broadcast television networks, there is little research that explores the effects of presidential agenda leadership of nontraditional media whether online or cable television. This study remedies this state of affairs by examining the relationship between the president’s daily agenda and traditional and nontraditional daily news agendas. I argue that although the president should find similar space on all news for topics he raises in his speeches, nontraditional sources are more likely to cover other stories that reference the president. Analysis of 748 stories on the presidency for 63 days in early 2012 from 7 traditional, cable, and online news sources provides support for my argument, with cable news providing the most presidential news coverage. I conclude with some implications about what my findings mean for presidential leadership of nontraditional media.     

Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public during the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike

This study investigated partisan perceptions of hostile bias in news coverage of the 1997 Teamsters Union strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), and the processes by which Teamster and UPS partisans formed impressions of public opinion regarding the strike. As predicted, both partisan groups perceived neutral news coverage as biased against their respective sides. However, perceptions of hostile media bias did not produce corresponding perceptions of hostile public opinion; instead, partisans appeared to rely on their personal opinions when estimating the opinions of others. Nonpartisan control-group subjects, however, did infer public opinion in part from their subjective assessments of news content. Findings suggest that level of involvement is crucial in predicting the effect that perceived media coverage of social issues will have on perceptions of public opinion regarding those issues.     

Changing the Face of Advocacy? Explaining Interest Organizations’ Use of Social Media Strategies

Social media have increasingly been recognized as an important and effective tool for advocacy. A growing body of research examines the use of social media in grassroots and social movements as well as issues related to civic engagement, social capital, and voter turnout. The extent to which organized interest groups have adopted social media as an advocacy tool, however, has been relatively ignored. This article examines the determinants of the use of social media tools by a broad range of interest organizations. We argue that social media use needs to be understood as part of an interest organization’s larger set of news media lobbying strategies. We explain social media use as a function of two factors: first, the importance organizations place on trying to shape lobbying debates through the news media; second, the importance they place on shaping their public image via the news media. We test this argument using a unique data set of interest group advocacy in the European Union. Controlling for a host of competing explanations, regression results provide evidence supporting our central argument.