The comparative effectiveness of populist rhetoric in generating online engagement

Worldwide, voters are supporting populist candidates who promise to upend “politics as usual.” Despite all we know about populism, we still do not know how individuals respond to populist content during campaigns, particularly compared to other common content in liberal democracies. This paper adapts framing theory to an online electoral context to argue that populist campaign messages will generate more online engagement compared to three alternative conceptions of the relationship between the people and the elites: pluralism, technocracy, and neutral messages. The paper adapts Snow and Benford's seminal 1988 theory of resonance to studies of populist communication and assess whether populism resonates more with online social media users. An original dataset using the campaign Tweets of 22 national-level actors across five countries is used to test the theory: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Italy, and Spain (N = 1777). The findings suggest that citizens on Twitter engage with populism more than its alternatives in certain contexts.     

试论转型时期的大众传媒与公共政策

我国大众传媒在政策过程中担当着议题建构者、民意代言人、政策宣讲者及监督者的角色。但是不论是从参与政策过程的范围,还是从政策过程中发挥的作用来说,它都只是有限度的参与政策过程。随着我国社会转型的推进,处在行政隶属关系与市场利益机构双重利益结构制约之中的大众传媒,也面临着从高度政治化和组织化的传媒体制和传统向企业经营模式与理念的变迁,在技术、经济、社会和政治层面都发生了巨大的变化,客观上也促进了我国公共政策制定过程中的科学化与民主化水平。     

我国传媒产业发展及其法律规制的调整

我国传媒产业近年来快速发展,已经形成了相当的规模。发展传媒产业不仅具有现实的经济意义,而且具有重要的政治意义。从社会效益和公共安全的角度,需要运用政策法律手段规制和引导传媒的行为。由于我国入世时对开放部分传媒产业领域做出了承诺,近年来相应地调整了传媒市场对外开放方面的法律规制。     

论隐私权的宪法保护——以自媒体时代为分析背景

自媒体在彰显言论自由之对,也打开了一扇偷窥公民隐私之窗.在宪法视野下,隐私权已经超越部门法的疆域上升为一项基本人权.在自媒体时代,侵犯公民隐私权的特征表现为隐蔽性、侵财性、便捷性和严重性,隐私权的传统法律保护模式遭遇了新的挑战.宪法对公民隐私权加以保护有其合理性与必要性.隐私权的宪法保护路径在于明确隐私权是一项列举的人权,强化违宪审查制度的贯彻执行,并通过部门法落实和实施该项权利,建立一个由宪法统领的、由部门法具体实施的、多层级和全方位的立体保护架构.     

自媒体时代的政治传播秩序及中国调适

政治传播秩序系政治秩序与传播秩序有机耦合而成。自媒体时代政治传播秩序变革呈现出新图景:“传-受”关系角色融合,信息流动立体对冲,“权势”格局去中心化,“节点”移位流程再造,线上线下双层互动,参与沟通机制转向,情感意见高度聚合,政治目标共生共享,文明契合价值转化,总体模式类型蜕变。应对自媒体时代政治传播秩序变革,中国应做出主动调适:确立政治传播秩序由“一元主体”主导到“多元主体”共享的总体理念;把新时代中国特色社会主义协商民主的秩序要求贯通到政治传播新秩序的建构中;更新对政治传播“内容”的理解,扩充“政治信息”的内涵和包容量;释放政治信息的生产权和传播权,激活政治传播秩序中媒体的独有能量;依托中国特色社会主义政治传播秩序的优势,为全球政治传播新秩序贡献中国经验。     

How political malpractice affects trust in EU institutions

Abstract

Political misconduct is known to harm the politicians involved. Yet, we know less about how such events affect trust in political institutions. We study a real-world political malpractice affair in the European Commission, using a three-wave panel design to investigate how information about the affair influences trust in EU institutions. This enables us, first, to isolate the impact of new information on political trust, remedying endogeneity issues common in political trust research. Second, we assess which institutions are affected most (specificity) and whether effects depend upon citizens’ sophistication levels (conditionality). Finally, we assess the durability of effects over time. Our findings demonstrate that citizens obtain knowledge about EU affairs through the media, and use this knowledge in their trust evaluations. In doing so, citizens differentiate between EU and national institutions, with trust in the European Commission affected most. This suggests a sophisticated process and highlights the evaluative nature of political trust.     

I Shield Myself From Thee: Selective Avoidance on Social Media During Political Protests

This study examines the phenomenon of politically motivated selective avoidance on Facebook in the context of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement protests in 2014. We conceptualize selective avoidance as individual choices that users make to shield themselves from undesirable dissonant views by removing unwanted information and breaking social ties that transmit such information. Given the political turmoil and high level of polarization during the protests, we argue that selective avoidance was related to the socio-psychological factor of perceived out-group threat. We present an analysis of a survey of 769 students from Hong Kong conducted at the height of the street protests. We find that 15.6% of the respondents removed content and/or unfriended a Facebook friend during the protests. The use of Facebook for protest-related information and expression was associated with higher likelihood of selective avoidance, which in turn predicted actual participation in the street protests. The level of perceived out-group threat strengthened the positive relationship between Facebook use and selective avoidance. We thus argue that group conflict in a time of political turmoil may catalyze selective avoidance, transforming a heterogeneous socio-informational environment into a more insulated gated community. Such acts may promote protest participation but also lead to a more fragmented and polarized citizenry.     

Three Prompts for Collective Action in the Context of Digital Media

Research dealing with the nexus of collective action, political participation, and digital media confronts three challenges: conceptualizing digital media as an influence on human behavior, finding common ground among new theories, and connecting together individual-level models with structural-level theories. This article addresses these challenges as a theoretical undertaking. It argues that the digital media environment should be understood as a change in the context for action rather than as an individual-level variable, and that this changed context is relevant to behavior because it expands opportunities for action. This expansion involves a range of structural possibilities for viable collective action that entail at least three paths: organizational prompts, social prompts, and self-initiation. There are theoretical reasons to expect that individual-level attributes including age, education, ideology, and personality may differentially affect people’s susceptibility to these prompts. Future research may profit from refinements to behavioral models that account for possible differences across structurally different prompts for action.     

What Drives Political Participation? Motivations and Mobilization in a Digital Age

This article provides insights into the driving forces that underpin new forms of political participation. Digital technologies offer opportunities for engaging in a wide range of civically oriented activities, each of which can contribute to deeper democratic engagement. Conventional acts of political participation are argued to be driven primarily by intrinsic motivations relating to self-efficacy and empowerment, with participants feeling they can have influence over decision makers. Little research explores whether similar motivations drive participation in less conventional acts, as well as whether mobilization attempts via social media by peers or political organizations mediate those motivations. Drawing on data from a survey among a representative sample of the U.K. electorate, we find the offline and online spheres of agency remain fairly distinct. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations both matter but extrinsic motivations have the strongest explanatory power independent of the sphere of activity. The mediating effect of mobilization tactics has a minimal effect on extrinsic motivations, online or offline, but online intrinsic motivations lose their explanatory power. As intrinsic factors offer little explanatory power, some forms of online political participation may lack meaning to the individual. Rather, these non-conventional acts result from reward seeking and are more likely to be encouraged by nongovernmental campaigning organizations, suggesting social media users are most likely to perform simple acts in support of non-contentious causes.