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Government

Snurb — Thursday 13 July 2023 18:01

Coverage of the Green New Deal and Inflation Reduction Act in the US Press

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | IAMCR 2023 |

The final day at IAMCR 2023 starts with a paper by Hannah E. Morris, on climate journalism in the United States. There has been what seemed to be a striking shift in coverage in recent times, with the New York Times unusually highlighting the role of capitalism and neoliberalism as driving the climate crisis, for instance.

This is in line with the Biden administration’s desire for a new Washington consensus on contemporary issues, received possibly by the legacy press. This calls for a new industrial policy, led by the US, to address these issues, and builds on nostalgic post-war perspectives …

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Snurb — Thursday 13 July 2023 01:14

Sympathy towards Ukraine in the Rhetoric of the Hungarian and Polish Prime Ministers

Politics | Government | Social Media | Facebook | IAMCR 2023 |

The final speaker on this third day of IAMCR 2023 is Gabriella Szabó, whose focus is on sympathy towards Ukraine in political rhetoric in Poland and Hungary. While usually there are considerable similarities in political rhetoric across the two countries, this is not true when it comes to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces: the governments of the two countries responded very differently to the invasion.

This divergence can be captured by examining the change in political rhetoric following the invasion. The key aspect to examine here is sympathy, which is itself the foundation for solidarity and moral …

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Snurb — Thursday 13 July 2023 01:13

The Social Media Logics of Domestic Chinese Propaganda

Politics | Government | Social Media | IAMCR 2023 |

Up next at IAMCR 2023 is Zheyu Shang, whose interest is in online propaganda in the Chinese Internet. This now works and looks quite differently from the historical forms of Chinese party propaganda that western observers may be familiar with; the Website of the Chinese Communist Party’s Youth League (CYL) looks more like a social media Website, for instance, and a Chinese army recruitment account on social media uses cartoonish imagery.

In addition, social media platforms are interactive, and ordinary users can create their own content online; they engage in many-to-many communication, also with state media accounts. State propaganda is …

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Snurb — Wednesday 12 July 2023 19:55

The Impact of Populist Regimes in Europe on Journalism

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | IAMCR 2023 |

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Marko Ribać, whose interest is in the impact of authoritarian-populist politics on journalism. The project focusses on Hungary and Turkey as clearly populist and autocratic regimes, compared to Austria and Slovenia as countries with more intermittently populist governments. The focus is on the past ten years of journalistic experience in each country, and conducted through interviews with some 82 newsworkers across the four countries to identify the external forces impacting on their work.

There are three broad areas of findings here. First, the influence of owners was felt strongly in Hungary …

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Snurb — Wednesday 12 July 2023 19:53

Populist Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Politics | Government | Crisis Communication | IAMCR 2023 |

Up next at IAMCR 2023 is Sabina Mihelj, focussing on populist communication about the COVID-19 pandemic, across the US, Poland, Serbia, and Brazil. Such research is critical given the real potential (and genuine experience) of populists assuming positions of political leadership (as in the US or Brazil) and actively contradicting the health advice of pandemic experts.

Populist divides between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, and promotes the rule of charismatic, usually male, leaders; it promotes illiberalism, not least also through the skilful use of social media; and this produces populist challenges to expert authority that can fall on fertile grounds …

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Snurb — Wednesday 12 July 2023 17:42

The Failure of the Australian News Media Bargaining Code

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | Internet Technologies | IAMCR 2023 |

The next speaker in this session at IAMCR 2023 is Benedetta Brevini, reflecting on the Australian experience with its News Media Bargaining Code. This was prompted by the crisis of journalism (and journalism funding) in the country, producing news deserts especially at local levels outside the largest cities. Some 5,000 news jobs were lost over the past two decades.

The NMBC was an attempt to address this through policy intervention, and in line with other moves towards rebalancing bargaining powers between Big Tech and news organisations – for instance also at the EU level. The NMBC was introduced in late …

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Snurb — Wednesday 12 July 2023 17:40

Participatory Policy-Making to Combat Elite Capture

Politics | Government | IAMCR 2023 |

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is María Soledad Segura, whose focus is on the elite capture of communication policies in Latin America. Such capture has a very long history in Latin America: policy-making processes are unequal and worsen the asymmetries in public communication. But in the past decades there has been greater focus on reform, creating participatory institutions for the development of new communication policies; the present paper explores their operation in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, and Uruguay. But did such efforts have any real impact on policy-making processes?

Such participation is as important as plurality and diversity …

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Snurb — Wednesday 12 July 2023 17:39

Understanding Media Environment Capture

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | Internet Technologies | IAMCR 2023 |

The next speakers in this IAMCR 2023 session are Mandy Tröger and Hendrik Theine, who continue to address those concerns about media environment capture. They begin by noting that most of the debates here are limited to national or regional contexts, and influenced by the specific and idiosyncratic settings found there, without taking a more general, overall perspective informed by theory. Such a perspective can build on the concept of media capture by developing it into the idea of media environment capture, in particular.

Media capture itself has been used by political economists to describe capture by either governments exercising …

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Snurb — Wednesday 12 July 2023 17:37

Principles for Bargaining between News Organisations and Big Tech

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | Internet Technologies | IAMCR 2023 |

The third full day at IAMCR 2023 starts with a panel on the political economy of Big Tech platform funding. We start with Natalie Fenton, whose focus is on the demise of local journalism in the UK, and the work of the Media Reform Coalition there. Local journalism in the UK has declined over time, with cutbacks and newsroom consolidation as part of the move to digital, while of course retaining news organisations’ profit margins.

But there has also been a public response to this that has agitated for better support for local journalism, and the UK government and parliamentary …

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Snurb — Tuesday 11 July 2023 23:18

Spanish News Consumption Habits during COVID-19

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | Social Media | IAMCR 2023 |

Next up at IAMCR 2023 are Aleix Martí and Roger Cuartielles, whose focus is on the circulation of information in Spain during the COVID-19 crisis. Legacy media as well as social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram played key roles in this infodemic. Social media in particular played a disintermediating role, enabling the further spread of mis- and disinformation.

The present project sought to explore the information consumption habits of Spanish news users, including the role of social media, the perception of disinformation, and the perception of official information channels. It approached this through a survey of some 1,000 …

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