Politics

The next session at IAMCR 2019 is Cinzia Padovani, who is interested in the intersections between mainstream media and the ultra-right. Mainstream media have at times been accused of being complicit in the rise of the ultra-right, by amplifying their reach and normalising their ideologies and political communication styles; this may be especially pronounced for right-wing mainstream media. But is this perception supported by empirical evidence?

The final speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Brian Goss, whose interest is in flak as a socio-political force. This is influenced by the propaganda model of news media in the contemporary United States at the end of the Cold War. Media at the time were free from formal censorship, but several factors conditioned the performance of news workers, and this led to their allegiance to an overall (then mainly anti-communist) ideological positioning.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Brigitte Huber; her interest is in the motivations for engaging in politics. Such participation might be explained by demographics, political knowledge, news use and other factors, but also by inherent personality traits.

The next speaker in this v IAMCR 2019 session is Sehrish Mushtaq, whose interest is in the relationship between the political affinities of newspaper readers and their selection of newspapers. Does personal bias align with the ideological bias of the newspaper?

It’s the last day at IAMCR 2019, and I’m in a session on media effects that begins with a paper by Evelia Mani. Her focus is on the situation in Mexico, where there is acute mistrust in the political system. Such mistrust is now not uncommon world-wide, and may be explained by the poor performance of state and political institutional as well as by changing cultural attitudes – but the more immediate explanation is probably the former.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Andrea Cancino-Borbón, whose focus is on satirical ‘fake news’ in Colombia.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Vanessa Cortez, whose focus is on hate speech in the recent presidential election in Brazil. This election was marked by increasing polarisation and hate speech, and to study this the project gathered content around the election itself.

The final speaker in this IAMCR 2019 is Nicolas Hube, who presents a comparison of the public press offices of German governments through the 20th century. The government spokesperson service was institutionalised very soon after the 1918 revolution, and the Federal Republic’s service built in part on these origins.

The next paper in this IAMCR 2019 session is presented by Arne Gellrich, who focusses on reporting about the League of Nations in the 1920s. The League changed the reporting of international affairs by shifting interest from national politics to international relations, and the role of journalists in this evolution has remained underresearched.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Martha Evans, whose focus is on the reporting on Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment on Robben Island. Mandela came to personify the anti-apartheid struggle – also by becoming an absent signifier of the struggle, which enabled him to become the ultimate polysemic persona onto whom all sorts of perspectives were projected.