Politics

The next ECREA 2018 session starts with Christina Peter, who begins by noting the reference to (supposed) popular opinion as a common rhetorical strategy of populist politicians as well as of journalists; this is classified as an explicit public opinion cue. By contrast, implicit public opinion cues simply represent public opinion for instance in the form of vox-pops.

Such explicit cues are very prominent in the media, while implicit cues are somewhat less prominent; what effects do they have on the formation of popular opinion, however? Does this convince actual citizens that the general public truly hold these views? Christina’s …

Finally for this ECREA 2018 session, Natalie Fenton asks how we as academics might therefore need to reconsider our own work in political communication. If we are considering different ways of doing democracy, this is inevitably also a question of power, of course, and it has immediate and critical implications for societies in which the gaps between the powerful and the powerless are rapidly widening.

As the institutions – especially at local levels – in which publics have traditionally sought to engage are being hollowed out and shut down (for instance as a result of austerity policies such as those …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2018 session is Aeron Davis, whose focus is on the role of political parties in political communication. Might we head towards a (non-)democratic future in which parties no longer exist in their present state – or is it just the dominant party model that is failing now?

On a variety of measures, including membership and participation, party structures have been declining for several decades; in many national systems, this has also contributed to an increased volatility in vote shares from election to election, independent of the voting systems (first-past-the-post or proportional representation) used in …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2018 session is Gholam Khiabany, who points especially at the absence of significant debates about war and military intervention in political communication. War is not absent from media research, of course, but perhaps war should be considered as central in our reassessment of democracy itself.

Militarism and war is now a motor of historical development, and not just a consequence; revisiting political communication must include a reassessment of its role in democracy, and as a subject of political communication. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, should it not be central …

The post-lunch session at ECREA 2018 is on media, democracy, and social change, and starts with Des Freedman. He begins by noting the role of the state as a particular, and particularly important, institutional power in political communication, whose role tends to be underresearched compared to that of various non-state actors from politicians to activists – perhaps because the idea of the state is seen as somewhat dated, following the decline in authority of territorial nation states.

States have outsourced many of their functions to the private sector, and have been overtaken by globalised commercial players, to such an extent …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2018 session is Svetlana Bodrunova, whose focus is on polarisation in Twitter-based discussions of inter-ethnic conflicts in the U.S., Germany, and Russia. She also notes that the debate about whether echo chambers and filter bubbles are real is still ongoing, and that attitudes towards political actors have been most researched to date; divergence in such attitudes is often interpreted as polarisation, but this often mistakes the formation of homophilous clusters for actual polarisation. Importantly, too, cluster formation is often non-binary, and instead leads to the development of multiple, overlapping, and dynamic thematic clusters …

The next speaker in this session at ECREA 2018 is Anne-Marie in der Au, who notes evidence that individual selection of media content may foster polarisation; however, there is also suspicion that algorithmic selection may foster such polarisation by building on and reinforcing such selective exposure. But empirical evidence on this is divided; several studies show no algorithmic impact or even demonstrate a negative correlation. What is going on here, and are there other variables that may interfere?

The present study examined these dynamics for the case of Germany, building on a representative phone survey. This measured the polarisation of …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2018 session is Edda Humprecht, whose focus is on polarisation on Facebook. There is evidence of considerable negativity on this platform, and this may affect users’ perceptions of the world around them; in particular, it may increase their perception of societal polarisation. News outlets operating on the platform are now often accepting negative comments because they do not want to be seen to be censoring user comments – yet at the same time they are complaining about the negative aspects of user participation on social media.

Potential drivers for such negativity may include …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2018 session is Jasmin Kadel, who presents a comparative study of polarisation across Switzerland and Germany. Polarisation can be understood along factual (across issues), perceived (misjudgments about polarisation in society), and affective dimensions (appreciation of co-partisan others); the study examined such polarisation amongst adult newspaper readers in both countries.

Factual polarisation turned out to be slightly stronger in Switzerland than in Germany, but it is weak in both countries; perceived polarisation, however, is greater in both countries, and especially so in Germany – Germans are less polarised but see them selves as more polarised …

The first session on this first full day at ECREA 2018 is on polarisation, and starts with Melanie Magin. She begins by highlighting the potential deleterious effects of polarisation on society: societies need a common meeting ground, and this has traditionally been provided by the news media and their agenda-setting function. But the diversification of information sources and channels may contribute to fragmenting this, and the algorithmic selection of content in these channels could aid this fragmentation – yet there is very little empirical evidence for the existence of the echo chambers or filter bubbles this is said to cause …