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This repository contains replication materials for the paper "A network model of negative campaigning: The structure and determinants of negative campaigning in multi-party systems" (2017, in Communication Research. DOI: 10.1177/0093650217712596.)

A significant paradigm shift is underway in communication research as open science practices (e.g., preregistration, open materials) are becoming more prevalent. The current work identified how much the field has embraced such practices and evaluated their impact on authors (e.g., citation rates). We collected 10,517 papers across 26 journals from 2010 to 2020, observing that 5.1% of papers used or mentioned open science practices. Communication research has seen the rate of nonsignificant p-values (p > .055) increasing with the adoption of open science over time, but p-values just below p < .05 have not reduced with open science adoption. Open science adoption was unrelated to citation rate at the article level; however, it was inversely related to the journals’ h-index. Our results suggest communication organizations and scholars have important work ahead to make open science more mainstream. We close with suggestions to increase open science adoption for the field at large.

The idea of meritocracy is pervasive in contemporary Western societies, and scholars have sought to understand what factors—both at individual and sociocultural levels—critically contribute to the widespread adoption and maintenance of such worldviews within Western societies. Among them, the role of popular culture in legitimizing and further promoting the meritocratic myth is widely documented (e.g., Redden, 2011; Rose & Baumgartner, 2013; Ronsini, 2014). Yet, the use of such meritocratic frame in music has received surprisingly scant attention. The current study systematically investigates the presence of meritocratic frames of status in English-language popular lyrics. We constructed and analyzed a unique dataset composed by the most popular songs listened on Spotify in six countries (US, UK, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) between 2016 and 2019 (N = 4117), where the lyrics of the included songs, retrieved from Genius, were analyzed in three steps. First, a sample of songs was manually coded to explore which meritocratic frames are present in music, through which procedure we iteratively developed codes to detect different meritocratic frames. Second, based on the full population of songs, we analyzed how frequently different meritocratic frames were present in music and how much variation exists between different genres. Third, we employ inferential network analysis in order to understand whether meritocratic words co-occurred more frequently together with each other, providing further information about the syntactical nature of frames (Matthes & Kohrning, 2008).

Results from Study 1 (South Korea) and Study 2 (United States) collectively suggested the evidence of persuasive effects of fact-checking news by partisan media, yet at the same time, partisans perceive such corrections to be biased against their ideological position. The bias perception of fact-checking news was higher when one’s ideological strengths were stronger, and the source (rather than contents) of the corrective information is at odds with one’s own position, the pattern of which is largely consistent with the HME. Yet both Study 1 and Study 2 did not directly address the underlying nature of such effects, leaving us additional questions regarding its possible mechanisms and boundary conditions. Study 3 attempts to critically test possible mechanisms of the diverging effect of partisan fact-checking news exposure, in which corrective information exposure produces increased bias perception while it also produces positive persuasive effects.

Research Questions and Hypothesis (Persuasive effect) Hypothesis 1 (H1): As a result of exposure to fact-checking news, prior attitude (or belief) on the issue would be changed toward the direction suggested by the fact-checking news. Hypothesis 2 (H2): The effect of fact-checking news would be consistent regardless of whether the content of the news is counter-attitudinal or pro-attitudinal. Hypothesis 3 (H3): The effect of the fact-checking news would be consistent regardless of the political slant of the news media. (Perceived bias) Hypothesis 4a (H4a): The perceived bias on fact-checking news would be varied by the content of the fact-checking news. Hypothesis 4b (H4b): The perceived bias on fact-checking news would vary by the perceived political slant of partisan media. Hypothesis 5a (H5a): Attitude-consistent fact-checking news content would be perceived as less biased, while counter-attitudinal content would be perceived to be more biased. Hypothesis 5b (H5b): Fact-checking news by in-group source would be perceived to be less biased, while fact-checking news by out-group source would be perceived to be more biased. Hypothesis 6 (H6): The intensity of bias perception on fact-checking news would be increased as the ideological strength of an individual increases.

It is commonly acknowledged that comparative perspectives are fundamental to further our understanding of media production and media effects, to avoid what has been coined ’naive universalism’ (Esser & Pfetsch, 2004; McLeod & Lee, 2013; for a recent summary see Boomgaarden and Song, 2019). At the same time, it is evident that the range of types of comparative research on media effects is broad, from what has been called basic to comparative explanatory approaches (Esser & Vliegenthart, 2017). It is time to take stock of where the discipline is and whether early calls for comparative dimensions have been addressed. Arguably the setting for comparative research has never been better, with increasing digital availability of content data and use of online surveys (also for experimental research) or the existence of large-scale survey programs (ESS, EES). But what is the state of the art of comparative communication research? Do we see an increasing application of comparative designs and do these contribute to a better understanding of the potential contextual dependency of media production or effects? This study reviews articles published in the top communication journals between 2003 and 2021. We focus on articles that “involve comparisons between a minimum of two macro-level units (systems, cultures, and markets) with at least one object of investigation relevant to communication research” (Esser & Hanitzsch, 2012a, p. 5). We assess the share of such studies, the types of questions asked, and of approaches used. Also, we consider authorship patterns and common data sources, and at which topical areas comparative research is most common. Doing so we hope to inspire and spark new and more endeavors into comparative communication research.

Social sciences are facing a crisis of replicability, and concerns about the confidence in quantitative findings have resulted in an increasing interest in open science practices across many fields. In this article we introduce scholars of (digital) journalism studies and communication science to multiverse analysis while addressing the possible reasons of heterogeneity in the findings of research on engagement with news on social media. Using the question of which news article characteristics predict news engagement on social media, this illustration of the multiverse approach shows how different measurement, data processing, and modelling choices lead to divergent conclusions. In particular, we show how the selection of widely used automated text analysis tools and preprocessing steps influence the conclusions drawn from the analysis. We also use this illustration to guide interested scholars through the different steps of doing a multiverse analysis. More broadly, we demonstrate how multiverse analysis can be an open and transparent research approach in a field that is increasingly faced with a wide range of analytical choices.

The abstract is available here: https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/o:1159650