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The local political arena is highly important for political engagement, as political issues that are relevant to citizens' daily lives are discussed at this level. Yet, empirical research on political communication at the local level in Germany is rather scarce, particularly with regards to analysis of how social media interacts and affects it. We do not know how active local political actors in Germany are in this communication sphere, nor do we know anything about potential driving forces of their activities on social media. Using different data sources, it can be demonstrated that political parties in Germany are using Facebook in varying degrees depending on their ideology, the urbanisation level of their home region and their membership structure. The results reveal that local groups within the German right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) have a large lead on Facebook – in terms of both published posts and user responses. This article demonstrates that Germany is facing similar challenges to many other liberal democracies in terms of a right-wing ecosystem on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used data from 52 countries to examine newspaper journalists' perceptions of their professional autonomy and whether autonomy is improving. Results suggest that nearly three-quarters of newspaper journalists enjoy some degree of professional autonomy. Journalists in individualistic cultures and high uncertainty avoidance cultures reported higher levels of autonomy. A healthy democracy also predicted journalistic autonomy. Overall, results suggest journalistic freedom is declining. Interestingly, stronger human development was associated with perceived declines in autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fake news has long been used in propaganda, but the proliferation of digital media reinvigorated it. In Zimbabwe, fake news peaks during elections and on the eve of international summits the country's leadership will be attending. The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A), which re-branded to Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), deploy fake news against each other. These two are the main contestants for power, and they dominate Parliament and Senate. ZANU-PF has the majority in the legislature whilst the opposition CCC dominates Urban Councils. They are permanently engaged in a battle for hegemony. Informed by the three dimensions of fake news as a genre, a label and dramaturgia, the paper interrogates how, when, where and why ZANU-PF and MDC-A deployed fake news in the post-Mugabe era. Data were gathered through archival research and virtual ethnography, and the findings show that both parties used the three dimensions of fake news in intra-party and inter-party struggles, and the battle to influence regional and global public opinion. Fake news was used to confuse the public and discredit the opponent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political campaigns are embracing the visual social media platform Instagram. One digital feature, the Story, has taken over feed sharing across social media. A Story is a sequence of images or videos uploaded to a profile that disappear after 24 hours. The Story is a novel feature relatively unexamined in political communications and marketing research. Specifically, it is unclear how Gubernatorial candidates employ the Instagram Story feature in campaigning. To address this gap, we content analyze 730 Instagram Stories drawn from 20 Gubernatorial candidate accounts one week before and after Election Day 2018. Results reveal that over half of the candidates employed the Story feature over the two-week period. The Story content primarily included indoor rallies and speeches rather than outdoor canvassing. Campaigns featured more static images than video in Stories and rarely used interactive features, such as animation, location tags, and emojis. Stories were also geared toward mobilization messages rather than voter support, behind-the-scenes looks, and attack ads. Last, some gender and political party differences were evident, as women and Democratic candidates utilized Instagram more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated sentiment analysis of textual data is one of the central and most challenging tasks in political communication studies. However, the toolkits available are primarily for English texts and require contextual adaptation to produce valid results—especially concerning morphologically rich languages such as Hungarian. This study introduces (1) a new sentiment and emotion annotation framework that uses inductive approaches to identify emotions in the corpus and aggregate these emotions into positive, negative, and mixed sentiment categories, (2) a manually annotated sentiment data set with 5700 political news sentences, (3) a new Hungarian sentiment dictionary for political text analysis created via word embeddings, whose performance was compared with other available sentiment dictionaries. (4) Because of the limitations of sentiment analysis using dictionaries we have also applied various machine learning algorithms to analyze our dataset, (5) Last but not least to move towards state-of-the-art approaches, we have fine-tuned the Hungarian BERT-base model for sentiment analysis. Meanwhile, we have also tested how different pre-processing steps could affect the performance of machine-learning algorithms in the case of Hungarian texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formulaic expressions/prefabricated chunks are established as crucial in fluent speech production in psycholinguistics and language acquisition/learning yet have been largely underexplored in interpreting studies, barring a few experimental studies. Formulaic expressions are particularly underexplored from a discursive perspective in interpreting, that is, how interpreters might employ formulaic expressions for discursive mediation. Drawing on 20 years of China's political press conferences data, this study conducts a corpus-driven critical discourse analysis to explore the ideological/discursive properties of the linguistic category using the N-Gram function. The findings reveal that the interpreters' formulaic language use manifests at multiple levels: Instead of being seemingly routine and innocuous, formulaic expressions used in interpreting can be ideologically salient in (re)constructing versions of truth, fact, and reality, discursively further strengthening China's stance in the global lingua franca English. Contextualised bilingual examples are provided to demonstrate interpreters' mediation. This interdisciplinary study contributes to current understanding of government interpreters' agency in a changing sociocultural and geopolitical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to model the socio-political influences of media use in diaspora. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from Tunisian diaspora members residing in France, Denmark and Sweden. The article proposes 'mediatized diaspora' as a new model explaining the transnational intertwining between media and politics in the diaspora. Four sets of influences enabled by multimodal communication were defined and discussed as components of the model: (1) aspirations for the country of origin; (2) political meaning-making; (3) engaging in political actions; and (4) perceptions of social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changing landscape of political communication in India, highlighting the importance of building narratives and media narratives in persuading citizens. It explores the role of political communication agents such as citizens, media, and politicians in shaping politics and political outcomes. The article also provides an overview of the book "Political Communication in Contemporary India: Locating Democracy and Governance" by Yatindra Singh Sisodia and Pratip Chattopadhyay, which offers critical insights into the strategies, failures, and successes of political communication in India. The book covers various aspects of political communication, including theoretical approaches, election strategies, cultural and linguistic dimensions, federal and administrative dimensions, and diversity in political communication. While the book provides valuable insights, it has limited scope in exploring media as an "agent" in the political communication process and overlooks propaganda-based communication and the usage of new media. Overall, the book can be a valuable resource for scholars interested in tracking contemporary trends in Indian political communication. [Extracted from the article]

The left–right scale is widely assumed to be a common space, a joint yardstick that facilitates political communication. Aggregate voter perceptions of party positions on the left–right scale are widely used by scholars, a.o. to test models of voting behaviour, assess voter-elite congruence, or study party system change. Remarkably, while these models hinge on the longstanding assumption that voters have a joint understanding of the ordering of political parties on the left–right scale, this assumption has not been put to a systematic test. This paper introduces formal and a probabilistic tests of the formal demands of a common space: individual transitivity and collective transitivity. Cross-national analyses of election survey data (36 countries in the CSES) and longitudinal analyses in Germany (1983–2021), Great Britain (1997–2019), and the Netherlands (1981–2021) test whether the left–right dimension meets these demands. The outcomes are sobering. They cast serious doubt on the interpretation of the left–right scale as a common scale among voters, except under specific circumstances. We discuss the far-reaching implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's digital age, images have become powerful tools for politicians to engage with their voters on social media platforms. Visual content possesses a unique emotional appeal that often leads to increased user engagement. However, research on visual communication remains relatively limited, particularly in the Global South. This study aims to bridge this gap by employing a combination of computational methods and qualitative approach to investigate the visual communication strategies employed in a dataset of 11,263 Instagram posts by 19 Brazilian presidential candidates in 2018 and 2022 national elections. Through two studies, we observed consistent patterns across these candidates on their use of visual political communication. Notably, we identify a prevalence of celebratory and positively toned images. They also exhibit a strong sense of personalization, portraying candidates connected with their voters on a more emotional level. Our research also uncovers unique contextual nuances specific to the Brazilian political landscape. We note a substantial presence of screenshots from news websites and other social media platforms. Furthermore, text-edited images with portrayals emerge as a prominent feature. In light of these results, we engage in a discussion regarding the implications for the broader field of visual political communication. This article contributes by showing the ways Instagram was used in the digital political strategy of two fiercely polarized Brazilian elections, shedding light on the ever-evolving dynamics of visual political communication in the digital age. Finally, we propose avenues for future research in the field of political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discourse practices of voluntary propaganda on social media in response to Fang Fang’s Wuhan Lockdown Diary during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Analysis of Weibo data reveals the use of negative labeling and grouping tactics to discredit Fang Fang as a ‘public intellectual’ and a traitor in the anti-‘public intellectual’ discourse. Additionally, the positive mobilization tactic was employed through moral teaching in the ‘positive energy’ discourse to portray her as having negative energy, in contrast to the prototype of a good citizen. The analysis highlights the adept use of rhetorical tools by voluntary propagandists in adapting their discourses to specific events. However, it also exposes loopholes in voluntary propaganda, where ambiguous discourses may legitimize criticism of the regime and uphold the liberal sphere in cyberspace. This study sheds light on the discourse practices of voluntary propaganda on social media and their implications for political communication in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article examines and compares the diverse online electoral advertising strategies employed by the Socialist Party (PS) and the Democratic Party (PD) in Albania's national and municipal elections. The purpose of this study is to analyze the themes, communication techniques, and tones used in campaign advertising and to evaluate how these components vary depending on the type of election and the political party participating. It focuses on discrepancies in tone, themes, and the priority placed on candidate image versus policy issues. This research uses content analysis methods to reveal significant differences in the content and strategies of electoral advertisements across various election types and political parties. The study highlights clear disparities in the political communication tactics used in national and municipal elections, as well as between the Socialist and Democratic Parties. This study's findings reveal differences in advertising content and strategies across national and municipal elections for Democratic and Socialist parties. This has significant implications for political groups, advertising, and lawmakers, particularly given the increasing impact of social media on citizen participation in the democratization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political elites use contrasting narratives about immigrants to shape public attitudes and influence immigration policy support. This study examines how pro- and anti-immigrant narratives affect public preferences for reducing immigration in the United States. Using two distinct samples – a non-Hispanic White sample from YouGov and a racially diverse sample from NORC – the experiment reveals that exposure to these narratives significantly shapes attitudes toward immigration. Effects vary depending on the type of narrative, as well as respondents’ political affiliations and racial backgrounds. Specifically, the pro- (‘worthy’) immigrant narrative, which portrays immigrants as hardworking, law-abiding members of the in-group, reduces support for lowering immigration levels, especially among White respondents, with Republicans and Independents showing the greatest shift. In contrast, the anti-immigrant narrative, which characterizes unauthorized immigrants as undeserving outsiders, increases support for reducing immigration across racial groups. This research advances our understanding of how political rhetoric shapes public attitudes toward immigration by employing large, diverse samples and realistic portrayals of pro- and anti-immigrant narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social bots are highly active on social media platforms, significantly affecting online discourse. We analyzed the dynamic nature of bot engagement related to Extinction Rebellion climate change protests in 2019. We found bots to impact human behavior more than the other way around during active discussions. To assess the causal impact of bot encounters, we compared communication histories of those who interacted with bots with matched users who did not. There is a consistent negative impact of bot encounters on subsequent sentiment. The impact on sentiment is conditional on the user's original support level, with a more negative impact on those with a favourable or neutral stance towards climate activism. Political 'astroturfing' bots induce an increase in human communications, while encounters with other bots result in a decrease. Bot encounters do not change activists' engagement levels in climate activism. Despite the seemingly minor impact of individual bot encounters, the cumulative effect is profound due to the large volume of bot communication. Our findings underscore the importance of monitoring the influence of social bots, as with new technological advancements distinguishing between bots and humans becomes ever more challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how silk as an aesthetic sign plays the active and efficient role of diplomatic narrative in the cultural and political communication between countries employing the historical and archaeological evidence in China. Aesthetic signs are of communicative values and cultural narrative significance. Silk is an aesthetic sign with iconic properties. The paper argues that beauty, exquisiteness, and value are the visual properties that silk as a sign vehicle presents in terms of texture, colours, patterns, and weaving techniques, recognised across all cultural contexts throughout history. The richness of favourable meanings that a sign conveys is embodied in the characteristics of its specific vehicle. The combination of silk as a sign vehicle and its designated object conveys the sign's value, thus performing the narrative function. Due to its iconic functions, silk is the most distinct and active aesthetic sign. Therefore, this paper argues that silk as a sign expresses diplomatic fraternity and harmony narrates aesthetics of unremitting pursuit of gentleness and auspiciousness, and constructs an international image of a country willing to coexist with others harmoniously and offer mutual assistance during difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyses the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the United States of America elections held in November 2020. We analyse the 29th of September and the 22nd of October debates in which candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden participated. Content analysis is used as the research technique. The frequency and time spent by each candidate on the Covid-19 topic are measured. In addition, it is analysed the content of the speeches in general and the communication and discursive strategies employed by both candidates. Both verbal and non-verbal language and the elements linked to the staging of the debates are analysed too. Among other issues, the results show the importance of the pandemic in the debates, Biden explicitly took a pro-scientific stance, while Trump leaned towards a sceptical stance, and it was found that the communicative styles and strategies of both candidates have differed throughout the events analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central theme emerging from recent research on party competition is that political actors sometimes remain deliberately opaque in their communication. This phenomenon has been investigated under labels such as position-blurring, ambiguity, issue clarity or ideological clarity. In this paper we propose a distinction between two concepts that are sometimes conflated in this literature: ambiguity and vagueness. While ambiguity means that there is substantial variance in parties' positional signals, vagueness denotes political statements that are non-committal in terms of the policy action to be taken or the outcome to be achieved. We explore the co-variation of these two dimensions and their relationship to issue ownership and government status using manifesto data produced by the Austrian National Election Study. These data are unique in that they provide detailed positional information as well as information on policy commitment (election pledges). We show that the two dimensions are uncorrelated and have opposite relationships with issue ownership (vagueness positive, ambiguity negative). We conclude that analyses of position-blurring in party competition should take different strategies of non-clarity in party communication into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the influence of electoral manifestos on the online communication of electoral candidates. Our study addresses electoral candidates' conflict between party discipline and individual issue prioritisation. Building on the salience framework, we examine the thematic congruence between manifestos and online communication. Moreover, we test which issues are emphasised during the 2017 German federal election campaign. To this end, we created an original topic dictionary based on party manifestos. Applying the dictionary, we classify 143,969 tweets by 797 candidates. Our analyses demonstrate that manifestos shape the online communication of electoral candidates substantially. The findings show that electoral candidates of left–wing parties focus on core issues over time. Our results not only highlight the authority of party leadership, but also suggest that politicians do not tap the whole potential of online communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars connect the rise of populist parties and the growing importance of social media platforms for political communication as the emerging social media logic seems well-suited to populist communication. The following research note presents a novel dataset that connects Facebook accounts to party-level populism data from the POPPA database. Over 600,000 posts from 226 parties between 2017 and 2019 were analysed. The results show that in most European countries, populist parties are more active than non-populist parties on Facebook. However, high variation in the frequency of posts emphasises that country-specific aspects play an important role. Generally, Italian parties are much more active than those from other countries, whereas those in Northern and Western Europe are the least active. The most active party in Europe, the Italian right-wing populist Lega, showed the most extreme level of activity: its daily activity is around 20 times higher than the median. Furthermore, this analysis highlights why researchers should carefully check Facebook data for implausible inactivity and how connecting different data resources can help overcome potential biases resulting from missing data. Future studies analysing any party communication on Facebook will benefit from the insights and the list of party accounts featured herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution to the Forum collection traces the rhetorical strategies taken up by far-right actors to cast white supremacist ideas as "respectable" in the post-civil rights era, including the adoption of "colorblind" and "reverse racism" frameworks. Today's reactionary figureheads have inherited these frameworks, while adapting them to the norms and affordances of the digital attention economy. Popular indicators of conservative respectability today include the adoption of "mitigating rhetorical strategies," appeals to free speech, and performances of intellectual and journalistic rigor. The piece ultimately argues that these tactics of obfuscation and abstraction should not deter political communication researchers from identifying white supremacist ideology as such, even when it manifests in coded and "respectable" ways. Adopting a systemic rather than individualistic understanding of white supremacy can help us to undertake the critical analyses required in this moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory piece to a special issue of the Forum, we explore the inadequacies of the field of political communication in addressing the rising threats posed by illiberalism and the far right. We argue that the discipline's frameworks, developed within the context of Western liberal democracies, are ill-equipped to tackle the complexities and self-reflexive strategies of contemporary far-right movements and actor types. These formations exploit liberal norms and practices to ultimately undermine and dismantle democratic values. We call for more "democratic clarity," urging political communication scholars to adopt a clear stance in defense of democratic principles and to develop more robust conceptual tools to accurately classify and understand far-right actors. We introduce the other discussion pieces featured in this special section and ultimately point to actionable items meant to move the field forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a large literature interrogates the causes and consequences of declining political trust in democracies, considerably less work has considered the everyday leadership strategies that might arrest this trend. I tackle this gap as I ask: what can politicians do to build trust? Going beyond the performance perspective current in political science, I suggest that all politicians can build trust by (1) increasing occasions for political contact and (2) utilising authentic political communication. These arguments are developed out of interviews with national politicians in five democracies (N = 51) and tested empirically with observational and experimental survey data gathered from a longitudinal sample of the UK public (N = 705). Attesting to academic work on the contact hypothesis and 'authentic trust', as well as the testimony of politicians themselves, these analyses suggest that both strategies carry appraisive potential. These findings contribute conceptually and practically to our understanding of both trust and leadership in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature has underscored the power of digital activism, but few studies have symmetrically examined its impact beyond domestic audiences and among illiberal regimes. The co-occurrence of mass protests in East and Southeast Asia in 2019–2021, when protesters called for help from international communities, offers a valuable opportunity to test the power of digital media. This study uses a data set of 154 million Twitter posts and a time-series model to contrast sets of collective action metrics and connective action metrics with a novel dependent variable—foreign politicians' responses. We then analyze the directional, intensity, and time-lagged effects of the relevant cue-taking processes. We find that the new metrics are more potent in predicting responses from foreign politicians. Agency- and network-centered metrics also outperform number- and intensity-oriented metrics across the three cases. These findings have implications for the roles of opinion leadership and engagement networks in digital activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores pranking as a novel form of manipulative communication in global politics, focusing on the Russian state-aligned phone pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus). Since 2014, the duo has duped over 200 prominent Western critics of the Kremlin into discussing Russia-related topics. Russian media and officials frame these pranks as exposing Western elites' duplicity and Russophobia, while Western media and politicians use them to ridicule their fooled competitors. The pranksters aim to bolster Russian domestic support for the Kremlin's foreign endeavors and undermine the West by deepening its internal divisions. The article conceptualizes and empirically examines state-sponsored pranking within the broader context of Russia's challenge to the liberal order, contributing to the understanding of Russian power dynamics, Russia-West relations, and global political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disinformation is multiplied through social networks, and many hoaxes show Russian interests, to the extent that the US and the European Union qualify RT and Sputnik as media outlets for the circulation of false facts. This research aims to identify the disinformation generated by RT and Sputnik related to Ecuador in audiovisual media and social networks. The methodology is qualitative and quantitative, descriptive in scope. It is evident that Russian disinformation is present in the country, especially online. It is important to promote media literacy and open a debate on regulation that promotes freedom of expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hallin and Mancini's Comparing Media Systems has provided Mass Communication research with valuable tools to compare media settings from a transnational viewpoint. However, most recent contributions around media systems theory focus on suggesting new dimensions or variables to update the three models presented in the authors' book, leaving behind the discussion concerning the factors galvanizing the transformation processes. We then ask: What factors explain the transformation of media systems? Through a literature review and the discussion of an extensive array of examples from different countries, our essay formulates new insights to refine a crucial concept in media studies. We examine material, institutional, and cultural logics of change to point out how the described transformations might unfold at different paces in particular social systems. By resorting to the idea of "critical junctures," our essay illustrates how supposedly isolated shifts in the media systems can have unexpected impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered prejudices, systemic inequities and critical feelings about governmental institutions around the globe. Since the start of the pandemic, the 12 nations that make up South America have had more than 67 million cases and 1.3 million fatalities. Public trust in and willingness to speak out about government responses to COVID-19 in each nation have differed vastly. Using spiral of silence, this study (n = 1248) explored support for governmental COVID-19 response and willingness to speak out about that response in four South American nations: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru. Results revealed Chileans are more likely to speak out on government response to COVID-19 than other South American participants. In addition, climate of opinion and support for government response positively predict willingness to speak. These results further our international and cross-cultural understanding of spiral of silence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to mobilise public opinion is central to interest group politics. Yet, whether and how groups succeed in swaying the public remains inconclusive. The article assesses this by conducting a field experiment in which a consumer group sent different versions of campaign material to a representative sample of over 5000 citizens. Relying on a two-wave panel survey, it shows that while the campaign affected intended consumer behaviour, it did not influence attitudes. Surprisingly, material by the organisation alone was more effective than material sent with a partner. Moreover, campaign references to personal experiences and facts were not more effective than material referring to public opinion. The findings challenge existing evidence on how sender and message characteristics affect the likelihood of influencing citizens. At the same time, they underline that public opinion is hard to change and have important implications for understanding political representation and interest groups in democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a comparative analysis of the inaugural speeches of U.S. President Joe Biden and Vietnamese President To Lam, utilizing Michael Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) framework. By examining the Ideational (Transitivity), Interpersonal (Modality), and Textual (Texture and Cohesion) metafunctions, the study reveals how each leader's linguistic choices mirror the distinct political and cultural contexts of their respective nations. Joe Biden's speech underscores the urgency of immediate action and crisis management, employing Material Processes to stress the importance of unity and national recovery. Conversely, To Lam's speech is rooted in long-term nation-building and the leadership of the Communist Party, with a focus on Relational Processes to reinforce collective responsibility and national unity. The Modality analysis demonstrates Joe Biden's use of High Modality to convey decisiveness and transparency, aligning with American expectations for solid and clear commitments. In contrast, To Lam emphasizes collective duty and the Party's enduring leadership, reflecting Vietnam's socio-political ethos. Additionally, both speeches use Theme-Rheme structures and lexical repetition to ensure textual cohesion, though their cultural and ideological differences lead to distinct rhetorical approaches. By deepening our understanding of how political leaders use language to shape identities, communicate visions, and influence public perception, this study contributes to the broader field of political communication, offering insights into the strategic use of language across different cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, science is challenged by science-related populism, which deems the common sense of "ordinary people" superior to the knowledge of "academic elites". Individual support for science-related populism can be associated with people's communication behavior: On the one hand, people who hold science-related populist attitudes may inform themselves differently about science; they may even be disconnected from societal discourse around science. On the other hand, they may communicate more actively on social media and in interpersonal conversations. We test this using nationally representative survey data from Switzerland. Results show that science-related populists use TV and social networking sites more often to get information about science. They are also more likely to communicate about science in social media comments. However, science-related populist attitudes are not associated with a general preference for social media over journalistic media. Science-related populism has thus not (yet) fueled a "science-related public disconnection". We also run multiverse analyses, which show further nuances of our results, and discuss implications for science communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author thematizes the operation of the political market of attention that is propelled by the willingness of citizens to credit populist leaders with their digital political labour. Mutual, nevertheless unequal, exchange of attention leads to the formation of a spiral of attention. Its expansive character is sustained by the strategically subsidized recognition of populist leaders. Accumulated attention, i. e. attention capital, is the resource that is used to maintain populist networked public spheres, while citizens are proletarianized: they are invited to apply their labour power to distributing political ideas but are pevented from evaluating the influence of competing public actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019–2020, Israel went through three consecutive elections in less than a year on grounds of alleged corruption by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and his lack of ability to form a coalition. This study aims to contribute to analyses of the media mobilization/malaise effect by examining the impact of such a prolonged period of campaigning on citizens' political behavior. Thus, we conducted six online surveys using a longitudinal sample of Israeli society before and after each election. The analysis found that, despite participants' testimonies that they were increasingly "tired of dealing with elections," there was a significant increase in participants' reported certainty in their vote, news consumption, participation in online political discussions, and level of political efficacy between the elections. Next, a multivariate analysis aiming to explain variations in voters' political efficacy found that political trust, participants' reported certainty about their vote, and political interest all explained high levels of political efficacy. The analysis provides one of the strongest reinforcements to date regarding the validity of political mobilization theory, demonstrating its relevance under challenging conditions. We discuss further implications and generalizability of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication faces significant challenges due to an increasing polarization of public discourses. This polarization oversimplifies societal differences into "us versus them" dynamics, complicating consensus building and eroding trust in democratic processes. Traditionally, CSR communication research has focused on how organizations negotiate meanings between various stakeholders. However, the rise in polarization necessitates a broader research scope to understand its impact on CSR practices and organizational relationships. This Special Issue of Management Communication Quarterly explores these evolving challenges, analyzing how polarization reshapes CSR communication and outlining strategies for businesses to navigate this fragmented landscape. The issue also reflects on the broader role of corporations amidst tendencies of polarization and suggests directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that Hispanic voters tend to be more politically engaged when Hispanic candidates are on the ballot. This study contributes to intercultural and political communication scholarship by considering how perceived candidate ethnicity, beliefs about candidates' commitment to Hispanic voters, and communication shape political engagement. Survey data (N = 424) from the 2018 Texas Senate election featuring Democrat Beto O'Rourke and Republican Ted Cruz, indicates that voter perceptions of candidate ethnicity and commitment to the Hispanic community likely shape political engagement, although this varies across candidates. Political talk enhances engagement and moderates the relationship between perceived candidate identity and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This retrospective phenomenological case study examines the experiences of 18 politicians who participated in a political campaign using performing arts and artists in a regional heads and legislators in Indonesia. Also, the role of Gandrung art as a performing art is becoming a political communication tool for political actors in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a retrospective phenomenological case. The informants recruited were 18 politicians who have local, regional and national political levels. The participants were interviewed about their experiences of campaigning using traditional performing arts as a form of political communication. Data collection techniques used in this study include interviews and photo documentation during the campaign process to triangulate findings. Findings: Based on a case study analysis and through thematic analysis, this research reveals three emerging themes which indicate that performing arts function as political communication tools in three significant ways: (1) as a form of artistic expression for conveying political messages through movement and the use of dancer costumes; (2) as a medium for showcasing cultural identity and representation as a form of concern for the local culture of voters; and (3) as a means to garner mass appeal and propagate political propaganda. Research limitations/implications: The study has two limitations. First, the study only interviewed a small number of participants. Thus, generalization for wider contexts of politicians is not possible. Second, the study focuses on examining the voice of politicians and analyzing it using thematic analysis. Originality/value: There is a scarcity of research that specifically focuses on uncovering the perspectives of politicians who employ performing arts as a political communication tool. This study contributes to the understanding that art performance is inherently non-neutral, highlighting how performing arts can actively engage in political communication by conveying messages, shaping cultural identity and influencing public opinion in the context of Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial "Democracy under siege: how actors, communication strategies, and emerging phenomena are changing the rules in the public sphere" explores the challenges democracy faces in the digital age. It discusses the rise of populism, manipulation of emotions, spread of disinformation, and control of communication in non-democratic regions. The articles featured in this research topic shed light on the evolving dynamics in the public sphere and the implications for democratic governance, emphasizing the need for a nuanced approach to regulating digital media and a renewed commitment to democratic norms and values. [Extracted from the article]

The article addresses Internet memes’ usage in Russian far-right discourse, seeking to evaluate how it corresponds with the basic roles of memes in political communication and the extent to which the Russian far-right memetic vernacular is universally translatable. The article uses qualitative content analysis and multimodal discourse analysis of the “Right-Wing Memes” community on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The Russian far-right builds its social identity by filling the floating signifiers of the “left-wing,” “migrants,” and “Russian national state” with relevant meanings through the memetic means of visual humor, bitter irony, and parallel comparison. These construct the in- and out-groups, convey the ideological message, and give voice to the groups excluded from the mainstream. However, although the Russian far-right employs globalized memetic tropes, the content is mainly country-specific, which, together with the language barrier, hinders the formation of a universal far-right memetic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between religion and politics is receiving increasing attention in political science, although the focus is often on voter attitudes. Despite secularization trends, scholars expect a resurgence of religion in Western European party politics, where Christianity as a native identity is opposed to non-native Islam by populist radical right parties. In this context, it is primarily hostility toward other religious groups that structures religious elements in political communication. In most Latin American societies, religiosity plays a much greater role for individuals, which is reflected in the discourses of political elites who use genuine religious references to appeal to religious voters ("sacralization of politics"). Using data from my own recent research on content analysis of parties' and candidates' Facebook profiles, this article compares how political actors in Latin America and Western Europe use religious references in electoral campaigns and how salient these discourses are. The results help to explain the different prominence of religious discourses in different democratic regions and religious markets. The article contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of religion in 21st century politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of emotive rhetoric in legislative debates has attracted increasing scholarly attention in political science research. Building on recent scholarship, I examine the conditions under which emotive rhetoric dominates legislative speeches in the UK House of Commons between 2001 and 2015. By coding nearly half a million legislative speeches according to Ekman's six basic emotions – anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise – I argue that members of parliament (MPs) strategically use emotions in their speeches to maximize their influence and visibility. The findings reveal modest but discernible effects related to electoral safety, seniority and party status. Specifically, the results show that speeches by electorally vulnerable, junior and opposition MPs contain higher levels of emotive language compared to those by other MPs. Notably, despite considerable similarity in the correlates of individual emotion categories, there are also significant differences. For example, opposition MPs and electorally vulnerable MPs rely more heavily on negative emotions such as anger, disgust, fear and sadness than government MPs and electorally safer MPs. While junior MPs use fear, sadness and surprise at higher rates compared to their senior counterparts, they are statistically indistinguishable from senior MPs in their use of anger, disgust and joy. Overall, these results underscore the need for greater scholarly attention to the communication styles of representatives in legislatures and emphasize the importance of examining the nuanced strategies behind the use of different types of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing evidence suggests that news media significantly contribute to disseminating, endorsing, or merely increasing the visibility of populist rhetoric. While a large amount of literature has focused on the type and volume of news coverage provided to populist actors and parties (populism through the media), there is more scarcity of knowledge regarding the media's orientation towards populism (populism by the media), partly due to a lack of systematic comparative evidence. To address this shortfall, we introduce a novel, large-scale comparative dataset, the Media Populism (M-POP) expert survey (including a website and a ShinyApp). This survey provides metrics for media populism across 38 national and subnational contexts globally, thereby offering an empirically grounded evaluation of the primary theoretical interpretations of media populism. In the article, we detail the dataset, evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of using an expert survey method, and conduct a systematic analysis of the determinants of media populism, particularly focusing on its right-wing manifestation, to validate our metrics. We then explore two empirical applications of the M-POP dataset in a comprehensive comparative manner, tackling key questions in political communication literature: the interplay between media populism and tabloid journalism, and the correlation between individual populist sentiments and media populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study has explored lobbying strategies, including public relation efforts, lobbying intensity, political communication, moderated by media coverage, on government actions and public opinion towards fluoride regulation. It is based on the Resource Dependence Theory and the responses gathered from the residents living in high fluoride areas in China and Pakistan from 700 respondents. Method: Structural equation modeling with SmartPLS 4.0 was used to analyze the proposed model. The public relation efforts (β = 0.257, p < 0.001), lobbying intensity (β = 0.211, p < 0.001), and political communication (β = 0.103, p = 0.025) have positive and significant impact on public opinion, which further mediates the effects on government actions on fluoride regulations (β = 0.412, p < 0.001). Results: This study also elucidates the moderating effect on media coverage and results showed that media coverage (β = 0.109, p = 0.012) moderates the relationship between public relation efforts and public opinion. Conclusions: This current research has established the importance of public opinion in supporting the actual government's decision and its implementation. Thus, this study is significant as it provides useful insights to policymakers and even lobby groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent political parties engage in debates about the same issues and how they respond to each other is highly relevant to democratic processes. Existing research on issue engagement has uncovered several interesting patterns and factors, but has neglected one important feature of contemporary democracies: nowadays, political actors have a wide range of communication channels at their disposal with the use of ‘newer’ forms of political communication (e.g., social media) potentially transforming discursive power relations between political actors. However, it remains largely unclear whether the extent and nature of issue engagement varies between more ‘traditional’ and ‘newer’ forms of political communication. To fill this gap, I apply unsupervised topic modelling to press releases and tweets from political parties in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (January 2019–September 2021). The statistical analysis shows substantial differences in issue engagement between political parties in press releases and on Twitter, now X. First, I find a higher likelihood of issue engagement between parties in tweets. Second, Twitter appears to moderate the influence of party‐level factors on issue engagement compared to press releases. The results show that for issue engagement in tweets, the importance of party size is smaller and the role of government parties is larger than in press releases, while the role of ideological distance does not seem to change. These findings add important insights to our understanding of the potential transformative effect of new communication technologies on party competition and political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russia-Ukraine war impacted the inherent world political pattern and aroused the common concern of the people of all countries. In era of mass communication, information exposure through media influences individuals' attitudes towards international events. By controlling the texts and images in news reports, this study tests the effects of prior cognition (cultural proximity) and media information exposure related factors on individual attitudes towards Russia-Ukraine war. This study conducted a 2 (information authority: mainstream media information vs. we-media information) x 2 (information attention bias: positive/neutral information attention vs. passive information attention) x 2 (self-construal: independent self vs. interdependent self) web-based experiment on 539 Chinese citizens (Mage= 30, SD = 20.494) during July 2023. Based on mediating and moderating analyses, the results showed that the impact of source credibility on audience attitudes was minimal, while cultural proximity had a strong influence on individuals' attitudes towards Russia and Ukraine and their levels of support. Additionally, micro-narratives were found to be more effective in evoking anti-war sentiments compared to macro-narratives. As individuals are exposed to more media information, their attitudes become more distinct and less likely to change. This study investigates he applicability of the OSOR model and the ELM model in political communication field, providing insights for understanding the effects of media information exposure in shaping public's opinions on internationally events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media influencers (SMIs) are not only important players in marketing but have also repeatedly posted about political issues on their channels. Yet, we lack insights into the prevalence of their political communication, their portrayal of different political subjects, and factors driving content popularity among audiences. This comparative study tackles these gaps: Quota-based youth surveys in Germany and Belgium (NTotal = 2,800) informed a YouTube content analysis in both countries (NTotal = 5,740), which was complemented by video metadata (i.e. views and likes per views on videos). Our findings show that most youth encounter political content from SMIs, but on a more occasional basis. Correspondingly, we found that most of the SMIs in our sample addressed political topics rather sporadically. However, their political videos received more views and likes than their nonpolitical content, implying that their discussion of meaningful subjects garners audiences’ attention. Our five-year analysis further suggests that political topics have become more prevalent in their content over time, pointing to an upwards trend in their political communication in recent years. Moreover, findings indicate that lifestyle-based political topics (e.g., gender, health) are most frequently discussed by SMIs. Generally, political topics were most often presented in the form of commentaries or reaction videos, which has several theoretical implications. Last, our results demonstrate that commentary-style videos and those characterized by high infotainment are most liked by audiences, showing that this type of content resonates strongly with SMIs’ viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how legislators use social media, specifically investigating whether their posts reflect the concerns expressed by their legislative party peers in an anonymous survey. Utilizing data from Twitter (now X), we compare legislators' social media posts with their responses in a survey of legislators in Latin America. We propose a novel and scalable method for analyzing political communications, employing OpenAI for topic identification in statements and BERTopic analysis to identify clusters of political communication. This approach enables a thorough and detailed examination of these topics over time and across political parties. Applying our method to statements made by members of the Chilean Congress, we observe a general alignment between the preferences stated in surveys by elites and the prominence of these issues on Twitter. This result validates social media platforms (particularly Twitter) as a tool for predicting politicians' preferences. Our methodological approach offers a scalable tool for analyzing political rhetoric over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vincent Mosco, a renowned academic in the field of communication studies, passed away at the age of 75. Throughout his career, Mosco focused on the power dynamics within digital technologies and the global communication landscape. He authored numerous books and articles, exploring topics such as the commodification of audiences, capitalist structures, and the impact of emerging media technologies. Mosco's work also delved into the social and cultural implications of the internet, AI, and content-driven services. His scholarship extended beyond North America, with collaborations and research in China and Brazil. Mosco's contributions to the field of communication studies have left a lasting impact on scholars worldwide. [Extracted from the article]

This study aims to explore Joko Widodo's political communication strategy through political diction and strategic grammar. At this point, language is a tool that is full of political interests to gain and maintain power. With a critical paradigm in a qualitative approach, the data are the text of President Joko Widodo's state speeches in the 2019-2023 period. Data analysis was performed using Fowler's version of CDA (critical discourse analysis). In the end, the results show that the hidden meanings of using political diction in President Joko Widodo's speech include embracing political opponents, gathering support, responding to demands, boosting image, growing optimism, and issuing warnings. Apart from that, Joko Widodo in his State of the Union speech also makes use of grammar strategically to highlight positive things or successes by packing them into active sentences and disguising (covering) negative things or failures by packing them into passive sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the two decades since the end of Suharto regime in Indonesia, two apparently distinct public industries have emerged in tandem: gendered forms of religious style, glossed as modest fashion, and legal efforts to hold citizens accountable for theft, glossed as corruption. Many of the most high-profile anti-corruption cases in the past decade have brought these two fields into semiotic interaction, as female defendants increasingly deploy forms of facial cover associated with extreme religious piety to signal humility and shame when appearing in court, in the process complicating the relationship between religious semiotics and criminality. Analyzing how and why these two genres of political communication have intersected in the past decade, and to what effects, requires situating these shifts in the context of dense aesthetic archives in which the spectacularity inherent to fashion resonates with the unique impulses of a post-authoritarian political landscape in which uncovering secrets is especially alluring. I argue that the hermeneutic impulses motivating popular fascination with criminal style, often circulated via social media, open new analyses of the ethical relationship between beauty and justice. Building on the scholarship on transparency and on the human face, I argue that putting gendered religious style at the center of the analytical frame—from religious self-fashioning to court appearances, and as forms of political protest—reveals the ethical impulses behind seeing and being seen, and the faciality of scandal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2024 presidential election is an important moment in the political life of a country. This study aims to analyze the role of various aspects of political communsication in the presidential election, including political campaigns, political propaganda, public opinion, political marketing and advertising, and political negotiations. The research methodology uses a holistic approach with quantitative and qualitative data collection through online surveys, interviews, and media content analysis. Key findings highlight the significance of social media in shaping public opinion and the political communication strategies used by candidates. Practical implications of these findings include recommendations for more effective political campaign strategies and the development of more transparent communication policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]