Extended call for papers: ECPR General Conference University of Hamburg, 22-25 August 2018

Section summary (see CfP on the ECPR website here)

In their seminal piece published nearly a decade ago, Bennett and Iyengar (2008) argued that drastic shifts in global communications challenged the foundations of political communication. During the ensuing decade, the upheaval caused by these trends has only increased: political rhetoric is increasingly populist, media fragmentation continues unabated, internet-based communication continues its rapid rise, and the disintegration of the mass public seems a given. These trends fundamentally affect all subfields of political communication, though their precise impact remains poorly understood. Political elites seem to increasingly circumvent the traditional gatekeepers – the mass media – opting to communicate directly with the public instead. This has caused shifts in electoral politics, with electoral wins for populist and outsider candidates that are able to effectively communicate with the public directly. This direct communication between politicians and the public also raises questions regarding the public’s perceptions of politics, especially in a context of declining political trust. The media themselves are perhaps most shaken by these trends: their role as gatekeepers is in decline, but so is their role as privileged content creators. The rise of internet communications has democratized content creation, which challenges traditional conceptions of political journalism and news creation, with various pundits even claiming that we are living in an era of ‘post-truth politics’ in which fake news flourishes. How has this affected the relationships between media and its key audiences – political elites and the mass public? The public seems to grow increasingly wary of media and journalists, who seem to have lost their monopoly as providers of truth. The disintegration of the mass public also challenges existing media effects theories, and the way in which political communication affects electoral outcomes. Similarly, the power balance between journalists and politicians may have shifted towards politics, with journalists being increasingly circumvented and criticized.

This section seeks to bring together scholars investigating the impact of these challenges on the various subfields of political communication. Although the section is open to contemporary work on political communication in general, it particularly invites theoretical and empirical contributions addressing the impact of the declining role of legacy news media on the relationships between politics, media and the public.

We invite paper givers to consider the panel descriptions below, but we are also open to submissions that do not seem to fit any of the panels at first glance. Any questions can be addressed to the panel organisers. Formal submissions have to be made via the ECPR website (and not via the panel organisers). The deadline for submissions in 15 February 2018.

 

Panels and panel organisers

Polling in crisis: Can social media data help out?

Heinz Brandenburg (University of Strathclyde, heinz.brandenburg[at]strath.ac.uk) & Marcel van Egmond (University of Amsterdam, m.h.vanegmond[at]uva.nl)

Opinion polling suffers from obvious and growing problems, both internal — a range of sampling and non-response biases — and external via increased electoral volatility.  This makes post-stratification a more arduous and hazardous business, resulting in some high-profile polling failures such as the Trump victory and Brexit referendums in 2016 and the previous two UK general elections.  Can the mining of social media data help out?  Since these particular ‘big data’ face much more fundamental representativeness issues of their own, there is no prospect of them supplanting opinion polls as suggested by some excitable initial studies.  But can they usefully supplement the polls?  There are promising signs: for example, Smith and Gustafson (2017) show that counts of candidates’ Wikipedia page views significantly improve poll-based forecasts of US Senate races.  Yet such research is in its infancy and raises a range of theoretical as well as methodological questions about the many steps between tweets, posts or clicks and public opinion.  This panel will bring together experts in survey methodology and big data research to address those questions.  It will deliver both insights for academics and guidance for beleaguered practitioners.

Passing the Media Gates

Iskander De Bruycker (University of Antwerp, iskander.debruycker[at]uantwerpen.be)

While social media channels are on the rise, the mass media remain an important platform for politicians, movements and advocacy groups to get their voices heard. Through media appearances political actors can affect public opinion and put pressure on agenda-setting and policymaking processes. This panel invites papers that seek to understand the way in which political actors pursue their ideological and policy objectives in the media arena, and how this affects public opinion and political decision-making processes.

Changing political communication, contingent effects?

Katjana Gattermann (University of Amsterdam, k.gattermann[at]uva.nl)

Growing media diversification and the changing use thereof as well as the rising opportunities of social media for politicians to communicate directly with citizens has altered the communicative relationship between represented and representatives, which is not only important during election campaigns, but also between elections. This panel invites papers that 1) offer new methodological approaches to how citizens are affected by political messages during and beyond election campaigns; 2) papers that deal with the (changing) communication behavior of politicians or political parties vis-à-vis citizens or voters; 3) papers that contribute new knowledge to the study of media effects on political behaviour beyond classic approaches such as agenda-setting, framing and priming; or 4) papers that take a longitudinal or comparative perspective in the study of the communicative interaction between politicians and citizens.

Emotions in Political Communication

Sophie Lecheler (University of Vienna, sophie.lecheler[at]univie.ac.at)

Political communication studies not only the minds, but also the hearts of journalists, politicians, and citizens alike. Yet, scholars only recently began to recognize the role of emotion as an integral part of political communication research. This panel invites papers that offer novel insights into the role of emotions into political communication theories and research. We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions that (1) further the integration of emotions into common theoretical frameworks of political communication; (2) that study the emergence and occurrence of emotionalized political and journalistic discourse, and (3) that focus on the effects emotions have on citizens’ attitudes, opinions and behavior. Furthermore, we invite scholars to present (4) novel qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches of the study of emotion in our field.

Political Communication in a Post-Truth Era

Javier Sajuria (Queen Mary, University of London, j.sajuria[at]qmul.ac.uk)

The “Fake News”-phenomenon raises larger concerns within political communication research: are information and factuality less valuable in times where citizens’ opinions seem based on ideology, preference, and emotion? Does this create dysfunctional relationships between media, politics and citizens? This panel invites papers studying political communication in a “post-truth” context. We are looking for submissions focusing issues of source credibility, detection and counteraction of misinformation, shifting patterns of political and media trust, or studying the consequences of fake news and misinformation. We welcome contributions both from theoretical and empirical perspectives. We also encourage interdisciplinary submissions, such as crossovers between political communication, text analysis, social network analysis, or other forms of computational social sciences.

How political news affects and is affected by social media

Peter Van Aelst (University of Antwerp, peter.vanaelst[at]uantwerpen.be)

The increasing importance of the Internet and social media as a means of communication and information has changed how political news is produced, distributed and consumed. More and more journalists are influenced by discussions on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. In addition, politicians have more digital opportunities to directly influence the public while bypassing the traditional media. These trends not only challenge some of the established theoretical insights in the field of political communication but simultaneously also offer new opportunities to study how information spreads and how the public deals with it. This panel welcomes papers that study aspects of the changing relationships between news media, politicians and citizens in the social media age.

Populist Political Communication

Jonas Lefevere (Vesalius College Brussels, Jonas.lefevere[at]vesalius.edu)

The academic debate on populism has been flourishing following recent political developments in Europe and the United States. This should not surprise, as populist parties on the left and right of the political spectrum have enjoyed a series of electoral successes. Though traditionally conceived as a ‘thin’ ideology, populism is increasingly studied as a communication style, which brings the study of populism to the centre of political communication research. This panel welcomes papers that investigate patterns and effects of populist communication by political actors and media. This includes, but is not limited to: studies analysing populist communication styles, studies tackling the extent to which populist communication affects the public’s attitudes and (electoral) preferences, and the extent to which media propagate populist rhetoric.