JournalTOCs

International Journal of Press/Politics
Journal Prestige (SJR): 2.458

Citation Impact (citeScore): 3
Number of Followers: 12

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 1940-1612 - ISSN (Online) 1940-1620
Published by Sage Publications

[1174 journals]

Anything Goes' Youth, News, and Democratic Engagement in the Roaring
2020s
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  Authors: Jakob Ohme, Kim Andersen, Erik Albæk, Claes H. de Vreese
  Pages: 557 - 568
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Volume 27, Issue 3, Page 557-568, July 2022.
  
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-04-29T06:13:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221093008
  Issue No: Vol. 27, No. 3 (2022)
How Climate Movement Actors and News Media Frame Climate Change and
Strike: Evidence from Analyzing Twitter and News Media Discourse from 2018
to 2021
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  Authors: Kaiping Chen, Amanda L. Molder, Zening Duan, Shelley Boulianne, Christopher Eckart, Prince Mallari, Diyi Yang
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Twitter enables an online public sphere for social movement actors, news organizations, and others to frame climate change and the climate movement. In this paper, we analyze five million English tweets posted from 2018 to 2021 demonstrating how peaks in Twitter activity relate to key events and how the framing of the climate strike discourse has evolved over the past three years. We also collected over 30,000 news articles from major news sources in English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, United States, United Kingdom) to demonstrate how climate movement actors and media differ in their framing of this issue, attention to policy solutions, attribution of blame, and efforts to mobilize citizens to act on this issue. News outlets tend to report on global politicians’ (in)action toward climate policy, the consequences of climate change, and industry's response to the climate crisis. Differently, climate movement actors on Twitter advocate for political actions and policy changes as well as addressing the social justice issues surrounding climate change. We also revealed that conversations around the climate movement on Twitter are highly politicized, with a substantial number of tweets targeting politicians, partisans, and country actors. These findings contribute to our understanding of how people use social media to frame political issues and collective action, in comparison to the traditional mainstream news outlets.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-06-20T03:59:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221106405
Neither Absent nor Ambient: Incidental News Exposure From the Perspective
of News Avoiders in the UK, United States, and Spain
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  Authors: Ruth Palmer, Benjamin Toff
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Scholars have long argued that incidental news exposure (INE) is a potentially valuable way citizens gain political information and learn about current affairs. Yet growing scholarship on news avoidance suggests many people still manage to consume little news, and algorithmic curation may decrease the likelihood that they will be exposed to it incidentally. In this article, we put the literatures on INE, news avoidance, and political talk into dialogue with one another. Then, by inductively analyzing over a hundred in-depth interviews conducted from 2016 to 2020 with news avoiders in the UK, Spain, and the United States, we explore how they encounter news incidentally and to what extent they feel the news is accessible and available to them. Our audience-centric approach highlights that interviewees often did not make a clear distinction between direct encounters with professional news (“firsthand news”) and discussions of news (“secondhand news”), especially online. When they did make a distinction, the latter was often more salient for them. We also find that just as news consumers have repertoires of news sources on which they habitually rely, news avoiders have repertoires of sources for incidental exposure to news to stay informed about major events and anything that might affect them directly. And yet, those repertoires catch only the biggest and most sensational stories of the day and do little to help them contextualize or understand the news they encounter, contributing to their sense that news is neither entirely absent nor ambient in the way scholars have theorized.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-06-09T03:32:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221103144
My Voters Should See This! What News Items Are Shared by Politicians on
Facebook'
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  Authors: Tobias Heidenreich, Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Petro Tolochko, Fabienne Lind, Hajo G. Boomgaarden
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Political actors play an increasingly important role in the dissemination of political information on social media. However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms why specific news items are shared with the support base instead of others. For a timespan between December 2017 and the end of 2018, we combine the analysis of Facebook content from 1,022 politicians associated with 20 political parties from Germany, Spain, and the UK, with an automated content analysis of media coverage from 22 major online news outlets, and survey data in a multilevel binomial regression approach. By comparing news items that have been shared by one or several political parties with news items that have not been shared by any of them, we overcome the selection biases of previous studies in the field of news dissemination. Findings show that a news item's likelihood to be shared by a politician increases (1) if that politician's party is mentioned in the news item, (2) the more salient their party's owned issues are in the news item, and (3) the more party supporters tend to read the news outlet in which the news item is published. We contextualize these findings in light of political actors’ multi-faceted motivations for news sharing on social media and discuss how this process potentially reinforces an information bias that may contribute to the polarization and fragmentation of audiences.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-06-07T05:22:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221104740
Troublemakers in the Streets' A Framing Analysis of Newspaper Coverage
of Protests in the UK 1992[math]2017
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  Authors: Johannes B. Gruber
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Research indicates that when mainstream news media report about demonstrations, protesters often face delegitimizing coverage. This phenomenon, known as the “(journalistic) protest paradigm,” is thought to be a default mindset that leads journalists to emphasize the method of protesters over their message. However, empirical work has so far limited itself to specific protest movements or events and only covers brief periods. This study first identifies and then codes the main frames in all reports about domestic protest in the United Kingdom. Analysing data that covers eight national newspapers during a 26 year period (N = 27,496), I provide a more systematic understanding of how the mainstream news media in liberal democracies report about protests. The analysis shows that a stable majority of articles uses frames linked to the protest paradigm throughout the time period. However, a substantial and growing number of articles employ legitimizing frames—either on their own or co-existing with delegitimizing framing.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-05-23T05:36:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221102058
Book Review: Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares
for its Rulers by Jennifer Pan
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  Authors: Min Jiang
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-05-23T05:36:13Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221102056
Distract and Divert: How World Leaders Use Social Media During Contentious
Politics
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  Authors: Pablo Barberá, Anita R. Gohdes, Evgeniia Iakhnis, Thomas Zeitzoff
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  How do leaders communicate during domestic crises' We provide the first global analysis of world leader communication on social media during social unrest. We develop a theory of leaders’ digital communication strategies, building on the diversionary theory of foreign policy, as well as research on the role of democratic institutions in explaining elite responsiveness. To test our theory, we construct a new dataset that characterizes leader communication through social media posts published by any head of state or government on Twitter or Facebook, employing a combination of automated translation and supervised machine learning methods. Our findings show that leaders increase their social media activity and shift the topic from domestic to foreign policy issues during moments of social unrest, which is consistent with a conscious strategy to divert public attention when their position could be at risk. These effects are larger in democracies and in particular in the run-up to elections, which we attribute to incentives created by democratic institutions. Our results demonstrate how social media provide meaningful comparative insight into leaders’ political behavior in the digital age.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-05-23T05:35:48Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221102030
How Do Populists Visually Represent ‘The People’' A Systematic
Comparative Visual Content Analysis of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’
Instagram Accounts
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  Authors: Benjamin Moffitt
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  How do populists visually represent “the people”' While the literature on populism has tended to focus on text- and language-based documents, such as speeches, policies, and party documents to consider how populists characterize “the people,” in this article I undertake a systematic visual content analysis to consider how populist leaders on either side of the ideological spectrum visually represent “the people” in images from their official Instagram accounts (N = 432). Comparing the cases of Donald Trump on the populist right and Bernie Sanders on the populist left, I code for the majority gender, race, and age of “the people” in each image, and supplement this with a discussion of the depictions of these categories. I find that Trump’s images of “the people” are significantly more homogenous across all categories—specifically more white, more masculine, and with less young people—than Sanders’, and situate these findings in the context of the literature on the differences between left and right populism. This article contributes to the study of populist communication by highlighting the role of images in representing “the people”; analyzing how left and right populists do this differently; and developing a method for measuring the demographic characteristics of “the people” in populists’ images that can be used in future studies. In doing so, it seeks to push the literature forward by highlighting that images are not something “extra” to be studied in populist communication, but rather are a central battleground for the construction of populist identities.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-05-19T04:28:16Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221100418
No Laughing Matter: Armin Laschet and the Photographic Exposé
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  Authors: Thomas Olesen
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  On July 17, 2021, the CDU's chancellor candidate Armin Laschet was photographed laughing during a speech by the German Federal President in the flood-stricken city of Erftstadt. The photographic images caused an uproar and contributed to the CDU's defeat in the September 23 election. The paper analyzes why these images resonated with such damaging effects. Theoretically, it sets the analysis on the background of the moralization and personalization of politics and argues that photography, with its ability to capture behavior at a distance, plays a prominent role in these processes. While this condition explains why an image of a laughing politician can generate such indignation in the first place, the paper discusses how this effect was amplified in the case of Laschet by a range of contextual features: (a) the timing of the images in the middle of an election period where politicians come under intense scrutiny; (b) their appearance in a crisis situation (the German flooding disaster) where politicians are surrounded by other role expectations than in routine periods; (3) Laschet's new, insecure position as leader of the CDU; (d) his history of scandals and poor political judgment; and (e) the frivolous and boisterous manner of his laughter. At a general theoretical level, the paper's insights caution us to avoid prima facie conclusions about the autonomous power of photographs. Instead, they encourage analytical sensitivity to the importance of timing and context as explanatory elements in our understanding of photographic exposés.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-05-17T05:07:25Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221102027
Online and Offline Battles: Usage of Different Political Conflict Frames
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  Authors: Emma van der Goot, Sanne Kruikemeier, Jeroen de Ridder, Rens Vliegenthart
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Conflict framing is key in political communication. Politicians use conflict framing in their online messages (e.g., criticizing other politicians) and journalists in their political coverage (e.g., reporting on political tensions). Conflicts can take a variety of forms and can provoke different reactions. However, the literature still lacks a systematic and theoretically-grounded conceptual framework that accounts for the multi-dimensionality of political conflict frames. Based on literature from political epistemology, political communication, and related fields such as psychology, we present four conceptual dimensions of political conflicts: (1) the style (civil/uncivil); (2) the subject (personal/substantive); (3) whether it is about underlying moral/epistemic principles or not (deep/superficial conflict); and (4) whether it concerns a normative or factual issue. Results of a content analysis of newspaper articles and politicians’ tweets confirm the usage of these conflict dimensions in the Netherlands during a non-election period. Interestingly, most of the conflicts are civil, substantive, and do not highlight deep fundamental clashes. In light of the current societal concerns about the lack of respect in political debates and the deepening of our political divides, these findings can be considered encouraging.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-04-27T08:40:29Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221096633
From Statistics to Stories: Indices and Indicators as Communication Tools
for Social Change
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  Authors: Lauren Kogen
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  The terms ‘indices’ and ‘indicators’ may immediately cause eyelids to droop. How, then, might they serve to impassion publics and, ultimately, promote social change' This paper examines the extent to which indices and indicators can be considered communication tools for social movements and social change. The analysis is based on a 2018 evaluation of one index based in the United States – the Ranking Digital Rights Index, which assesses privacy and freedom of expression in the ICT space – and incorporates interviews with civil society stakeholders. Bringing theory from the fields of journalism and social movements together with the data from the evaluation, the findings suggest indices can serve as useful communication resources for social movements under certain circumstances. In particular, the analysis suggests three communication resources – legitimate information, newsworthy information, and flexible information – that human rights indices are most likely to provide.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-04-15T05:51:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221094246
News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and
How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship
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  Authors: Ernesto de León, Mykola Makhortykh, Teresa Gil-Lopez, Aleksandra Urman, Silke Adam
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  This study explores shifts in political trust during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, examining the role that media consumption and threat perceptions played in individuals’ trust in politics. We combine panel surveys taken before and during the first nation-wide lockdown with webtracking data of participants' online behaviour to paint a nuanced picture of media effects during the crisis. Our work has several findings. First, political trust, an attitude known for its stability, increased following lockdown. Second, consumption of mainstream news on COVID-19 directly hindered this increase, with those reading more news having lower over-time trust, while the relatively minor alternative news consumption had no direct effect on political trust. Third, threat perceptions a) to health and b) from the policy response to the pandemic, have strong and opposite effects on political trust, with threats to health increasing trust, and threats from the government policy response decreasing it. Lastly, these threat perceptions condition the effect of COVID-19 news consumption on political trust: perceptions of threat had the power to both exacerbate and mute the effect of media consumption on government trust during the pandemic. Notably, we show that the expected negative effect of alternative news on political trust only exists for those who did not think COVID-19 posed a threat to their health, while public service news consumption reduced the negative effect produced by government threat perceptions. The paper therefore advances our understanding of the nuanced nature of media effects, particularly as relates to alternative media, especially during moments of crisis.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-04-13T07:10:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221087179
Book Review: Youth Active Citizenship in Europe - Ethnographies of
Participation by Shakuntala Banaji and Sam Mejias
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  Authors: Jakob Ohme
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-04-05T06:39:03Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221092994
Power Hierarchies and Visibility in the News: Exploring Determinants of
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  Authors: Ximena Orchard, Bastián González-Bustamante
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  This article studies determinants of political actors’ visibility in the news, and their stability over time, observing the press coverage received by Chilean politicians in the elite press since the beginning of the democratic transition in 1991 and until 2019. In dialogue with theories of news values, we test how political positions in a markedly presidential system, the belonging to a government coalition, gender, and the association to conflict frames behave as determinants of the presence and prominence of politicians in the news in the three decades following the recovery of democracy in Chile. We have three key findings. Firstly, the visibility of political actors in the news follows a clear institutional hierarchy led by the president and cabinet members. Secondly, female politicians are less likely to be mentioned or have speaking space in newspapers than male politicians. Lastly, although an association with conflict-framed news boosts politicians’ visibility, such association is unable to disturb structural power hierarchies, and the value of conflict does not increase over time.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-30T06:50:25Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221089482
Social Media and Belief in Misinformation in Mexico: A Case of Maximal
Panic, Minimal Effects'
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  Authors: Sebastián Valenzuela, Carlos Muñiz, Marcelo Santos
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Contrary to popular narratives, it is not clear whether using social media for news increases belief in political misinformation. Several of the most methodologically sound studies find small to nonexistent effects. However, extant research is limited by focusing on few platforms (usually Facebook, Twitter or YouTube) and is heavily U.S. centered. This leaves open the possibility that other platforms, such as those that rely on visual communication (e.g., Instagram) or are tailored to strong-tie network communication (e.g., WhatsApp), are more influential. Furthermore, the few studies conducted in other countries suggest that social media use increases political misperceptions. Still, these works use cross-sectional designs, which are ill suited to dealing with omitted variable bias and temporal ordering of processes. Using a two-wave survey fielded in Mexico during the 2021 midterm elections (N = 596), we estimate the relationship between frequency of news exposure on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp, and belief in political misinformation, while controlling for both time-invariant and time-dependent individual differences. In contrast to political discussion, information literacy and digital skills, none of the social platforms analyzed exhibits a significant association with misinformed beliefs. We also tested for possible indirect, moderated, and reciprocal relationships, but none of these analyses yielded a statistically significant result. We conclude that the study is consistent with the “minimal media effects” paradigm, which suggests that efforts to address misinformation need to go beyond social platforms.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-24T09:42:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221088988
The Effects of Flagging Propaganda Sources on News Sharing:
Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Twitter
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  Authors: Fan Liang, Qinfeng Zhu, Gabriel Miao Li
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  While research on flagging misinformation and disinformation has received much attention, we know very little about how the flagging of propaganda sources could affect news sharing on social media. Using a quasi-experimental design, we test the effect of source flagging on people’s actual sharing behaviors. By analyzing tweets (N = 49,126) posted by 30 China's media accounts before and after Twitter's practice of labeling state-affiliated media, we reveal the corrective role that flagging plays in preventing people's sharing of information from propaganda sources. The findings suggest that the corrective effect occurs immediately after these accounts are labeled as state-affiliated media and it leads to a long-term reduction in news sharing, particularly for political content. The results contribute to the understanding of how flagging efforts affect user engagement in real-world conversations and highlight that the effect of corrective measures takes place in a dynamic process.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-24T09:41:29Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221086905
Poll Wars: Perceptions of Poll Credibility and Voting Behaviour
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  Authors: Stephen Dawson
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Pre-election opinion polls are an increasingly prominent aspect of political campaigns, yet they often vary in terms of their results, sources, and where they are published. Citizens are therefore increasingly confronted with the proposition of which polls to give more credence to than others in shaping their voting behaviour. This study investigates the relationship between subjective determinations of poll credibility and voting behaviour in the polarised context of Turkish mayoral elections. The theoretical perspective of motivated reasoning is employed to consider how individuals determine and act upon credible opinion polls in mixed information environments. Using an original two-step experimental approach conducted in 2020, this paper establishes that while the effects of opinion poll credibility on party choice are limited to the strategic considerations of the supporters of smaller parties, opinion polls can have considerable demobilising effects when polling environments are conflicting or deemed not credible. The findings produced in this study are more suggestive of accuracy-seeking than directional motivations, and they have considerable implications for how we think about the relationship between polls, politicians, and voters.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-18T11:57:12Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221087181
Motivated Mobilization: The Role of Emotions in the Processing of Poll
Messages
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  Authors: Taberez Ahmed Neyazi, Ozan Kuru
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  This study investigates how exposure to favorable messages about one's preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral intentions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions’ frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure. Specifically, we examine the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between motivated assessments of polls and political mobilization. To test this model, we offer empirical evidence from an online survey-experiment (N = 540) conducted during the 2019 Indian general election. We find that exposure to favorable poll results increases enthusiasm and decreases anger, while both enthusiasm and anger activate behavioral intention for political participation. While our study supports the existing findings which show that partisanship is an important predictor of mobilization for a party and candidate, we uncover the affective routes through which partisanship operates to shape poll reactions. The results underscore the importance of capturing individual variability in preexisting affiliations and their shaping of poll reactions through affect-driven motivated reactions. We discuss these results with regard to the dynamics of political mobilization during election campaigns, the role of emotions in political cognition at large, and in understanding and mitigating biases in poll perceptions.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-18T11:56:47Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221086907
Unpacking the Determinants of Outrage and Recognition in Public Discourse:
Insights Across Socio-Cultural Divides, Political Systems, and Media Types
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  Authors: Charlotte Löb, Eike Mark Rinke, Carina Weinmann, Hartmut Wessler
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  The degree to which civility norms are upheld or violated is an important criterion in evaluating the democratic quality of public debates. We investigate civility across media types, political systems, and levels of socio-cultural division, offering a comparative perspective on how these factors shape levels of civility in public debates around a key question for societies around the world: What is the proper role of religion in public life' Capturing both positive and negative forms of civility (i.e., recognition and outrage) on multiple levels of analysis, we compile and analyze an original large-scale dataset of news items published during August 2015 until July 2016 in six democracies (Australia, Germany, Lebanon, Switzerland, Turkey, and the USA) across three types of media (printed newspapers, news websites, and political blogs). We find that mediated discourse was heavier on outrage in mixed political systems (Germany and Turkey) than in ‘purely’ majoritarian and consensus systems. Public debate in deeply divided countries contained more outrage but also more recognition compared to less divided countries, with newspapers and news websites mitigating outrage discourse compared to political blogs. Blogs also emerged as less nurturing of recognition than newspapers and news websites.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-11T02:26:53Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221084206
Corrigendum to Diffusion of Development Journalism Inside Egyptian
Newsrooms
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  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-04T07:04:51Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221083550
Discursive Toolkits of Anti-Muslim Disinformation on Twitter
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  Authors: Kiran Vinod Bhatia, Payal Arora
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, we investigate the socio-technical ecology of Twitter, including the technological affordances of the platform and the user-generated discursive strategies used to create and circulate anti-Muslim disinformation online. During the first wave of Covid-19, right-wing followers claimed that Muslims were spreading the virus to perform Jihad. We analyzed a sample of 7000 tweets using Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how the online disinformation accusing Muslims in India was initiated and sustained. We identify three critical discourse strategies used on Twitter to spread and sustain the anti-Muslim (dis)information: (1) creating mediatized hate solidarities, (2) appropriating instruments of legitimacy, and (3) practicing Internet Hindu vigilantism. Each strategy consists of a subset of discursive toolkits, highlighting the central routes of discursive engagement to produce disinformation online. We argue that understanding how the technical affordances of Social Networking Sites are leveraged in quotidian online practices to produce and sustain the phenomenon of online disinformation will prove to be a novel contribution to the field of disinformation studies and Internet research.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-01T10:53:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221084633
Playing Both Sides: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the
#BlackLivesMatter Movement
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  Authors: Samantha Bradshaw, Renée DiResta, Carly Miller
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Russian influence operations on social media have received significant attention following the 2016 US presidential elections. Here, scholarship has largely focused on the covert strategies of the Russia-based Internet Research Agency and the overt strategies of Russia's largest international broadcaster RT (Russia Today). But since 2017, a number of new news media providers linked to the Russian state have emerged, and less research has focused on these channels and how they may support contemporary influence operations. We conduct a qualitative content analysis of 2,014 Facebook posts about the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests in the United States over the summer of 2020 to comparatively examine the overt propaganda strategies of six Russian-linked news organizations—RT, Ruptly, Soapbox, In The NOW, Sputnik, and Redfish. We found that RT and Sputnik diverged in their framing of the BLM movement from the newer media properties. RT and Sputnik primarily produced negative coverage of the BLM movement, painting protestors as violent, or discussed the hypocrisy of racial justice in America. In contrast, newer media properties like In The NOW, Soapbox, and Redfish supported the BLM movement with clickbait-style videos highlighting racism in America. Video footage bearing the Ruptly brandmark appears in both traditional and new media properties, to illustrate, in real time, civil unrest across the US. By focusing on overt propaganda from the broad array of Russian-affiliated media, our data allows us to further understand the “full spectrum” and “counter-hegemonic” strategies at play in contemporary information operations.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-02-28T03:37:52Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221082052
Ideology Matters: The Influence of Competing Message Framings on Public
Attitudes toward Humanitarian Interventions
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  Authors: Qihao Ji, Juris Pupcenoks
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  This study assessed the effects of different message framing strategies on average Americans’ attitude towards interventions in humanitarian crises abroad. Two survey experiments were conducted via Amazon MTurk between late 2019 and early 2020, where participants were randomly assigned to read a mock news story about a foreign humanitarian crisis written using one of the three framing techniques. Results of both studies indicated that the framing effect on respondents’ support for intervention interacted with ones’ political ideology and prompted distinctive reactions among different populations. Most intriguingly, the results of Study 2, which employed a non-student sample and a secondary frame, suggested that the specific order of message framings also influences public opinion towards humanitarian intervention. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature on the persuasiveness of message design and framing in the context of military humanitarian interventions (MHI). Accordingly, news organizations and policymakers are encouraged to consider these findings in specific contexts.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-02-21T04:47:16Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221082063
Making African Suffering Legible: Co-Constructing Narrative of the Darfur
Atrocities
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  Authors: j Siguru Wahutu
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Although the last two decades have seen a concerted effort to understand the role and place of African journalism in covering events on the continent, there has been little focus on who journalists chose to quote as sources in their stories. This despite scholarship on sources being vital to our understanding of how journalists gain the “raw materials” to produce stories about events. Thus, while scholarship has begun taking Africa's coverage of itself seriously, there has been a slower uptick in focusing on whom African journalists give voice to as co-constructors of events. This silence is even more perplexing, considering that scholars and observers have been critical of who is quoted as a source when the global north covers events unfolding in Africa. This paper shows that African suffering was made legible for African audiences through a combination of American, English, and Sudanese voices. Specifically, it finds that African journalists are –counterintuitively - vital players in silencing some African voices in their construction of knowledge about the atrocities in Darfur. Despite the criticism leveled at journalism fields in the global north over their perceived silencing of African voices, African journalists are similarly engaged in this silencing as well.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-02-21T04:47:13Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221082062
Identity, Social Media and Politics: How Young Emirati Women Make Sense of
Female Politicians in the UAE
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  Authors: Leysan Storie, Sarah Marschlich
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Social media offered new opportunities for politicians to engage with the public. However, little research has explored public perceptions of women politicians and their role in women's empowerment, especially in non-Western contexts. This study used a qualitative methodology to explore how young Emirati women made sense of gender and other identities in their discussions of Emirati women politicians on social media. Drawing from intersectionality theory, the study looked beyond gender, exploring other identities that may play a role in Emirati women's perceptions. The results offered insights into the family and ethnic identity as they interacted with gender. The findings also highlighted the challenges of personalizing messages in a patriarchal society. This study contributes to international political communication research and practice by understanding the complexity of women's sense-making of social media and women politicians in a non-Western context.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-02-21T04:46:58Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221078795
Antecedents of Political Consumerism: Modeling Online, Social Media and
WhatsApp News Use Effects Through Political Expression and Political
Discussion
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  Authors: Zicheng Cheng, Bingbing Zhang, Homero Gil de Zúñiga
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  According to lifestyle politics theory, social media platforms introduce new ways for people to engage in civic life. Based on the communication mediation model, prior scholarship laid out theoretical and empirical foundations for how media exposure to the news positively influences people’s political participatory behavior through supplemental communicative processes. Building on this line of research, we rely on a two-wave panel survey of U.S. adults to examine how the different online and social media communicative patterns among U.S. citizens, such as news use, political expression, and discussion, predict political consumerism behavior - the purchase decision of consumers based on political or ethical reasons. Advancing diverse causal order structural equation models, this study highlights a positive influence of news consumption, social media political expression, and political discussion in explaining political consumerism (i.e., boycotting and buycotting). Specifically, results underscore the importance of political expression and discussion mediating the relationship between online, social media and WhatsApp news use and political consumerism. Implications for future research and limitations to the study are provided in the manuscript.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-02-04T05:02:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221075936
Identifying Informational Opportunities in Political Responsibility
Reporting: A Study of Television News Coverage During the Coronavirus
Pandemic in the UK's Devolved System
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  Authors: Stephen Cushion, Llion Carbis
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  How the news media report who’s responsible for political decisions is fundamental to an informed citizenry. Our study develops a new way of examining political responsibility coverage by drawing on the concept of informational opportunities in order to explore how television news could enhance audience understanding. We examine how television news reported who was responsible for making policies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during the coronavirus pandemic. Drawing on a content analysis study of five UK television news bulletins (N = 181), we found that reporting did not regularly attribute political responsibility to all four governments of the UK at the start of the pandemic. Once the nations began to adopt different lockdown measures the clarity of reporting legislative decisions improved, but there were still missed opportunities to clarify which government was responsible for specific policies. By way of conclusion, we argue that scholars examining how the media report political responsibility need to find creative ways of theorising and empirically studying informational opportunities in order to enhance public understanding.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-28T01:12:14Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221075571
Book Review: Media and the Image of the Nation during Brazil's 2013
Protests by César Jiménez-Martínez
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  Authors: Jorge Saavedra Utman
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-27T01:50:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221075539
The Evolution of Self-Censorship in Hong Kong Online Journalism:
Influences from Digitalization and the State
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  Authors: Alex Zhi-Xiong Koo
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Studies about media self-censorship typically focus on its mechanism in traditional newsroom settings. But how media self-censorship may evolve in online journalism has remained largely unexplored. Using Hong Kong as a case, I examine the digital evolution of media self-censorship in a unique non-democratic context. Drawing on interviews with online journalists, my findings reveal that digital transformation has provided new valences for media self-censorship. With the financial hardship of legacy media in the digital age, Hong Kong online journalists are more directly exposed to external threats such as advertisement boycotts orchestrated by the state, and hence increasingly reluctant to offend external powerholders out of the fear of political and financial retaliation. Moreover, as online journalists adopt business-driven norms that favor the generation of clicks, political or policy news are further marginalized. These stories are often deemed boring, non-engaging to online audiences, and are not “sensationalizable” due to political risks, especially when compared to soft news types like crimes and lifestyles stories. Adapting to these changes, news managers are increasingly used to avoiding professional editorial debates that results are unpredictable but using “objective” web metrics as persuasive devices to discourage the production of sensitive news. Lastly, the dissemination of sensitive news is curbed in the social media gatekeeping process. These findings suggest that an authoritarian state can effectively influence online news production by controlling the capital that drives digital transformation, thereby limiting the liberating potential of the media in the digital age.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-24T12:44:50Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221075553
Rethinking Audience Fragmentation Using a Theory of News Reading Publics:
Online India as a Case Study
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  Authors: Subhayan Mukerjee
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into various other ways in which audience fragmentation can manifest in these often-overlooked countries. In this paper, I use the case of online India as an example to offer a theoretical framework – that of news reading publics – for understanding audience fragmentation as a more global socio-political phenomenon that allows for rigorous comparative research, without being restrictive in scope. I draw from existing theories in communication and related disciplines and show how such a framework can be situated within existing social science theory. I argue that this framework should make us think of audience fragmentation in western contexts to be special cases of a more general model. I also show how network analysis can be used as a context-agnostic tool for identifying news reading publics and demonstrate the utility of such a method in complementing this theoretical framework. Finally, I discuss potential future research directions that this framework generates.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-19T03:06:19Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072700
For People, For Policy: Journalists’ Perceptions of Peace Journalism
in East Africa
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  Authors: Meagan E. Doll
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Compared to studies on peace-journalism content, little research examines journalists’ perceptions of peace journalism despite theoretical suggestions that individuals influence content production. To address this relative disparity, this study examines the social conditions shaping journalists’ perceptions of peace journalism using a hierarchy-of-influences perspective and data from 20 in-depth interviews with East African journalists, conducted between September 2020 and February 2021. Findings suggest that journalists generally understand peace journalism in one of two ways, each with distinct intended audiences, aims, and reporting interventions. Moreover, when examined alongside respondents’ professional situations, these perceptions tend to be stratified by varying degrees of professional precarity.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-18T02:43:13Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072775
Perspectives from Journalism Professionals on the Application and Benefits
of Constructive Reporting for Addressing Misinformation
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  Authors: Natasha van Antwerpen, Deborah Turnbull, Rachel A. Searston
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  The proliferation of misinformation in contemporary information environments contributes to increasing polarization and decreasing trust in institutions and experts, both of which encourage further proliferation of misinformation. Increasing attention has been brought to the role of news media in the spread and uptake of misinformation, and to the role of journalists and news organizations in combatting this spread. Constructive journalism is a relatively new approach to reporting which, among other aims, looks to increase audience engagement, reduce polarization, and provide a more accurate view of events. In early 2020, we interviewed 16 journalism professionals from Europe (UK inclusive), Australia, Africa, and North America across a range formats to explore their perceptions of the use ‘constructive’ reporting strategies to address the spread of misinformation. We used thematic analysis to produce three themes and six subthemes in journalists’ responses, ‘apathy against the machine’, with subthemes ‘journalism as a moderator’, and ‘news and mental health’; ‘standards as shared reality’, with subthemes, ‘pluralism not postmodernism’, and ‘this means information war’; and ‘truth, trust, and the turn to transparency’, with subthemes, ‘facts necessary but not sufficient’, and ‘principles not particulars’. Constructive journalism was thought to address misinformation by increasing engagement with news and institutions, reducing polarization, providing a sense of shared reality amidst increasingly diverse perspectives, increasing trust, and reducing misperceptions encouraged by selection and reporting strategies. Constructive journalism may be a promising approach to addressing the spread and consequences of misinformation, however, empirical work is needed to evaluate the efficacy of the approach.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-17T01:15:25Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072782
How right-wing populists instrumentalize news media: Deliberate
provocations, scandalizing media coverage, and public awareness for the
Alternative for Germany (AfD)
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  Authors: Marcus Maurer, Pablo Jost, Marlene Schaaf, Michael Sülflow, Simon Kruschinski
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  The rise of right-wing populist parties in Western democracies is often attributed to populists’ ability to instrumentalize news media by making deliberate provocations (e.g., verbal attacks on migrants or politicians from other parties) that generate media coverage and public awareness. To explain the success of populists’ deliberate provocations, we drew from research on populism and scandal theory to develop a theoretical framework that we tested in two studies examining the rise of German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between January 2015 and December 2018. In Study 1, an input–output analysis of 17 deliberate provocations by AfD politicians in German news media revealed much more coverage about their attacks on migrants than about their attacks on political elites, although all were covered in predominantly scandalizing ways. Next, Study 2, involving media database research and an analysis of Google Trends data, showed that the provocations had increased overall media coverage about the AfD and influenced public awareness of the party
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-12T11:57:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072692
A Media Repertoires Approach to Selective Exposure: News Consumption and
Political Polarization in Eastern Europe
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  Authors: Fanni Tóth, Sabina Mihelj, Václav Štětka, Katherine Kondor
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  In recent years, links between selective news exposure and political polarisation have attracted considerable attention among communication scholars. However, while the existence of selective exposure has been documented in both offline and online environments, the evidence of its extent and its impact on political polarisation is far from unanimous. To address these questions, and also to bridge methodological and geographical gaps in existing research, this paper adopts a media repertoires approach to investigate selective news exposure and polarisation in four Eastern European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. Using a combination of population surveys, expert surveys and qualitative interviews, the data for the study were collected between November 2019 and May 2020. We identify five types of news repertoires based on their relative openness to counter-attitudinal sources, and show that selective news repertoires are present in 29% of the entire sample. Our findings also reveal significant cross-country differences, with the more selective news repertoires more prominent in countries characterised by higher levels of polarisation. Furthermore, while the selection of news sources is in line with people's electoral (and to a lesser extent ideological) preferences, our findings show that exposure to counter-attitudinal sources can also be strongly correlated with political and ideological leanings. Our qualitative data suggest that this is because exposure to counter-attitudinal sources can reinforce attitudes, and potentially contribute to polarisation. Qualitative data also highlight the influence of environmental factors (e.g., family), and suggest that selective news consumption is associated with normatively different conceptions of media trust.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-12T02:59:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072552
Reactive and Asymmetric Communication Flows: Social Media Discourse and
Partisan News Framing in the Wake of Mass Shootings
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  Authors: Yini Zhang, Dhavan Shah, Jon Pevehouse, Sebastián Valenzuela
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Marked by both deep interconnectedness and polarization, the contemporary media system in the United States features news outlets and social media that are bound together, yet deeply divided along partisan lines. This article formally analyzes communication flows surrounding mass shootings in the hybrid and polarized U.S. media system. We begin by integrating media system literature with agenda setting and news framing theories and then conduct automated text analysis and time series modeling. After accounting for exogenous event characteristics, results show that (a) sympathy and gun control discourses on Twitter preceded news framing of gun policy more than the other way around, and (b) conservatives on Twitter and conservative media reacted to progressive discourse on Twitter, without their progressive counterparts exhibiting a similar reactiveness. Such results shed light on the influence of social media on political communication flows and confirm an asymmetry in the ways partisan media ecosystems respond to social events.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-10T01:07:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072793
The Intersection of Candidate Gender and Ethnicity: How Voters Respond to
Campaign Messages from Latinas
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  Authors: Martina Santia, Nichole M. Bauer
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Despite the recent surge of women of color in elected political office in the U.S., the representation of Latinas is strikingly low. Past research offers unclear conclusions as to whether Latina political candidates face biases due to the intersection of their identities as women and as ethnic minorities, and how Latinas can navigate such biases. In this study, we identify how Latinas draw on their intersectional identities as both women and ethnic minorities to develop strategic campaign messages and how voters respond to such messages. Through an analysis of campaign advertising data and an original survey experiment, we show that Latina candidates do not face an automatic disadvantage based in gender and ethnic biases, but they can benefit from the intersection of these two identities, especially among female minority voters. These results are consequential because they offer insights into how to improve the descriptive and substantive representation of marginalized groups in the U.S.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-10T01:06:57Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072697
Do Local Newspapers Mitigate the Effects of the Polarized National
Rhetoric on COVID-19'
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  Authors: Catie Snow Bailard
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  This analysis tests two distinct predictions regarding local newspapers’ coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. A public service view of local newspapers predicts that a robust local newspaper sector would mitigate the politicized national partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-19; reducing the disparity in social-distancing behaviors between predominantly Republican and predominantly Democratic counties by increasing compliance in Republican counties. The alternative hypothesis, informed by a demand-side view of the market pressures local newspapers face, predicts that increased competition between local newspapers will increase the degree to which local newspapers amplify the rhetoric of national officials in line with the partisan composition of their community, further polarizing adherence to social-distancing behaviors across predominantly Republican versus predominantly Democratic counties. The results of this analysis offer strong support for the second hypothesis; but, an additional analysis of vaccination rates offers a more nuanced perspective than a simple public service versus demand-side dichotomy would imply.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-07T10:45:25Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072774
How Right-Wing Populists Engage with Cross-Cutting News on Online Message
Boards: The Case of ForoCoches and Vox in Spain
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  Authors: Clara Juarez Miro, Benjamin Toff
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Anecdotal evidence suggests a link between online message boards and the rise of far-right movements, which have achieved growing electoral success globally. Press accounts and scholarship have suggested these message boards help to radicalize like-minded users through exposure to shared media insulated from cross-cutting viewpoints (e.g., Hine et al. 2017; Palmer 2019). To better understand what role online message boards might play for supporters of right-wing populist movements, we focus on the Spanish political party Vox and its supporters’ use of the message board ForoCoches, a fan site for car enthusiasts, which became an important platform for the party. Using more than 120,000 messages collected from threads mentioning the party between 2013–2019, we examine the URLs shared to show how mainstream news media events shape the conversation online and how users not only were exposed but deeply engaged with cross-cutting news sources. We argue that the use of sites such as ForoCoches should be viewed in the context of a broader increasingly hybrid political and media landscape where activity online and offline cannot be understood separate from one another. Moreover, our findings suggest that the online political discussions that take place in Vox-related threads on ForoCoches resemble normatively positive deliberative spaces—albeit in this case in support of illiberal political positions. In other words, our findings complicate conventional notions about the benefits of political talk, especially online, as a democratically desirable end in and of itself.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-05T08:32:45Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072696
Does Journalism Still Matter' The Role of Journalistic and
non-Journalistic Sources in Young Peoples’ News Related Practices
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  Authors: Leonie Wunderlich, Sascha Hölig, Uwe Hasebrink
  First page: 569
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  In today's hybrid media environment new content creators challenge the status of professionally produced journalism and blur the lines between professional and non-professional content. Growing up in this information landscape, younger generations have developed news-related practices and attitudes that lie in stark contrast to those of previous generations. In addition, discrepancies exist between news definitions and the use practices of young people. We conducted focus groups with German adolescents (15–17 years), young adults (18–24 years) and adults (40–53 years) in August 2020 to uncover young peoples’ orientation toward news and journalism. Our study indicates that the boundaries of what journalism is and what it is not are becoming increasingly indistinct. However, distinctions do emerge between the journalistic and non-journalistic sources that adolescents and young adults use and the functions they associate with them according to their information needs. Differences between the age groups become apparent in their motivations to stay informed which highlights the important role non-journalistic sources play in information behaviour and opinion formation. For teenage participants especially, Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are relevant within these processes, which are linked to a perceived social duty-to-keep-informed. Moreover, findings from the focus groups highlight cohort-specific differences regarding the understanding of journalism and, consequently, differences in the assessment of trust and reliability as well as the verification strategies that are applied. In sum, for young participants journalism is a reliable source of information, especially in the case of current events and for crosschecking online information, while non-journalistic sources fulfil social needs.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-05T06:23:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072547
Change in News Access, Change in Expectations' How Young Social Media
Users in Switzerland Evaluate the Functions and Quality of News
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  Authors: Lisa Schwaiger, Daniel Vogler, Mark Eisenegger
  First page: 609
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Online media environments have changed the way young people access news. Despite much research on the topic, the expectations of journalistic news by young adults who have turned their back on traditional news media remain unclear. We use a novel multimethod qualitative online study design to investigate the perceived quality, functions, and expectations toward journalistic news of young adults in Switzerland who use social media as their main source for news and rarely consume traditional media. Nineteen young adults between 20 and 25 years of age with different educational levels participated in our study in May 2020. Our results show that even though the participants only occasionally use traditional news media channels, they still consider journalistic news relevant and appreciate quality standards of professional journalism such as actuality and veracity (Swart 2021b). Among the functions of news, the participants highlighted sociability and identification. Exchange and discussion of news are, thus, of high relevance online but also offline. Also, the participants show a high affinity toward news on mobilizing topics, which are of interest to themselves and their peers, and motivate them to engage with news more intensely. According to the participants, news should be attractively prepared, such as with audiovisual formats and easy to understand and integrate into everyday life. The participants also expressed a preference to consume news articles from different media brands within a single platform. Our study outlines a fruitful path for comprehensive qualitative research with innovative online tools.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-24T03:44:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072787
Judging Value in a Time of Information Cacophony: Young Adults, Social
media, and the Messiness of do-it-Yourself Expertise
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  Authors: Kelley Cotter, Kjerstin Thorson
  First page: 629
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  In this paper, we explore U.S. young adults’ strategies for evaluating news and information value within the rapidly changing, increasingly digitalized media environment. We draw on interviews with U.S. young adults conducted between April and November 2020. Based on our findings, we develop the concept of information cacophony to characterize young adults’ experience of the contemporary information environment. Information cacophony is characterized by the jarring noise of many, discordant voices offering up information, under conditions of low media trust and an absence of a pre-defined epistemic hierarchy of sources. We illustrate how the volume and discordance of voices circulating content online makes it difficult for young adults to know what to believe, and show that young peoples’ strategies for evaluating information are deeply entangled with the sociality and emotionality of the experience of information cacophony. We argue that existing theory is not yet well-developed to account for content evaluations and effects resulting from the novel complexities of navigating information cacophony. Existing work remains focused primarily on news exposure and effects, which misses the broader informational context within which young adults find themselves, and evolving strategies for evaluating information.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-02-28T04:41:23Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221082074
ICYMI: RT and Youth-Oriented International Broadcasting as (Geo)Political
Culture Jamming
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  Authors: Robert A Saunders, Rhys Crilley, Precious N Chatterje-Doody
  First page: 696
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Research in political communication has recently begun to explore the role of non-Western English-language state-funded international broadcasters (NEIBs) in influencing international audiences. Despite this, there has been little attention given to understanding how NEIBs engage and influence young people in ‘Western’ democracies. Our article addresses this gap by providing a detailed analysis of RT's English-language, youth-orientated news product ICYMI. Launched in 2018, ICYMI is a social media-based news brand that consists of a series of 2–3-min videos that deliver satirical takes on recent global events including military conflict, financial scandals, and culture clashes. Our findings, which examine the first year of the platform's activity, show that ICYMI is a novel form of engagement, one that is not easily categorised as either public diplomacy or propaganda, nor can it be described as traditional journalism. Instead, we label this approach as geopolitical culture jamming. In this article, we conduct a discourse analysis of 45 videos published on YouTube by ICYMI over its first year to examine how the platform attempts to influence how young people relate to traditional foreign policy discourses. Our empirical analysis centres on how viewers engage with and interpret ICYMI's videos with the aim of addressing how RT may be influencing younger audiences, particularly its core demographic of Anglophone white males whose comments reflect an attachment to ICYMI's populist, anti-elite worldview.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-05T06:23:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072771
Youth Activism for Climate on and Beyond Social media: Insights from
FridaysForFuture-Rome
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  Authors: Francesca Belotti, Stellamarina Donato, Arianna Bussoletti, Francesca Comunello
  First page: 718
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  The FridaysForFuture movement (FFF), launched by Greta Thumberg's school strikes in 2018, has led a new wave of climate activism worldwide. Young people are at the forefront, with social media serving both as mobilizing tools and expressive spaces. Drawing upon literature on youth and digital activism with a generational, situated approach, we account for how both the climate struggle and social media are appropriated by FFF-activists as part of their own youth grassroots politics. Moreover, we explore the activities they mix and the strategies they adopt when moving across online and offline environments. From July 2020 to January 2021, we carried out 6 months of ethnographic work with(in) the FFF-Rome group by blending participant observation of assemblies and protests with digital ethnography on the homonym WhatsApp group. Results’ thematic analysis shows that FFF-activists believe climate activism to be their own fight and social media their own battlefield. A generational understanding of digital climate activism emerges at the intersection of the appropriation of the dispute (climate change) and the digital environments (social media). Findings also account for broader logics and strategies adopted by FFF-activists, on and beyond social media. They move seamlessly between online and offline, spanning across and negotiating with different platforms according to political goals and target audiences. These results contribute to overcoming reductive or marginalizing approaches to youth activism, to legitimizing and situating young activists’ social media usage practices within an array of grassroots political practices, and to understanding how generational belonging affects such practices in the Italian context.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-01-05T02:29:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072776
Politics – Simply Explained' How Influencers Affect Youth’s
Perceived Simplification of Politics, Political Cynicism, and Political
Interest
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  Authors: Desirée Schmuck, Melanie Hirsch, Anja Stevic, Jörg Matthes
  First page: 738
  Abstract: The International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
  Social media influencers promote not only products and brands but also their opinions on serious topics like party politics or climate change. These so-called digital opinion leaders may exert a powerful impact on their followers’ political attitudes. Accordingly, we explore new directions to explain how influencers’ communication is related to political outcomes by proposing the concept of perceived simplification of politics (PSP). We argue that PSP may fuel political cynicism but also stimulate youth's interest in politics. We also explore important boundary conditions of these associations. We use data from three studies, a two-wave panel survey of adolescents (NT2 = 294), a cross-sectional survey of young adults (N = 632), and a two-wave panel survey of young adults (NT2 = 496) in Germany between 2019 and 2020. Findings of all three studies show that the frequency of exposure to social media influencers’ content increases PSP. In Studies 1 and 2, PSP is related to higher political cynicism, while in Study 3, this relationship is restricted to influencers’ communication about environmental topics and gender equality. Furthermore, Studies 2 and 3 suggest that PSP also increases political interest—yet this association requires a certain level of parasocial interaction (PSI) with the influencer and is contingent on specific political topics.
  Citation: The International Journal of Press/Politics
  PubDate: 2022-03-24T09:42:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/19401612221088987