The Political Effects of Entertainment Media

Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini

In recent years political communication scholars have begun to build a small but important body of quantitative research suggesting that the consumption of entertainment media can affect how citizens learn about, think about, and act in the political world. However, we have limited our ability to understand this relationship by treating entertainment media as a distinct and ghettoized area of study and by an overreliance on theories originating in the study of news and other overtly public affairs media. This chapter argues that what constitutes “politics,” “political engagement,” “political effects,” and “politically relevant media” is not based on inherent qualities of a particular genre, medium, or topic, but is rather are socially constructed. This has always been true, but it is arguably more so in the information environment of the twenty-first century, which for a variety of reasons challenges the presumed distinction between “news” and “entertainment.”

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Malka ◽  
Christopher J. Soto

AbstractWe argue that the political effects of negativity bias are narrower than Hibbing et al. suggest. Negativity bias reliably predicts social, but not economic, conservatism, and its political effects often vary across levels of political engagement. Thus the role of negativity bias in broad ideological conflict depends on the strategic packaging of economic and social attitudes by political elites.


Author(s):  
Christopher F. Karpowitz

A powerful tool for content analysis, DICTION allows scholars to illuminate the ideas, perspectives, and linguistic tendencies of a wide variety of political actors. At its best, a tool like DICTION allows scholars not just to describe the features of political language, but also to analyze the causes and the consequences those features in ways that advance our understanding political communication more broadly. Effective analysis involves helping academic audiences understand what the measures being used mean, how the results relate to broader theoretical constructs, and the extent to which findings reveal something important about the political world. This involves exploring both the causes and the consequences of linguistic choices, including by attending closely to how those texts are received by their intended audiences. In this chapter, the authors review ways in which DICTION has been used and might be used to better understand the role of political leadership, the meaning of democracy, and the effects of political language on the political behavior of ordinary citizens.


Author(s):  
Mutlu UYGUN ◽  
Ayşe Kübra SARIKAYA

The main purpose of this study is to examine the political communication behaviors of the participants covering the individuals from all segments by taking into consideration the demographic and internet related usage characteristics, regardless of a special election campaign. In order to meet the main purpose of the study, based on the quantitative research method, data were collected from a total of 531 participants in Aksaray, using a questionnaire formed from appropriate scales and questions according to the convenience sampling technique. Data were analyzed by various statistical techniques such as descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation Analysis, Factor Analysis, One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multi-way variance analysis (factorial ANOVA). The results revealed that the political communication behavior in social media consists of two sub-dimensions which include active and passive engagement behaviors. In addition, it has been determined that these political communication behaviors in social media do not differ according to demographic characteristics, but they differ according to some personal internet and social media usage characteristics. These results, in addition to their contribution to the conceptual literature, it is thought that political parties include clues about how they can effectively use social media as a tool in their communication efforts and marketing efforts.


Author(s):  
Daniel A. Bell ◽  
Daniel A. Bell

Westerners tend to divide the political world into “good” democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes, but the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” This book seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? This book answers these questions and more. Opening with a critique of “one person, one vote” as a way of choosing top leaders, it argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. It discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. It also summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world. The book looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-417
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Baym

Abstract Years before Twitter, Fox News, or reality TV, Donald Trump became a public figure through his presence in tabloid media. Much of that focused on sex and spectacle, but early tabloid coverage of Trump was also surprisingly political, with speculation about a possible presidential campaign beginning as early as 1987. Although that coverage has been largely overlooked, this study reveals that tabloid media played a central role in building the foundations of Trump’s political identity. It tracks the early articulation of the Trump character and its simultaneous politicization within a media space outside the ostensibly legitimate arena of institutional public-affairs journalism. In so doing, it reveals the deeper contours of an imagined political world in which a Trump presidency could be conceivable in the first instance—a political imaginary adjacent to the deep assumptions of liberal Democracy, and therefore long invisible to most serious observers of presidential politics.


1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Jones

In three important decisions,1 handed down on the same day in October 1994, the Australian High Court continued its exploration of the implied constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication. Two years previously, in the judgments in Nationwide News Pty Ltd v. Wills2 and Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v. The Commonwealth,3 a majority of the High Court had distilled an implication of freedom of political communication from the provisions and structure of the Australian Constitution.4 This was not an implication of freedom of expression generally, since it was derived from the concept of representative government which the majority considered to be enshrined in the Constitution: “not all speech can claim the protection of the constitutional implication of freedom … identified in order to ensure the efficacious working of representative democracy and government”.5 The extent of this implied constitutional guarantee was left rather unclear, since a number of different views were expressed. As Justice Toohey has now explained,6 there were two possibilities. The first was a more limited “implied freedom on the part of the people of the Commonwealth to communicate information, opinions and ideas relating to the system of representative government”. The second was a rather more expansive “freedom to communicate in relation to public affairs and political matters generally”. In the recent trilogy of cases a majority of the High Court was prepared to endorse the second of these alternatives.7 In Cunliffe v. The Commonwealth Chief Justice Mason concluded that it would be too restrictive to limit the implied freedom to “communications for the purposes of the political processes in a representative democracy”.8


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Salomé Berrocal Gonzalo ◽  
Rocío Zamora Medina ◽  
Marta Rebolledo de la Calle

Politainment is a phenomenon that deals with the political communication of entertainment regarding its production, diffusion and intake in its different formats. It entails consequences regarding the dynamics of communication such as political informative decline, along with the loss of democratic quality giving prominence to a post-truth communication environment and promoting the celebritization of politicians. The academic basis upholds that, in the politainment environment, social networks play an important role acting as instruments that help promote information exchange, both horizontally and vertically, from an active, connected, empowered social audience which evidences participation, contribution, production and collaboration. This research is pioneer in identifying the kind of contents of politainment programmes that promote a greater engagement among the social audience. Therefore, it includes an empirical analysis from a quantitative and qualitative approach of the contents of tweets and comments with the highest level of interaction among prosumers from the profiles of the three most representative politainment programmes in Spain: El Objetivo, El programa de Ana Rosa and El Intermedio. The results achieved from this comparative analysis include significant differences regarding the politainment content promoted by these programmes and also in relation to the level of online engagement. Although the limited interaction from the social audience was a common pattern, the results show that tweets with hashtags, visual elements and the ones using the attribute of responsibility frame achieved a higher engagement level than the rest of them.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Alimatul Qibtiyah

The current political activity of women has become a meaningful conversation. Women have shown their existence as an important part of society that has and gives a positive meaning in the development of state and nation. Similarly, presented by Muslimat NU in Tegal District Election of Tegal District, Muslimat NU appear in front of the real to participate politically so that Pemilukada become an important moment in history as proof of their success. Through a gender approach to the theory of political communication, this article attempts to describe what the NU Muslimat motivates in the succession of the Tegal Regency Election of 2013, then how the political communication is built so that the effort succeeds in achieving its targets, as well as what factors are able to build political communication between them. The method used is interview and observation. The results of this study indicate that Umi Azizah, the elected vice-regent with an effective communication approach and his credibility and capital as a community activist for 20 years can take part in the political world substantially and can win the election with no money politics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 1078-1109
Author(s):  
Neven Obradović ◽  
Siniša Atlagić

In this paper, the authors present the research results about the attitudes of the student population in Serbia regarding the use of social media tools as instruments of political engagement. The text presents a segment of a broader study of political communication of young people in Serbia, conducted within the benefit concept. The research results show that social media tools do not contribute to the political engagement of young people in online sphere. The authors interpret the results in the context of political communication and power, indicating the absence of efforts by young people in Serbia to acquire political subjectivity and persuasive action in the environment.


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