Voters' information behaviour when using political actors' web sites during the 2011 Scottish Parliament election campaign

How journalists construct the authority of their sources is an essential part of how news comes to have power in politics and how political actors legitimize their roles to publics. Focusing on economic policy reporting and a dataset of 133 hours of mainstream broadcast news from the 5-week 2015 UK general election campaign, we theorize and empirically illustrate how the construction of expert source authority works. To build our theory, we integrate four strands of thought: an important, though in recent years neglected, tradition in the sociology of news concerned with ‘primary definers’; the underdeveloped literature on expert think tanks and media; recent work in journalism studies advocating a relational approach to authority; and elements from the discursive psychology approach to the construction of facticity in interactive settings. Our central contribution is a new perspective on source authority: the identification of behaviors that are key to how the interactions between journalists and elite political actors actively construct the elevated authoritative status of expert sources. We call these behaviors authority signaling. We show how authority signaling works to legitimize the power of the United Kingdom’s most important policy think tank and discuss the implications of this process.

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An opportunity for engagement in cyberspace: Political youth Web sites during the 2004 European Parliament election campaign

Information Polity ◽

10.3233/ip-2005-0079 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 10 (3,4) ◽

pp. 233-246 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Janelle Ward

Keyword(s):

Web Sites ◽

European Parliament ◽

Election Campaign

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Online Petitions to Queensland Parliament

Encyclopedia of Digital Government ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-789-8.ch194 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 1282-1286

Author(s):

M. Henderson ◽

F. Hogarth

Keyword(s):

Web Sites ◽

Web Site ◽

Policy Framework ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Scottish Parliament ◽

Government Web Sites ◽

Australian State ◽

German Bundestag ◽

The Right ◽

Electronic Delivery

The right of a citizen to petition Parliament is arguably one of the fundamental ways individuals can engage in democratic processes, by providing their views on what governments should do and requesting action on a particular issue. In 2000, the Scottish Parliament agreed to a trial of an e-petitioner system whereby members of the Scottish public are able to lodge, sign and view petitions to the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions Committee using the internet. Originally developed and hosted by the International Teledemocracy Centre, constituents can now place petitions on the Scottish Parliament Web site in a format that offers a discussion forum for each petition. In 2002, the Queensland government (Australia) launched an e-democracy policy framework that introduced three digital democracy initiatives, including e-petitions. This particular initiative is presented in the case study below. A second Australian state (Tasmania) commenced a 12-month trial based on the Queensland model in July 2004. These three parliaments are the only parliaments to allow e-petitions as at October 2004, although the Canadian, Basque, European parliaments and the German Bundestag have apparently shown an interest in Scotland’s e-petitioner system (MacIntosh, 2004). Although these are only three parliaments that accept electronic petitions, online petitioning is also being used for engaging with governments and elected members. For example, in the United Kingdom, the prime minister’s office accepts electronic petitions and lists those with more than 300 genuine signatures on the number 10 Downing street Web page, together with a link to the government’s response to the petition. However, petitions are not hosted on that site and a separate Web site must be established to explain the purpose of the petition and to collect signatures. Fourteen petitions on a range of diverse issues were listed on the site for the period between April 2001 and July 2003, ranging from 306 to 83,440 signatures per petitioned issue. There are also non-government Web sites providing information about, and tools for, creating online petitions. For example, www.petitiononline.com (Artifice, Inc, 2004) provides a privately sponsored free online hosting service for public petitions that includes an automatic formatting system for the Web petition; collects, displays and maintains petition signatures; automatically rejects duplicate signatures and confirms receipt to signatories; and allows for electronic delivery through e-mailing the petition URL to the target recipient. In mid 2004, the site claims over 20 million signatures have been collected on a range of topics.

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Googling Politics: Parties, Sources, and Issue Ownerships on Google in the 2017 German Federal Election Campaign

Social Science Computer Review ◽

10.1177/0894439319881634 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 089443931988163 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Julian Unkel ◽

Mario Haim

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Election Campaign ◽

Issue Ownership ◽

Federal Election ◽

Agent Based ◽

Political Actors ◽

Search Results ◽

Multimethod Approach ◽

Democratic Election ◽

Google Search

Democratic election campaigns require informed citizens. Yet, while the Internet allows for broader information through greater media choices, algorithmic filters, such as search engines, threaten to unobtrusively shape individual information repertoires. The purpose of this article is to analyze what search results people encounter when they employ various information orientations, and how these results reflect people’s attributions of issue ownership. A multimethod approach was applied during the 2017 German Federal Election campaign. First, human search behavior depicting various information orientations was simulated using agent-based testing to derive real search results from Google Search, which were then manually coded to identify information sources and ascribe issue ownerships. Second, a survey asked participants about which issues they attribute to which party. We find that search results originated mainly from established news outlets and reflected existing power relations between political parties. However, issue-ownership attributions of the survey participants were reflected poorly in the search results. In total, the results indicate that the fear of algorithmic constraints in the context of online search might be overrated. Instead, our findings (1) suggest that political actors still fail to claim their core issues among political search results, (2) highlight that news media (and thus existing media biases) feature heavily among search results, and (3) call for more media literacy among search engine users.

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Walka o dobrą zmianę: medialne narracje w parlamentarnej kampanii wyborczej w 2015 roku

Wrocławskie Studia Politologiczne ◽

10.19195/1643-0328.26.8 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

pp. 111-124

Author(s):

Rafał Klepka

Keyword(s):

The Political ◽

Parliamentary Election ◽

Election Campaign ◽

Electoral Success ◽

Political Actors ◽

Tv News ◽

Media Narratives ◽

News Programs

The struggle for good change: Media narratives in the parliamentary election campaign in 2015 The role of media narratives in politics is particularly important in the time of narrative media, which interpret reality more than they report on the course of events. The article presents the results of research on the content of TV news programs Wiadomości of TVP, Fakty of TVN, and weeklies Polityka, Newsweek and W Sieci from the period preceding the parliamentary campaign in 2015. The aim of the analysis was to determine to what extent the election materials illustrate the activities of the political actors and how many prepared narratives were intended to clearly suggest to the voters who to vote for. The conclusion drawn from the research is that positive and coherent narratives can significantly increase the chance of achieving electoral success.

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The Rise of Political Hatred in Twitter Conversations of Indonesian Netizens

Jurnal Komunikasi Ikatan Sarjana Komunikasi Indonesia ◽

10.25008/jkiski.v6i1.518 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 22-31

Author(s):

Iswandi Syahputra

Keyword(s):

Presidential Election ◽

Freedom Of Expression ◽

Political Conflict ◽

Election Campaign ◽

Political Actors ◽

Presidential Candidates ◽

Political Category ◽

The Government ◽

Presidential Election Campaign ◽

Democratic Country

This article discusses expressions of hatred as a political category that has become a topic of discourse among Indonesian netizens on Twitter. The Twitter conversations data used in this analysis were obtained through a Twitter thread reader application operated by DEA (Drone Emprit Academic). As a political category, hatred is considered new. It emerged as and became a conversational topic for netizens on Twitter due to various political promises President Joko Widodo has made during his campaign and has not fulfilled. Political hatred has spread extensively owing to Twitter leading to absolute freedom of expression. On Twitter, political hatred has increased because of two main clusters during the 2019 Presidential Election campaign. The two clusters represent two pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates, namely Joko Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin (Number 01/JKW-MA) and Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno (Number 02/PS-SU). This study may have implications on broader hatred-based political conflict. Additionally, political hatred may also have implications on the waning of the public’s function to criticize political actors and the government because criticism may be suppressed on the basis of it being an expression of hatred. This will, accordingly, turn into a new dilemma in a democratic country, between freedom of expression and potential rise of new authoritarianism.

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Post as Much and as Diversely as Possible

Civic Engagement and Politics ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-7669-3.ch049 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 983-1004

Author(s):

Alem Maksuti ◽

Tomaž Deželan

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Driving Force ◽

The Political ◽

Election Campaign ◽

Election Campaigns ◽

Message Delivery ◽

Party Leaders ◽

Political Actors ◽

Political Messages ◽

Different Types

The daily interaction between political parties and voters is a driving force in election campaigns and can influence their outcomes. The theory of campaign intensity holds that the timing of message delivery in an election campaign is a key component of the strategies used by political actors. However, this theory also warns political actors to be cautious about the timing of different types of messages sent during the election campaign. Our objective is to examine the intensity and types of messages Slovenian political actors communicated through Twitter during different stages in the 2014 national election campaign. Our study conducts a content analysis of 7,113 tweets posted during the last four weeks of the official election campaign. It includes 17 official accounts of Slovenian parties, party leaders, and influential party twitterians. The results indicated that the stage of the campaign and the differences between established and fringe political parties significantly influenced the intensity of Twitter communications during the study period. The results also revealed that the political actors tweeted different types of political messages (e.g., to inform and to persuade voters) during different stages of the campaign.

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”Extended infomercials” or ”Politics 2.0”? A study of Swedish political party Web sites before, during and after the 2010 election

First Monday ◽

10.5210/fm.v16i4.3456 ◽

2011 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Anders Olof Larsson

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Web Sites ◽

Political Engagement ◽

Political Campaigns ◽

The Internet ◽

Web Pages ◽

Election Campaign ◽

Monthly Basis ◽

Research Gap ◽

The Web

Although many of the initial hopes regarding the Internet's effect on political engagement and participation has largely gone unfulfilled, it is generally held that the Internet still plays substantial role in political campaigns. Several studies have focused on how the Internet is employed for such purposes during an actual election campaign, but rather few studies have adopted a broader temporal scope, examining Web sites of political parties before, during and after an election. This paper fills this research gap by presenting a longitudinal analysis of the Web sites of Swedish political parties during the election year of 2010. Starting in January of 2010, these Web pages were downloaded on a monthly basis, a practice continued until the end of the year. By studying the Web sites of political parties before, during and after an election campaign, this project provides unique insights into Web campaigning rationale.

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Emotionality and Intertextuality in Official Discourses of Post-Soviet Authoritanian States (Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Russia)

Humanitarian vision ◽

10.23939/shv2020.02.021 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 21-27

Author(s):

Nataliia Steblyna ◽

Keyword(s):

Web Sites ◽

Formal Analysis ◽

Computer Programs ◽

The Political ◽

Political Actors ◽

Low Intensity ◽

Python Language ◽

Democratic Regimes ◽

Characteristic Features ◽

Small Period

Official discourses of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia are discovered with formal analysis in the article. The official discourses were represented with presidents’ web-sites. With the help of computer programs (Python language) the indicators of emotionality, direct and indirect intertextuality were calculated. The low emotionality and direct intertextuality are characteristic features of all three discourses. This underlines low intensity (or formality) of political interrelations. Average indicators of Kazakhstan and Russia discourses emotionality are (0,26; 0,24), for Belarus (0,39). These indicators are almost two times smaller, than in countries with more democratic regimes. Additionally, two types of authoritarian discourses are differentiated: more emotional and sporadic (Belarus) and less emotional stable (Kazakhstan, Russia). The positive correlation between the discourses of Kazakhstan and Russia (0,84) is discovered. Thus, similar periods of the discourses development are found: with more salient emotionality (before 2013) and unemotional period afterwards. For Belarus and Russia the periods with high indicators for indirect intertextuality (2012-2014, 2016-2017; and 2005-2010 – respectively) are discovered. The indicators’ values are explained with political interrelations imitation. The big amount of political texts (more than a half, sometimes – 80-90%) are congratulations and commemorations of authoritative leaders towards political actors’ form international community. The small period of such texts domination for Kazakhstan (2011-2012) is differentiated. Thus, the imitation of political interrelations with communication for Russia and Belarus is studied; however, this feature is not a characteristic one for Kazakhstan discourse. It’s concluded that all three discourses have artificial character of political interrelations in official discourses, which can be discovered with clear templates usage for all the political texts.

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