New medium, old strategies? Comparing online and traditional campaign posters for German Bundestag elections, 2013–2017

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 370-388
Author(s):  
Dennis Steffan ◽  
Niklas Venema

Election campaigns in hybrid media systems are characterised by the integration of newer and older media. With the rise of social media platforms, newer tools of political communication emerge, such as online campaign posters, complementing older tools, such as traditional campaign posters. This raises the question whether the newer medium online campaign posters replicates strategies of professionalised political communication (i.e. personalisation, de-ideologisation and negative campaigning), and whether major and minor parties differ in their use of these strategies in online campaign posters. Against this background, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of visual and textual elements of online campaign posters and traditional campaign posters ( N = 1,069) for the 2013 and 2017 German Bundestag elections. The results indicate that online campaign posters are significantly more negative than traditional campaign posters. Moreover, the use of online campaign posters tends to moderate the inter-party competition in the social media environment.

Author(s):  
Erik P. Bucy ◽  
John E. Newhagen

The vulnerabilities shown by media systems and individual users exposed to attacks on truth from fake news and computational propaganda in recent years should be considered in light of the characteristics and concerns surrounding big data, especially the volume and velocity of messages delivered over social media platforms that tax the average user’s capacity to determine their truth value in real time. For reasons explained by the psychology of information processing, a high percentage of fake news that reaches audiences is accepted as true, particularly when distractions and interruptions typify user experiences with technology. As explained in this essay, fake news thrives in environments lacking editorial policing and epistemological vigilance, making the social media milieu ideally suited for spreading false information. In response, we suggest the value of an educational strategy to combat the dilemma that digital disinformation poses to informed citizenship.


Author(s):  
Corinne Weisgerber

This article calls into question the social media empowerment narrative and the underlying idea that social media platforms are empowering everyday netizens to have their voices heard. The author argues that social media technologies may simply privilege only those Internet users who are new media savvy and have leisure time to participate in the so-called digital democracy. While social media systems might have lowered the entrance threshold for civic engagement, hurdles such as the growing competition in an attention economy, the odds of standing out amidst millions of other individual voices, knowledge of new media technologies required to achieve visibility, and time demands make the social media empowerment vision more difficult to attain than the architects of the empowerment ideology have made the public to believe.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Svensson ◽  
Uta Russmann ◽  
Andaç Baran Cezayirlioğlu

Inspired by Coleman’s call for a more ‘direct representation’, we address two neglected issues within the field of social media and political communication. We study a non-election period in Sweden (two randomly selected weeks in early 2016) and conduct a cross-platform comparison. The article is based on content analyses of the four prominent social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. We seek to answer the following questions: do parties use social media platforms in-between elections? If so, for what purposes? Do parties use social media to interact in a direct manner with citizens? We focus on three different Swedish parties: the Social Democrats (incumbent), the Feminist Initiative (underdog) and the Sweden Democrats (populist right-wing). Our findings suggest a bleak direct representation in-between elections. Parties are more active on social media platforms during election campaigns. Twitter is the preferred platform, especially by the incumbent party for broadcasting achievements.


Tripodos ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Mārtiņš Pričins

Over the last decade, the implementation of campaigns by political parties and their candidates on social media platforms has become an integral part of political communication. Political communication studies have long indicated that elections are becoming personalized, with more focus on party leaders or individual candidates. But studies on communication by political parties to understand the identity of parties and their potential in communication with voters remain relevant. The aim of the paper is to analyse the visual election materials of the political parties from Latvia on the social network Facebook during the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election campaign. The research period is two weeks before elections. The subject of the study is election materials on Facebook accounts of the parties representing the national parliament of Latvia. A codebook for analysis has been developed, containing common and specific variables, designed to explore the verbal and visual dimensions. The results of the study allow us to draw conclusions about the changing success of new populist and traditional parties, as well as to look at the role of Facebook in elections in a little-studied country.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Steffan ◽  
Niklas Venema

Faced with fundamental societal changes such as partisan dealignment and mediatisation, political parties in Germany as well as in other Western democracies professionalise their communication. Drawing on the concept of professionalisation of political communication, the present study investigates changes of campaign posters for German Bundestag elections from 1949 until 2017 with regard to personalisation, de-ideologisation and negative campaigning. By using a quantitative content analysis of visual and textual elements of campaign posters ( N = 1,857) and logistic regression analyses, we found an increase in visual personalisation and in visual ideologisation. However, no upwards trend was detected regarding negative campaigning across the four phases of political campaigning. Moreover, we found no empirical evidence for an increasing textual personalisation or textual de-ideologisation. All in all, the findings of this longitudinal analysis indicate an increasing visualisation of political communication.


Koneksi ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 338
Author(s):  
Faiz Zulia Maharany ◽  
Ahmad Junaidi

'Nightmare' is the title of a video clip belonging to a singer and singer called Halsey, in which the video clip is explained about the figure of women who struggle against patriarchal culture which has been a barrier wall for women to get their rights, welfare and the equality needed they get. This research uses descriptive qualitative research methods. Data collection techniques are done through documentation, observation and study of literature. Then, analyzed using Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics technique. The results of this study show the fact that signs, symbols or messages representing feminism in the video, 'Nightmare' clips are presented through scenes that present women's actions in opposing domination over men and sarcastic sentences contained in the lyrics of the song to discuss with patriarchy. Youtube as one of the social media platforms where the 'Nightmare' video clip is uploaded is very effective for mass communication and for conveying the message contained in the video clip to the viewing public.‘Nightmare’ adalah judul video klip milik musisi sekaligus penyanyi yang bernama Halsey, dimana pada Video klipnya tersebut menceritakan tentang figur perempuan-perempuan yang berusaha melawan budaya patriarki yang selama ini telah menjadi dinding penghalang bagi perempuan untuk mendapatkan hak-haknya, keadilan dan kesetaraan yang seharusnya mereka dapatkan. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian kualitatif deskriptif. Teknik pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui dokumentasi, observasi dan studi kepustakaan. Kemudian, dianalisis menggunakan teknik semiotika milik Charles Sanders Peirce. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa terdapat tanda-tanda, simbol atau pesan yang merepresentasikan feminisme di dalam video klip ‘Nightmare’ yang dihadirkan melalui adegan-adegan yang menyajikan aksi perempuan dalam menolak dominasi atas laki-laki dan kalimat-kalimat sarkas yang terkandung dalam lirik lagunya untuk ditujukan kepada patriarki. Youtube sebagai salah satu platform media sosial dimana video klip ‘Nightmare’ diunggah sangat efektif untuk melakukan komunikasi massa dan untuk menyampaikan pesan yang terkandung di dalam video klip tersebut kepada masyarakat yang menonton.


Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion ◽  
Daniel Jackson

This introduction unpacks the eight articles that make up this Journalism special issue about election reporting. Taken together, the articles ask: How has election reporting evolved over the last century across different media? Has the relationship between journalists and candidates changed in the digital age of campaigning? How do contemporary news values influence campaign coverage? Which voices – politicians, say or journalists – are most prominent? How far do citizens inform election coverage? How is public opinion articulated in the age of social media? Are sites such as Twitter developing new and distinctive election agendas? In what ways does social media interact with legacy media? How well have scholars researched and theorised election reporting cross-nationally? How can research agendas be enhanced? Overall, we argue this Special Issue demonstrates the continued strength of news media during election campaigns. This is in spite of social media platforms increasingly disrupting and recasting the agenda setting power of legacy media, not least by political parties and candidates who are relying more heavily on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to campaign. But while debates in recent years have centred on the technological advances in political communication and the associated role of social media platforms during election campaigns (e.g. microtargeting voters, spreading disinformation/misinformation and allowing candidates to bypass media to campaign), our collection of studies signal the enduring influence professional journalists play in selecting and framing of news. Put more simply, how elections are reported still profoundly matters in spite of political parties’ and candidates’ more sophisticated use of digital campaigning.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110158
Author(s):  
Opeyemi Akanbi

Moving beyond the current focus on the individual as the unit of analysis in the privacy paradox, this article examines the misalignment between privacy attitudes and online behaviors at the level of society as a collective. I draw on Facebook’s market performance to show how despite concerns about privacy, market structures drive user, advertiser and investor behaviors to continue to reward corporate owners of social media platforms. In this market-oriented analysis, I introduce the metaphor of elasticity to capture the responsiveness of demand for social media to the data (price) charged by social media companies. Overall, this article positions social media as inelastic, relative to privacy costs; highlights the role of the social collective in the privacy crises; and ultimately underscores the need for structural interventions in addressing privacy risks.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110594
Author(s):  
Yiyi Yin ◽  
Zhuoxiao Xie

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-118
Author(s):  
Noora Shrestha

Food and beverage marketing on social media is a powerful factor to influence students’ exposure to social media and application for food and beverage. It is a well-known fact that most of the food and beverage business target young people on the social media. The objective of the study is to identify the factors associated to the students’ exposure in the social media platforms for food and beverage. The young students between the ages 20 to 26 years completed a self-administered questionnaire survey on their media use for food and beverages. The questionnaire was prepared using Likert scale with five options from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The data set was described with descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation. The exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation method was used to extract the factors. The most popular social media among the respondents were Facebook, Instagram, and You Tube. 73.3% of the students were exposed to food and beverage application in their mobile device and 76% of them followed the popular food and beverage pages in social media. The result revealed that social media posts, promotional offer, and hygienic concept have positively influenced majority of the students’ exposure to social media for food and beverage. Keywords: Factor analysis, Social Media, Food and Beverage, Student, Promotional Offer.


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