Transcultural political communication from the perspective of proximization theory: A comparative analysis on the corpuses of the Sino–US trade war

Previous studies have shown the operational potential in political discourse analysis from the proximization perspective. This study adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to analyze political communication across transcultural contexts, especially in the cyber discourse space. Based on the spatial–temporal–axiological (STA) model, we compare the journalistic discourses on two social media platforms by China Xinhua News Agency (CXNA), an official speaker for China worldwide. The corpuses are constructed with microblogs on Weibo in Chinese and Twitter in English containing key words of Sino–US trade war. It is found that the speaker has shaped different realities of discourse in accordance with the cultural contexts and proximized from corresponding dimensions to increase political legitimacy.

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Introduction to special issue about election reporting: Why journalism (still) matters

Journalism ◽

10.1177/1464884919845454 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 20 (8) ◽

pp. 985-993 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Stephen Cushion ◽

Daniel Jackson

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Parties ◽

Political Communication ◽

News Media ◽

Election Campaigns ◽

Special Issue ◽

Technological Advances ◽

Campaign Coverage ◽

Election Coverage ◽

Social Media Platforms

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.

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Political communication Modi style: A case study of the demonetization campaign on Twitter

International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics ◽

10.1386/macp_00006_1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 361-379 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Usha M. Rodrigues ◽

Michael Niemann

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

News Media ◽

Mass Communication ◽

Communication Strategy ◽

Direct Communication ◽

Mainstream Media ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Government Websites

Abstract Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) is one of the world's most followed political leaders on Twitter. During the 2014 and 2019 election campaigns, he and his party used various social media networking and the Internet services to engage with young, educated, middle-class voters in India. Since his first sweeping win in the 2014 elections, Modi's political communication strategy has been to neglect the mainstream news media, and instead use social media and government websites to keep followers informed of his day-to-day engagements and government policies. This strategy of direct communication was followed even during a critical policy change, when in a politically risky move half-way through his five-year prime ministership, Modi's government scrapped more than 85 per cent of Indian currency notes in November 2016. He continued to largely shun the mainstream media and use his social media accounts and public rallies to communicate with the nation. As a case study of this direct communication strategy, this article presents the results of a study of Modi's Twitter articulations during the three months following the demonetization announcement. We use mediatization of politics discourse to consider the implications of this shift from mass communication via the mainstream news media, to the Indian prime minister's reliance on direct communication on social media platforms.

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Sosiaalisen median kommenttien analyysi multimodaalisesta näkökulmasta digitaalisen journalismin ja poliittisen viestinnän tutkimuksessa

Informaatiotutkimus ◽

10.23978/inf.111071 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 40 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Margareta Salonen ◽

Elisa Kannasto ◽

Laura Paatelainen

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Content Analysis ◽

Literature Review ◽

Political Communication ◽

Qualitative Content Analysis ◽

Data Sets ◽

Individual Mode ◽

Digital Journalism ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

The One

Societal discussions flow on social media platforms that are studied by researchers in multiple ways and through various kinds of data sets that are extracted from them. In the studies of these discussions, multimodality unravels the semiotic modes that are communication resources through which meanings are socially and culturally created and expressed. In addition, the viewpoint of affordances can be used for viewing the functions of social media platforms and their discussions. Furthermore, this review was conducted to better understand how social media comments are researched from the perspective of multimodality in the context of digital journalism and political communication. A systematic literature review and qualitative content analysis were used as methods. The review discovered that the studies under review were not that high in multimodality and that text as an individual mode was the most common one. Furthermore, Twitter was the most researched platform and the one where the use of modes was more thoroughly explained.

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Logics of the Icelandic Hybrid Media System

Nordicom Review ◽

10.2478/nor-2019-0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 43-59

Author(s):

Birgir Guðmundsson

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

New Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

Parliamentary Elections ◽

Media System ◽

Network Media ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

The Media ◽

Media Logic

AbstractThe increased importance of social media platforms and network media logic merging with traditional media logic are a trademark of modern hybrid systems of political communication. This article looks at this development through the media-use by politicians before the 2016 and 2017 parliamentary elections in Iceland. Aggregate results from candidate surveys on the use and perceived importance of different media forms are used to examine the role of the new platform Snapchat in relation to other media, and to highlight the dynamics of the hybrid media system in Iceland. The results show that Snapchat is exploited more by younger politicians and those already using social media platforms. However, in spite of this duality between old and new media, users of traditional platforms still use new media and vice versa. This points to the existance of a delicate operational balance between different media logics, that could change as younger politicians move more centre stage.

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Narrative of politics in the era of social media: a multimodal analysis of president Joko Widodo’s video blog

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/20187410012 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 74 ◽

pp. 10012

Author(s):

Fransiskus Surdiasis ◽

Eriyanto Eriyanto

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

Political Legitimacy ◽

Multimodal Analysis ◽

Multimodal Discourse ◽

The People ◽

Political Narratives ◽

Political Narrative ◽

Semiotic Resources ◽

Use Of Social Media

This research aims to investigate the use of social media in constructing political narrative by examining the video blogs (vlogs) of Indonesian President, Jokowi, on Youtube as a case study. How does President Jokowi use his vlogs to construct political narratives about his personal life and presidency? What kind of semiotic resources deployed in his vlogs? This research uses the method of Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis and concludes that President Jokowi has used his vlogs to build his political narrative with the underlying themes of progress and reformation, stating that his presidency will lead Indonesia to a better situation. The political narrative championed in his vlogs strengthens his political legitimacy as a leader who is humble, modest, and close to the people. In building his political narrative, President Jokowi has used a variety of semiotic resources, including participants, process or kinesics action, locative circumstance, visual collocation, speech, and text. This research confirms the change of political communication in content dimension and shows the importance of applying multimodal analysis in understanding contemporary political communication. This research recommends politicians to use vlogs as a platform to build their political narratives in this new political environment.

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780190931407.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Samuel C. Woolley ◽

Philip N. Howard

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

Data Science ◽

Autonomous Agents ◽

Future Research ◽

Political Role ◽

The People ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Qualitative Work

Computational propaganda is an emergent form of political manipulation that occurs over the Internet. The term describes the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, algorithms, and big data tasked with manipulating public opinion. Our research shows that this new mode of interrupting and influencing communication is on the rise around the globe. Advances in computing technology, especially around social automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, mean that computational propaganda is becoming more sophisticated and harder to track. This introduction explores the foundations of computational propaganda. It describes the key role of automated manipulation of algorithms in recent efforts to control political communication worldwide. We discuss the social data science of political communication and build upon the argument that algorithms and other computational tools now play an important political role in news consumption, issue awareness, and cultural understanding. We unpack key findings of the nine country case studies that follow—exploring the role of computational propaganda during events from local and national elections in Brazil to the ongoing security crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Our methodology in this work has been purposefully mixed, using quantitative analysis of data from several social media platforms and qualitative work that includes interviews with the people who design and deploy political bots and disinformation campaigns. Finally, we highlight original evidence about how this manipulation and amplification of disinformation is produced, managed, and circulated by political operatives and governments, and describe paths for both democratic intervention and future research in this space.

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Beyond normalization and equalization on Twitter: Politicians’ Twitter use during non-election times and influences of media attention

Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies ◽

10.1386/ajms_00021_1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 169-189 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Adrian Rauchfleisch ◽

Julia Metag

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

Activity Level ◽

Theoretical Discussion ◽

Traditional Media ◽

Media Attention ◽

The Core ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

High Level ◽

The Impact

Twitter has already become one of the most important social media platforms for political communication. Concerning the use of Twitter in politics, two possible developments have been at the core of the theoretical discussion ‐ equalization and normalization. As normalization seems to be the case in most western countries about politicians’ Twitter use, it is yet unknown to what extent this debate can be applied to non-election times. The aim of our study is threefold. First, we address the debate of normalization on Twitter with a focus on the activity level on Twitter. Second, we classify the politicians based on their activity level in order to investigate to what extent the Twitter use still differs even if a high level of adoption has been reached. Third, we analyse the impact of the traditional media on the Twittersphere during parliamentary and non-parliamentary phases, thus focusing on non-election times. Our results show that even though media attention gives some politicians an advantage online, equalization tendencies are still possible on Twitter if politicians actively use the platform.

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Feeling the Chill: Bersih 2.0, State Censorship, and “Networked Affect” on Malaysian Social Media 2012–2018

Social Media + Society ◽

10.1177/2056305118821801 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 205630511882180

Author(s):

Amelia Johns ◽

Niki Cheong

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

Digital Networks ◽

Kuala Lumpur ◽

Chinese Youth ◽

Political Dissent ◽

Ethnographic Interviews ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Media Reports ◽

The Government

In 2007, Bersih—a Malaysian social movement for “clean and fair elections”—rode a wave of anti-government sentiment to mobilize 40,000 citizens to take to the streets. In particular, young Malaysians, fueled by “outrage and hope” at old oligarchies and lives put on hold by economic, social, and political inequality, were key actors in Bersih rallies staged between 2011 and 2016, driven by social media platforms and networked publics, which enabled the enthusiasm of the streets to connect with and drive the movement’s online formation. In response, the then government began to use media and security laws to disrupt digital networks and engage in arrest of activists and “ordinary” citizens. This, combined with allegations that the government has used astroturfing (commonly referred to as “cybertrooping” in Malaysia) to shape voter sentiments and suppress the momentum of Bersih and popular forms of online political dissent, has been strongly condemned by human rights organizations. This article draws upon findings from PhD research on cybertroopers and ethnographic interviews conducted with 29 Malaysian-Chinese youth between 2016 and 2018 (in Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne, Australia) to map and analyze the effects of the government’s use of “affective techniques” to manipulate social media publics and crackdown on online political communication, with media reports connecting these strategies to declining participation in Bersih’s street rallies from Bersih 4-5. The article will draw on theories of “networked affect” and “affective publics” to examine the role affect has played in this downturn in participation and a growing sense of hopelessness among Malaysia’s digital citizens.

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Concerns Discussed on Chinese and French Social Media During the COVID-19 Lockdown: Comparative Infodemiology Study Based on Topic Modeling

JMIR Formative Research ◽

10.2196/23593 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. e23593

Author(s):

Stéphane Schück ◽

Pierre Foulquié ◽

Adel Mebarki ◽

Carole Faviez ◽

Mickaïl Khadhar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Data Privacy ◽

Topic Model ◽

Scientific Information ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

Cultural Contexts ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Specific Interests ◽

The Impact

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous countries, including China and France, have implemented lockdown measures that have been effective in controlling the epidemic. However, little is known about the impact of these measures on the population as expressed on social media from different cultural contexts. Objective This study aims to assess and compare the evolution of the topics discussed on Chinese and French social media during the COVID-19 lockdown. Methods We extracted posts containing COVID-19–related or lockdown-related keywords in the most commonly used microblogging social media platforms (ie, Weibo in China and Twitter in France) from 1 week before lockdown to the lifting of the lockdown. A topic model was applied independently for three periods (prelockdown, early lockdown, and mid to late lockdown) to assess the evolution of the topics discussed on Chinese and French social media. Results A total of 6395; 23,422; and 141,643 Chinese Weibo messages, and 34,327; 119,919; and 282,965 French tweets were extracted in the prelockdown, early lockdown, and mid to late lockdown periods, respectively, in China and France. Four categories of topics were discussed in a continuously evolving way in all three periods: epidemic news and everyday life, scientific information, public measures, and solidarity and encouragement. The most represented category over all periods in both countries was epidemic news and everyday life. Scientific information was far more discussed on Weibo than in French tweets. Misinformation circulated through social media in both countries; however, it was more concerned with the virus and epidemic in China, whereas it was more concerned with the lockdown measures in France. Regarding public measures, more criticisms were identified in French tweets than on Weibo. Advantages and data privacy concerns regarding tracing apps were also addressed in French tweets. All these differences were explained by the different uses of social media, the different timelines of the epidemic, and the different cultural contexts in these two countries. Conclusions This study is the first to compare the social media content in eastern and western countries during the unprecedented COVID-19 lockdown. Using general COVID-19–related social media data, our results describe common and different public reactions, behaviors, and concerns in China and France, even covering the topics identified in prior studies focusing on specific interests. We believe our study can help characterize country-specific public needs and appropriately address them during an outbreak.

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Comparing Twitter and Instagram as platforms for party leader communication

First Monday ◽

10.5210/fm.v26i10.10638 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Eli Skogerbø ◽

Anders Olof Larsson

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Communication ◽

Political Campaigns ◽

Party Leader ◽

Interaction Patterns ◽

Party Leaders ◽

Different Types ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

User Groups ◽

Scholarly Attention

While social media have become key in contemporary political campaigns, different platforms feature differing affordances, allowing for varying functionalities. Even more importantly, different platforms are populated by different user groups. As Twitter has received large amounts of scholarly attention, comparisons of how and why different social media platforms are used for political communication are less abundant. This study looks at the differences between Twitter and Instagram as platforms for top politicians, describing and explaining how they allow for interaction with different types of audiences. The study gauges the interaction patterns emerging from activity undertaken by Norwegian party leaders on Twitter and Instagram during the 2017 Norwegian elections and shows how use of these two platforms differ not only in terms of the volume and structure of the activities — but also with regard to what types of other users the party leaders choose to interact with on the studied platforms and why we see differences between them.

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