scholarly journals Requests made under the Official Information Act 1982 : a survey at the agency level

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dave Andrew Clemens
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
High Response Rate ◽  
Information Policy ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Official Information

<p>The Official Information Act (OIA) has been in force for almost two decades. During these years there has been little research published about how citizens use this legislation, or how agencies have responded to requests made under the Act. The aim of this project is to produce basic research data from a range of agencies to quantify use made of the Act, and to examine what other request information sample agencies hold. The study uses the Act as a survey instrument to produce a high response rate to the questionnaire and to produce qualitative and quantitative data about the request process. The results show that only a minority of surveyed agencies records the number of requests they receive or the category of information requesters e.g., news media and political parties. Compared to the detailed information recorded by the Ombudsmen there appears to be little consistency of request record keeping across sampled agencies. This record keeping gap has implications for our ability to either assess the effectiveness of the OIA against its original purpose, or to review it in the context of government information policy.</p>

scholarly journals Requests made under the Official Information Act 1982 : a survey at the agency level

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dave Andrew Clemens
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
High Response Rate ◽  
Information Policy ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Official Information

<p>The Official Information Act (OIA) has been in force for almost two decades. During these years there has been little research published about how citizens use this legislation, or how agencies have responded to requests made under the Act. The aim of this project is to produce basic research data from a range of agencies to quantify use made of the Act, and to examine what other request information sample agencies hold. The study uses the Act as a survey instrument to produce a high response rate to the questionnaire and to produce qualitative and quantitative data about the request process. The results show that only a minority of surveyed agencies records the number of requests they receive or the category of information requesters e.g., news media and political parties. Compared to the detailed information recorded by the Ombudsmen there appears to be little consistency of request record keeping across sampled agencies. This record keeping gap has implications for our ability to either assess the effectiveness of the OIA against its original purpose, or to review it in the context of government information policy.</p>

Agenda-Setting Dynamics during the Campaign Period

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Partheymüller
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Limiting Factors ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Agenda Setter ◽  
Memory Decay ◽  
The Media

It is widely believed that the news media have a strong influence on defining what are the most important problems facing the country during election campaigns. Yet, recent research has pointed to several factors that may limit the mass media’s agenda-setting power. Linking news media content to rolling cross-section survey data, the chapter examines the role of three such limiting factors in the context of the 2009 and the 2013 German federal elections: (1) rapid memory decay on the part of voters, (2) advertising by the political parties, and (3) the fragmentation of the media landscape. The results show that the mass media may serve as a powerful agenda setter, but also demonstrate that the media’s influence is strictly limited by voters’ cognitive capacities and the structure of the campaign information environment.

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

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-993 ◽  
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.

Political Knowledge and Misinformation in the Era of Social Media: Evidence From the 2015 UK Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Media Platform

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.

scholarly journals The People’s Champions? Populist Communication as a Contextually Dependent Political Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 107769902199864
Author(s):  
Iskander De Bruycker ◽  
Matthijs Rooduijn
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Eu Policy ◽  
News Stories

This article conceives of populist communication as a contextually dependent political strategy. We bridge actor- and communication-centered approaches by arguing that the context of issues conditions the extent to which parties employ populist communication. We draw from a content analysis of 2,085 news stories in eight news media outlets and Eurobarometer data connected to 41 EU policy issues and analyze statements from 85 political parties. Our findings show that populist parties are more prone to express populism on salient and polarized issues. Issues important to civil society groups, in contrast, make non-populist parties more inclined to express such communication.

scholarly journals User engagement with political “facts” in the context of the fake news phenomenon

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 1082-1099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Marcella ◽  
Graeme Baxter ◽  
Agnieszka Walicka
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Information Quality ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Subject Knowledge ◽  
Perceived Credibility ◽  
North East ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Quality Awareness

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study that explored human behaviour in response to political “facts” presented online by political parties in Scotland. Design/methodology/approach The study consisted of interactive online interviews with 23 citizens in North-East Scotland, in the run-up to the 2017 UK General Election. Findings Participants demonstrated cognitive and critical responses to facts but little affective reaction. They judged facts swiftly and largely intuitively, providing evidence that facts are frequently consumed, accepted or rejected without further verification processes. Users demonstrated varying levels of engagement with the information they consume, and subject knowledge may influence the extent to which respondents trust facts, in previously unanticipated ways. Users tended to notice facts with which they disagreed and, in terms of prominence, particularly noted and responded to facts which painted extremely negative or positive pictures. Most acknowledged limitations in capacity to interrogate facts, but some were delusionally confident. Originality/value Relatively little empirical research has been conducted exploring the perceived credibility of political or government information online. It is believed that this and a companion study are the first to have specifically investigated the Scottish political arena. This paper presents a new, exploratory fact interrogation model, alongside an expanded information quality awareness model.

Informing Dissent

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
Hillary Greene ◽  
Dennis A. Yao
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Information Control ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Social Communities ◽  
Social Pressures ◽  
The Government ◽  
Economic Tools ◽  
Official Information

The first part of this commentary argues that because the production of dissent depends on the availability of information, greater attention should focus on government restrictions on access to official information. At no time is this more important than when information is monopolized by the government. If not constrained, government’s monopoly control of information, combined with its incentives to shape support for its policies, may at some times and in some ways reduce dissent. In the second part of the commentary, a cost-benefit approach is proposed to analyze an individual’s incentives to produce speech and is then applied to assess the role social communities play vis-à-vis individual dissent. This analysis underscores the important and complex (sometimes encouraging, sometimes discouraging) role that communities play in the generation of dissent. Our analysis uses economic tools, often accompanied by an antitrust perspective, to better understand the implications of government information control and social pressures upon speech and dissent.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document