Sentencia Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corrupción y derecho al voto en Estados Unidos

En este artículo se estudia la sentencia Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Ciudadanos Unidos contra la Comisión de Elecciones Federales), dictada por la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos como mecanismo de legalización de la influencia irrestricta del financiamiento privado en la política estadounidense. La hipótesis aquí es que esta modificación institucional legaliza, a su vez, una forma de corrupción política que se evidencia en la actual legislación restrictiva del voto. Se presentará un marco referencial en el que se definirán los conceptos que articulan el análisis. Luego, se hará una descripción de los antecedentes y el contexto de la sentencia Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission; en seguida, se realizará un análisis de la sentencia, para pasar luego al repaso de dos de sus consecuencias: la primera es la influencia del dinero negro (donaciones anónimas) tanto en las campañas como en la selección de jueces, y la siguiente es la exposición de la influencia del financiamiento privado ilimitado de las campañas en la legislación restrictiva actual del voto.

“Les gens qui vous ressemblent”: Discursive Negotiation of Identity and Construction of Affiliation in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election Party Leader Debates

In the weeks leading up to the Canadian federal election, federal party leaders seek to appeal to a crucial part of the electorate - Québec voters, most of whom are of French-Canadian background - through a series of televised debates. As party leaders engage in discourse aimed at creating proximity with and enacting an affiliative stance toward these voters, the debates become a platform for discursive negotiation of Québec identity, in which identity stances and narratives are reflected, reproduced, and challenged. This study examines a corpus of party leaders’ discourse as these political actors interactively negotiate Québec identity during three party leader debates in the 2019 federal election. Following the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, the inquiry discusses the following aspects of the party leaders’ discourse: discursive representation of Quebecers’ group identity and self-positioning with respect to that identity, use of symbolic lexis and references that signal attachment to the French-Canadian majority’s collective memory, and self-positioning with respect to the French language. In addition, the discussion addresses implications of the bilingual nature of political discourse in the Canadian context, focusing on party leaders’ use of code-switching and metapragmatic commentary. Crucially, the study’s conclusions suggest that a shared vision of Québec identity has not yet been widely ratified. While the party leaders’ discourse appears largely felicitous with the inclusive, civic vision of Québec identity, the study’s findings point to continued primacy of the French-Canadian fact in its current conceptualization.

Political Crowdfunding and Campaigning on GoFundMe

Background: What does the Canadian use of GoFundMe tell us about the role of non-party campaigners in contemporary election campaigning? Analysis: Within the context of the 2019 Canadian federal election, this article examines how GoFundMe has been used as a platform for fundraising by fringe and populist political voices online. Conclusion and implications: The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has been leveraged to meet political goals both within and outside of traditional, party-centred, political fundraising setups. The mobilization of GoFundMe’s crowdfunding tools in the 2019 federal election presented an opportune space for the financialization of political goals reflecting right-wing populist ideas. Contexte : Que nous dit l’utilisation de GoFundMe sur le rôle de campagnistes sans affiliation à un parti lors de campagnes électorales contemporaines au Canada? Analyse : Cet article examine comment des voix politiques marginales et populistes ont utilisé GoFundMe comme plateforme pour effectuer des levées de fonds pendant l’élection fédérale canadienne de 2019. Conclusion et implications : La plateforme de sociofinancement GoFundMe a été exploitée pour atteindre des objectifs politiques dans le cadre de processus traditionnels de levées de fonds centrées sur les partis et au-delà de ce cadre. Les outils de sociofinancement fournis par GoFundMe pendant la campagne fédérale de 2019 ont créé un espace propice au financement d’objectifs politiques reflétant des idées populistes de droite.

Training political reporters during a federal election: The UniPollWatch student journalism project

UniPollWatch was the largest student journalism project ever undertaken in Australia. Approximately 1000 students from 28 universities worked to cover the 2016 federal election. The project aimed to provide effective training on political reporting in a work-integrated learning environment. Utilising a combination of analysis and descriptions of the project and a survey research methodology, the results of this project suggest that by placing student reporters in the midst of a fluid and highly contested election environment they learn by observing and doing. The project demonstrated that students’ attitudes to, and aptitude for, covering politics varied greatly, but that the skills needed for political reporting can be improved through projects such as UniPollWatch.

Twitter Campaigning Strategies in Australian Federal Elections 2013–2019

This special issue of Social Media + Society develops a cross-national, longitudinal perspective on the use of social media in election campaigns. Australia, where leading social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were adopted early and widely by the general population, and where federal election cycles are unusually short (often less than 3 years), provides a particularly suitable environment for observing the evolution of social media campaigning approaches. This article extends our analysis of previous federal election campaigns in Australia by examining Twitter campaigning in the 2019 election; to allow for a direct comparison with previous campaigns, it builds on a methodological and analytical framework that we have used since the 2013 election.