What matters for keeping or losing support in televised debates

What leads citizens to change their candidate preferences during televised debates? The present paper addresses this question with real-time response and panel survey data from respondents recruited in the run-up to the 2017 German national election. Probing the importance of party identity and performance perceptions formed during the debate, the analysis more closely examines several core determinants than has previously been done with real-time response data. The findings suggest, first, that only a strong or very strong party identity is an effective barrier to candidate preference change. Second, beyond party identity, ratings of candidates’ issue-specific statements on policy issues show a very strong effect, albeit regardless of personal issue importance. Third, this influence of candidate ratings does not seem to be mediated through changes in valence perceptions. Rather, viewers seem to form a general impression of the candidates which cannot be reduced to performance perceptions regarding policy issues.

Through the Eyes of Other - Social Opinion Monitoring in a televised debate

More and more people engage in social media platforms while watching televised debates during election campaigns. This study explores the potential of biases in social media users’ comments in influencing the debate viewing experience. We argue people do rely on biases in these additional information environments, in order to make sense out of a televised debate. To empirically asses these effects, the paper builds on data from a survey experiment on a German televised debate. While evidence for effects on the perceived debate performance of the candidates are rather scarce, we find consistent evidence for people drawing on a bias as anindicator for general public’s evaluation of the candidates’ debate performance. Furthermore, the paper highlights the differential roles positive and negative biases play for the abovementioned effects.

Is there a visual bias in televised debates? Evidence from Germany, 2002–2017

Media professionals make use of various production techniques in the visual portrayal of politicians on television. A large body of literature indicates that these techniques exert varying influence on, for example, the evaluation of these actors, leading to the question of whether politicians are depicted in an equal way. Focusing on televised debates, this content analysis of five German debates aims to determine if there is a visual bias in the portrayal of candidates, depending on party affiliation, gender and role. Among other forms of bias, the authors find a difference in the use of camera movements and angle depending on the candidate’s gender and party affiliation.

4. From Islamic revolutions to the Internet

“From Islamic Revolutions to the Internet” traces the development of global Islam from the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the war in Afghanistan to today, via the post-Soviet opening of multiple borders and the growth of Islam in China, Central Asia, and rural Africa. This period was characterized by competition between rival organizations, some violent such as ISIS. What happened when the states were no longer able to control the beliefs they sponsored? Today’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have returned to a message of Muslim unity. Smartphone technology has enabled individual religious activists to communicate their beliefs in a more vibrant and arresting way than state-sponsored televised debates.

Feasting Our Eyes on the Candidates: Visual Cues in Televised Debates Prime Personality Traits of Lesser Known Candidates and Promote Learning

This article examines how different modes of exposure to debates between presidential candidates affect both the criteria by which they are assessed and levels of learning about politics in an unobtrusive, distant context. In this study, 167 Portuguese undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either watch or listen to one of two 1986 dyadic presidential debates, rate the candidates on a series of items, and answer questions about the contents of the debate. We found that the mode of exposure only affected the assessment criteria of the lesser known presidential candidate. In fact, his personality appraisals carried more weight for viewers than for listeners, while the substantive performance was more important for those who listened to the debate. Although a more confrontational debating style lowered the ratings of the lesser known candidate, this was not conditional to mode of exposure. Moreover, video exposure to the debate resulted in higher levels of learning. In summary, this study supports the assumption that the visual cues in audiovisual formats are major factors of learning and prime personality traits as criteria for the appraisal of (relatively) unknown candidates.

The Shāhīn Affair and the Evolution of uṣūl al-tafsīr

In 1997, the distinguished linguistics professor ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr Shāhīn of Cairo University published his re-reading of the story of creation, entitled Abī Ādam (‘My Father Adam’). Although the book created a storm of refutations, televised debates, and a blasphemy charge against the author, the Islamic Research Council of al-Azhar University concluded that the book was flawed but not blasphemous. This paper sheds light on Shāhīn's key strategies in arguing for an evolutionary reading of the Qur'an, in which Adam was the first full human (insān) endowed with divine spirit, but born on earth to hominid parents (bashar). Responses by two other linguist scholars, ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm Ibrāhīm al-Maṭʿanī of al-Azhar and Ḥamza b. Qublān al-Muzaynī of King Saud University, illustrate the contemporary underdevelopment of Qur'anic hermeneutics (uṣūl al-tafsīr) as a discipline. The paper draws attention to current scholarly developments in the Muslim world and the move from refutations to constructive accounts based on tradition.