Voting in the Echo Chamber? Patterns of Political Online Activities and Voting Behavior in Switzerland

Understanding the political consequences of digitalization is among the key challenges for modern societies. A pressing issue is the question whether political online activities make individuals more close-minded and less willing to consider alternative arguments. We examine this question using a peculiarity of the Swiss electoral system – the possibility to split votes – as a behavioral outcome measure. We argue that political online activities might either make individuals less likely to split votes (“echo chamber”-argument) or more likely to spread their votes across parties (“deliberation”-argument). Empirically, we use data from the Swiss Election Study Selects 2019 to test these arguments. The results of a hierarchical logistic regression analysis do not support any of the conflicting arguments. Yet, additional analyses suggest that political interest moderates the relationship between online activities and vote splitting: political interest makes online activists more likely to split votes

Media and campaign effects on vote choice at national elections in Europe : a review of a multilingual research landscape

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts

Smartphone e mobilitazioni sociali: i counterpublics nella sfera pubblica

Tramite lo sviluppo di questa tesi si è cercato di approfondire diverse teorie che possono fornire una spiegazione dell’importanza dei dispositivi mobile nelle società civili, come questi dispositivi incidano nelle mobilitazioni sociali e quali siano le caratteristiche principali di questi strumenti che ampliano la gamma di azioni a disposizione dei manifestanti. L’inizio dell’analisi non sarebbe possibile senza richiamare concetti e approcci specifici in grado di costituire un contesto analitico utile a comprendere le caratteristiche delle società democratiche moderne. L’approccio della post democrazia di Crouch (2004) permette di analizzare il declino dei sistemi democratici, l’apatia e la passività dei cittadini nei confronti della politica. Gli approcci di Rosanvallon (2012) e Keane (2009), che contestano la teoria della post democrazia, evidenziano la nascita di nuove forme di partecipazione politica. Questa contestualizzazione consente di introdurre uno dei concetti più innovativi di questa tesi, fortemente critico nei confronti del discorso egemone dell’opinione pubblica: i contropubblici (Negt and Kluge 1979; Fraser 1990). Grazie alla trasformazione democratica e alle nuove tecnologie dell’informazione e della comunicazione, i contropubblici possono mobilitarsi, esprimere le loro opinioni e partecipare alla vita politica (Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1990; Negt and Kluge 1979). Il ruolo emergente dei telefoni cellulari e l’Internet mobile nelle diverse mobilitazioni sociali in tutto il mondo, consente di qualificarli come i principali mezzi di comunicazione alternativi utilizzati dai contropubblici, malgrado i divari digitali ancora presenti nelle società contemporanee (Pearce and Rice 2013; van Dijk 2005; Selwyn 2004)

First-order linkage analysis (Frequently Applied Designs)

First-order linkage analyses (Schulz, 2008) employ individual survey data weighted by aggregated content data and are generally used to investigate media effects on public opinion. In contrast to experiments, their outcomes are highly generalizable since they allow to grasp what kind of content people encounter in a naturalistic setting (Barabas & Jerit, 2009), with which frequency and intensity, and how it triggers a particular reaction, attitude change, knowledge gain or behavior. First-order linkage analyses often employ manual and automated content analysis, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. When using panel data, they are furthermore able to identify within-individual changes in attitudes and behaviors (e.g. Takens et al., 2015).   Field of application/theoretical foundation: Linkage analyses have extensively been used in the fields of political communication and public opinion, EU studies and media and political psychology. Studies that employed first-order linkage analyses are concerned with theories of agenda setting (Erbring et al., 1980), visibility, priming and media attention on public opinion dynamics (e.g. Bos et al., 2011); news media tone (Hopmann et al., 2010), or the impact of exposure to counter-attitudinal views through the media (Matthes, 2012) on voting decisiveness and behavior. Framing studies or studies focusing on journalistic styles have also made extant use of linkage analysis (e.g. Jebril et al., 2013;  Schuck et al., 2014) (see chapter Content Analysis in Mixed Method approaches for a detailed account of uses, applications and advantages of using linkage analyses).   References Barabas, J., & Jerit, J. (2009). Estimating the Causal Effects of Media Coverage on Policy-Specific Knowledge. American Journal of Political Science, 53(1), 73–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00358.x Boomgaarden, H. G., Van Spanje, J., Vliegenthart, R., & De Vreese, C. H. (2011). Covering the crisis: Media coverage of the economic crisis and citizens’ economic expectations. Acta Politica, 46(4), 353–379. Bos, L., Van der Brug, W., & De Vreese, C. (2011). How the media shape perceptions of right-wing populist leaders. Political Communication, 28(2), 182–206. Castro Herrero, L., & Hopmann, D. N. (2017). The Virtue of Moderation: A Cross-National Analysis of Exposure to Cross-Cutting Information and Turnout. International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Castro, L., Nir, L., & Skovsgaard, M. (2018). Bridging Gaps in Cross-Cutting Media Exposure: The Role of Public Service Broadcasting. Political Communication, 1–24. De Vreese, C. H., Boukes, M., Schuck, A., Vliegenthart, R., Bos, L., & Lelkes, Y. (2017). Linking survey and media content data: Opportunities, considerations, and pitfalls. Communication Methods and Measures, 11(4), 221–244. Erbring, L., Goldenberg, E. N., & Miller, A. H. (1980). Front-page news and real-world cues: A new look at agenda-setting by the media. American Journal of Political Science, 16–49. Hopmann, D. N., Vliegenthart, R., De Vreese, C., & Alb\a ek, E. (2010). Effects of election news coverage: How visibility and tone influence party choice. Political Communication, 27(4), 389–405. Jebril, N., Albaek, E., & De Vreese, C. H. (2013). Infotainment, cynicism and democracy: The effects of privatization vs personalization in the news. European Journal of Communication, 28(2), 105–121. Matthes, J. (2012). Exposure to counterattitudinal news coverage and the timing of voting decisions. Communication Research, 39(2), 147–169. Schuck, A. R., Vliegenthart, R., & De Vreese, C. H. (2014). Who’s Afraid of Conflict? The Mobilizing Effect of Conflict Framing in Campaign News. British Journal of Political Science, 1–18. Schulz, W. (2008). Content analyses and public opinion research. The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research, 348–357. Takens, J., Kleinnijenhuis, J., Van Hoof, A., & Van Atteveldt, W. (2015). Party leaders in the media and voting behavior: Priming rather than learning or projection. Political Communication, 32(2), 249–267. Vreese, C. H. D., & Semetko, H. A. (2004). News matters: Influences on the vote in the Danish 2000 euro referendum campaign. European Journal of Political Research, 43(5), 699–722. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0304-4130.2004.00171.x   Table 1. Data matching in first-order linkage analyses Author(s) Relationship of theoretical interest Sample Time frame Content-analytical constructs Linkage strategy Boomgaarden et al., 2011 How exposure to media coverage of the 2008-2009 economic crisis affected expectations regarding the future development of the national economic situation (a) Predictions or expectations about the economic situations provided by articles of nine newspapers and items from 2 news bulletins in the Netherlands in the period between wave 1 and wave 2 of the survey below-mentioned. For w2 to w3, only the front pages of newspapers were coded. (b) 976 respondents of a three-wave panel survey conducted in the Netherlands between November 2008 to February 2009 Nov 2008- Feb 2009 “Expectation, assumption or prediction of the personal economic situation of the Dutch people/the Dutch economy” and whether these are negative, neutral or positive (Boomgaarden et al., 2011, p. 361) (1) Calculation of number of positive and negative economic expectations/assumptions/predictions per outlet (negative (-2), rather negative (-1), balanced (0), rather positive (1), positive (2)) for either the Dutch economy or the Dutch people. Negative evaluations are weighted twice since people tend to select negative information in greater numbers. (2) Each survey respondent’s frequency of use of each outlet is weighted (multiplied) by each outlet’s aggregated score for each relevant content characteristic outlined above, and regressed on people’s actual economic expectations for the country and for themselves. De Vreese et al. 2017 How exposure to economic news (visibility and tone) predicts respondents’ expectations about the state of the national economy in the coming 12 months (a) 1,211 hand-coded articles evaluating the state of the Dutch economy in Dutch national newspapers   (b) Three-wave panel data from a surveyed representative sample of the Dutch population Feb-June 2015 (Negative, neutral or positive) tone towards the Dutch economy (1) The authors construct a variable in a content-analysed dataset measuring a tone scale per news article, ranging from -2 (completely negative) to 2 (completely positive)   (2) Publication recency for each article (how close in time the article was published to when respondents were surveyed) and prominence of each article (operationalized as how long the article was compared to average article length) were used to create weighted measures, in order to test whether more recent and more lengthy evaluative articles had stronger effects on economic perceptions, as compared to an unweighted variable.   (3) Observations at the article level were then aggregated at the wave-outlet level in a new dataset containing information on total number of articles with evaluations of the economy, tone, and the two weighted measures above-mentioned per outlet in each wave.   (4) The linkage was done using the survey dataset. For each individual i in wave w a score of the amount of evaluative news (visibility), the positive, neutral or negative connotation of such news (tone) and the weighed variables (weighted tone by recency and prominence) was calculated for each newspaper they read on a weekly basis. The final computation can be illustrated as follows:   For each individual i and wave w, Where k stands for outlet, =1 if individual i reads outlet k and 0 otherwise, and j denotes article and Nkw is the set of articles with evaluative news published by outlet k in wave w. Yj  can denote one of three possibilities: Above, tj captures tone of an article,  rj captures recency and lj is a measure of article length.   (5) A series of OLS regression analyses were finally performed, with respondents’ expectations on the economy as dependent variable, exposure to media evaluations of the economy (tone), the weighted tone variables and lagged dependent variables as predictors. Castro, Nir & Skovsgaard (2018) How political interest and public service broadcasting strength impact cross-cutting, or counter-attitudinal media exposure; and whether public service media moderates the effect of political interest on cross-cutting exposure (a) 48,983 news stories from three newspapers and two TV news bulletins across 27 EU countries, collected by the European Election Media Study during the June 2009 European election campaign (May 14 to June 4 for some countries, up to May 17 to June 7 for others). Among such stories, 3,390 news evaluations on the national government’s record were identified and used to build the media content component of a cross-cutting media exposure measure.   (b)Self-reported news media exposure and political interest from 27,079 individuals in 27 EU countries surveyed by the European Election Study consortium during the three weeks following the June 2009 European Parliament elections. May-June 2009 Tone toward the national government (positive (1), balanced/mixed (0), negative (–1) (1) A variable that accounts for the extent to which an individual approves (1) or disapproves (– 1) of the government’ s performance to date is built. (2) The mean of each national government’ s positive (1), balanced/mixed (0), or negative (– 1) evaluations found in each media outlet’ s news stories is computed. (3) Cross-cutting exposure is calculated by accounting for the absolute difference between each individual’ s approval of their government and the average degree for each media outlet this individual uses at least once a week, averaged by the number of news media outlets they follow. (4) Random-intercept regression models, using individual exposure to cross-cutting information as the dependent variable, and political interest, public service broadcasting strength (audience share) and an interaction between both as main independent variables, are run. This allows to account for the hierarchical structure of the data by decomposing individual and country-level variances, and also to explain the relationship between cross-cutting news media exposure and political interest, considering contextual interactions (i.e., with public service broadcasting strength).   See Appendix B of the paper for the exact formula and a more detailed account of how scores are calculated for each individual and media outlet

“It’s Complicated”: Facebook and Political Participation in Italy and the UK

Drawing from an extensive and unique data set acquired by combining a cross-national comparative approach and a mixed methods methodology, this thesis examines the contributions of Facebook to citizens' political participation in Italy and the UK. In the last decade there has been a proliferation of academic studies investigating the links between digital technologies and citizens' political participation, with an increasing number of publications focusing on social networking websites (SNSs). Within this specific sub-field, research has produced contrasting evidence. Some scholars stress the positive impact of the Internet and SNSs on political participation (i.e., optimists), while others minimise their mobilising power, emphasising their tendency to reinforce existing participatory trends (i.e., normalisers) or highlighting their limited or even negative influence on political participation (i.e., pessimists). The present research differs from the majority of investigations in this area in three ways. Firstly, the data for this study were gathered mostly in a non-electoral period and thus the contributions of Facebook to citizens' political participation were assessed independently of the electoral process, which usually occasions a rise in political participation. In addition, this research tackled two conceptual weaknesses characterising many Internet and political participation studies: the failure to consider political participation as a multidimensional phenomenon and the over-generalised approach to Internet and SNS usages. It did so by differentiating between political communication and political mobilisation activities, and three Facebook non-political usages, i.e., information, interpersonal communication, and social recreation. Thirdly, in response to the lack of cross-national comparative studies in this subject area, the contributions of Facebook to citizens' political participation were examined in the different contexts of Italy and the United Kingdom. This thesis makes four main contributions to the field of political communication, and more specifically to the strand of research examining the impact of digital technologies on political participation. The first contribution is the Particularised Model of Facebook Political Participation. The model identifies a number of factors mediating the links between Facebook and political participation, demonstrating the relevance of both external, context-related factors related to the British and Italian media and political landscapes, and more personal, subjective ones such as self-presentation, pre-existing levels of political engagement, and the nature and size of the Facebook network. Secondly, this study sheds light on the ways that Facebook functions as a political platform, establishing that dynamics typical of both new and traditional media are in action on this SNS, and that Facebook holds the capacity to activate a virtuous circle, thereby generating an information-led mobilisation. The third contribution is the Dual Routes of Exposure Model which offers clarification on the alleged tendency of digital technologies to promote selective exposure and, consequently, political fragmentation and polarisation, and shows that Facebook can operate as a potential antidote to such trends. The fourth contribution is to the polarised debate between optimists, normalisers, and pessimist, with the present research further highlighting the sterility of such a debate and indicating potentially fruitful approaches for the development of the field.sub_mcpasubmitted2953_ethesessubmitte