Digital media, power, and democracy in parties and election campaigns: Party decline or party renewal?

The role of digital media practices in reshaping political parties and election campaigns is driven by a tension between control and interactivity but the overall outcome for the party organizational form is highly uncertain. Recent evidence contradicts scholarship on the so-called “death” of parties and suggests instead that parties may be going through a long-term process of adaptation to postmaterial political culture. We sketch out a conceptual approach for understanding this process, which we argue is being shaped by interactions between the organizations, norms, and rules of electoral politics; postmaterial attitudes toward political engagement; and the affordances and uses of digital media. Digital media foster cultures of organizational experimentation and a party-as-movement mentality that enable many to reject norms of hierarchical discipline and habitual partisan loyalty. This context readily accommodates populist appeals and angry protest—on the right as well as the left. Substantial publics now see election campaigns as another opportunity for personalized and contentious political expression. As a result, we speculate that parties are being renewed from the outside in as digitally-enabled citizens breathe new life into an old form by (partly) remaking it in their own participatory image. Particularly on the left, the overall outcome might prove more positive for democratic engagement and the decentralization of political power than many have assumed

Citizen Deliberation Online

Political conversation is at the heart of democratic societies, and it is an important precursor of political engagement. As society has become intertwined with the communication infrastructure of the Internet, we need to understand its uses and the implications of those uses for democracy. This chapter provides an overview of the core topics of scholarly concern around online citizen deliberation, focusing on three key areas of research: the standards of quality of communication and the normative stance on citizen deliberation online; the impact and importance of digital platforms in structuring political talk; and the differences between formal and informal political talk spaces. After providing a critical review of these three major areas of research, we outline directions for future research on online citizen deliberation.</p

Converging Technologies; Information Systems and Communication Studies:A Story of Separation and Reunion

We contrast assumptions of communications theorizing with those underlying information systems to emphasize that the convergence inherent in contemporary ecosystems of digital technologies, online services and the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICT) are bringing scholars from these two intellectual communities together while challenging their understanding of one-another’s scholarship. It is no wonder that the theory has been claimed and called both “Theory of Information” and at the same time by some, “Theory of Communication” by others. We look at that difference from man perspective and draw the boundary between two communities. We believe the new emerging technologies have brought back both theories a back together; which we label and discuss as a reunion. We bring few examples to support our story. In short, this paper is the story of birth of two fields of studies from one theory, their separation over many decades and recent reunion of them with rise of new digital technologies.ye

Context and Medium Matter: Expressing Disagreements Online and Face-to-Face in Political Deliberations

Processes of disagreement are important to public deliberation, but research has not examined the dynamics of disagreement in deliberation of political topics with respect to effects of the channel of interaction. This study analyzes the discussions generated via an experiment in which discussants were randomly assigned either to deliberate online via synchronous chat or face-to-face. The study compares the initiation of disagreement, its qualities, and how long it is sustained in the two environments. Discourse analysis suggests that in the online environment initial expressions of disagreement were less frequent, less bold, and were not sustained as compared with the face-to-face discussions. Reasons include the lack of coherence in synchronous chat, which may challenge interlocutors and prevent them from pursuing a disagreement over multiple turns. Implications of these findings for scholars and practitioners are discussed

More than “Fake News”?

Abstract While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on several themes, including castigating them for malicious gatekeeping, for being out of touch with the views of the public, and for being a bully. Only Trump routinely attacks the news media for trafficking in falsehoods and for colluding with other interests to attack his candidacy. Our findings highlight the ways that candidates instrumentalize the news media for their own rhetorical purposes; further constructing the news media as harmful to democracy.</jats:p

Dysfunctional Information Sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook: The Role of Political Talk, Cross-Cutting Exposure and Social Corrections

In this study, we investigate dysfunctional information sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook, focusing on two explanatory variables—frequency of political talk and cross-cutting exposure—and potential remedies, such as witnessing, experiencing, and performing social corrections. Results suggest that dysfunctional sharing is pervasive, with nearly a quarter reporting sharing misinformation on Facebook and WhatsApp, but social corrections also occur relatively frequently. Platform matters, with corrections being more likely to be experienced or expressed on WhatsApp than Facebook. Taken together, our results suggest that the intimate nature of WhatsApp communication has important consequences for the dynamics of misinformation sharing, particularly with regard to facilitating social corrections

Social Media, Opinion Polls, and the Use of Persuasive Messages During the 2016 US Election Primaries

Political campaigns’ use of digital technologies has been a topic of scholarly concern for over two decades, but most studies have been focused on analyzing the use of digital platforms without considering contextual factors of the race, like public opinion polls. Opinion polls are an important information source for citizens and candidates and provide the latter with information that might drive strategic communication. In this article, we explore the relationship between the use of social media in the 2016 US presidential elections and candidates’ standing in public opinion polls, focusing on the surfacing and primary stages of the campaign. We use automated content analysis to categorize social media posts from all 21 Republican and Democratic candidates. Results indicate that a candidate’s performance in the polls drives certain communicative strategies, such as the use of messages of attacks and advocacy, as well as the focus on personal image

A circulação da (des)informação política no WhatsApp e no Facebook

As eleições de 2018 no Brasil colocaram em destaque a circulação de informação política e os impactos da desinformação na formação da opinião pública. O declínio da confiança nas notícias veiculadas pela grande mídia foi terreno fértil para o aumento das fake news, que atuaram fortemente na produção de conteúdos sobre as campanhas. Nesse contexto, também chamou a atenção a utilização dos sites de redes sociais (SRSs) e o serviço móvel de mensagens instantâneas WhatsApp como espaço de formação de preferências, de pequenos comitês de campanha e de polarização ideológica. Neste artigo, examinamos as dinâmicas da apropriação política do WhatsApp, em comparação com o Facebook, com foco nas relações entre a desinformação e a formação da opinião pública sobre a política, tendo em vista o cenário eleitoral de 2018 e suas reverberações pós-eleitorais. Nos interessou observar os hábitos de consumo das mídias sociais e o grau de exposição às notícias falsas, bem como compreender a frequência e a intencionalidade de compartilhamento de fake news pelos usuários. Para tanto, utilizamos dados da pesquisa nacional "WhatsApp como fonte de engajamento político e (des)informação no Brasil" (N = 1.615).</jats:p