Countries with less government interference in the media have higher levels of voter knowledge

A media free from government interference is one of the key components of a democratic society, with state interference in what is and isn’t printed and broadcast used to exemplify the lack of freedoms enjoyed by many countries. Martijn Schoonvelde argues that it is also a pre-requisite for greater understanding of the political and democratic systems

Undermining, defusing or defending European integration? Assessing public communication of European executives in times of EU politicisation

How do mainstream political executives cue their politicised constituencies on European integration? Moving beyond static expectations that EU politicisation induces executives to either undermine, defuse or defend integration, this article theorises executives’ incentives under different configurations of public and partisan Euroscepticism in their home countries. Expectations are tested on the sentiment and complexity that executives attach to European integration in almost 9,000 public speeches delivered throughout the Euro Crisis. It is found that national leaders faced with sceptical public opinion and low levels of partisan Euroscepticism rhetorically undermine integration, whereas European Commissioners faced with similar conditions are prone to defend it. These responses intensify disproportionally with growing public Euroscepticism, but are moderated by Eurosceptic party strength in surprising ways. When such challenger parties come closer to absorbing the Eurosceptic potential in public opinion, executive communication turns more positive again but also involves less clear rhetorical signals. These findings move beyond existing uniform expectations on mainstream responses to Eurosceptic challenges and highlight the relevance of different domestic configurations of EU politicisation

Studying media events in the European social surveys across research designs, countries, time, issues, and outcomes

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave via the DOI in this record.Scholars often study isolated media effects using one method at one time point in one country. We seek to generalise the research in this area by examining hundreds of press-worthy events across dozens of countries at various points in time with an array of techniques and outcome measures. In particular, we merge a database containing thousands of events with five waves of the European Social Survey to conduct analyses across countries and individuals as well as within countries and for specific respondents. The results suggest that there is an impressive degree of heterogeneity when it comes to how citizens react to political developments. Some events generate significant opinion changes when groups of individuals who are 'treated' are compared with 'control' cases. However, other events produce modest or even null findings with methods that employ different counterfactuals. Thus, findings of both strong and weak media effects that scholars have uncovered over the years could be a function of methodological choices as well as context-specific factors such as institutional arrangements, media systems, eras, or event characteristics. Data limitations also make some research designs possible while they preclude others. We conclude with advice for others who wish to study political events in this manner as well as discussion of media effects, broadly construed

Manipulated vs. measured: Using an experimental benchmark to investigate the performance of self-reported media exposure

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Media exposure is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences, and yet scholars have struggled with how to operationalize it for decades. Some researchers have focused on the effects of variously worded self-report measures. Others advocate the use of aggregate and/or behavioral data that does not rely on a person’s ability to accurately recall exposure. The present study introduces the prototype of an experimental design that can be used to improve measures of exposure. In particular, we show how an experimental benchmark can be employed to (1) compare actual (i.e., manipulated) and self-reported values of news exposure; (2) assess how closely the self-reported measures approximates the performance of “true” exposure in an empirical application, and (3) leverage the experimental benchmark to investigate whether a variation in question wording improves the accuracy of self-reported exposure measures

Diagnosing Gender Bias in Image Recognition Systems

Image recognition systems offer the promise to learn from images at scale without requiring expert knowledge. However, past research suggests that machine learning systems often produce biased output. In this article, we evaluate potential gender biases of commercial image recognition platforms using photographs of U.S. members of Congress and a large number of Twitter images posted by these politicians. Our crowdsourced validation shows that commercial image recognition systems can produce labels that are correct and biased at the same time as they selectively report a subset of many possible true labels. We find that images of women received three times more annotations related to physical appearance. Moreover, women in images are recognized at substantially lower rates in comparison with men. We discuss how encoded biases such as these affect the visibility of women, reinforce harmful gender stereotypes, and limit the validity of the insights that can be gathered from such data

The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative: Investigating Immigration and Social Policy Preferences. Executive Report.

In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of selective model reporting and lack of replicability. The heterogeneity of countries obscures attempts to clearly define data-generating models. P-hacking and HARKing lurk among standard research practices in this area.This project employs crowdsourcing to address these issues. It draws on replication, deliberation, meta-analysis and harnessing the power of many minds at once. The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative carries two main goals, (a) to better investigate the linkage between immigration and social policy preferences across countries, and (b) to develop crowdsourcing as a social science method. The Executive Report provides short reviews of the area of social policy preferences and immigration, and the methods and impetus behind crowdsourcing plus a description of the entire project. Three main areas of findings will appear in three papers, that are registered as PAPs or in process

Media systems and voter knowledge : an agent-based model

This paper presents an agent-based model explaining voter knowledge in the context of electoral competition. It shows that a set of simple behavioral rules implemented by voters, parties and media outlets generates novel (and testable) predictions regarding the mass-mediated underpinnings of aggregated voter knowledge and party representativeness. More specifically, it finds that increasing competition among media outlets has a positive effect on the political knowledge of the electorate at large. It also finds that increasing media competition leads to parties that are more accountable to the median voter, but only when voters care about the quality of the news alone

The effect of perceived similarity and behavioral options on automatic behavior

Behavioral priming effects have been well established in past research. More recent studies have investigated factors that moderate behavioral priming effects such as social comparison processes, individual goal states and environmental features. In spite of this research, however, the boundary conditions of behavioral priming effects remain unclear. In the present study we investigated these boundary conditions by examining the interplay between behavioral priming, multiple behavioral options and perceived similarity with the primed category. To this extent, we primed participants with both hooligans and nerds and manipulated their perceived similarity with these categories. We then asked participants to take a general knowledge test. Results showed that participants who were primed with hooligans performed better on science and nature questions than participants who were primed with nerds. Furthermore, we found that participants’ performance on a general knowledge test was enhanced by increased elaboration on similarities with hooligans

Replication Data for: Media Freedom and the Institutional Underpinnings of Political Knowledge

Data and script to replicate findings in "Media Freedom and the Institutional Underpinnings of Political Knowledge