Political Communication 2018 Abstracts
Contesting the “bad hombres” narrative: How U.S. and Mexican presidents shape migrants’ media image • Vanessa Bravo, Elon University; Maria De Moya, DePaul University • During the candidacy and following the election of U.S. president Donald Trump, there was an emphasis on framing the Mexican immigrant as a criminal and on building a wall between the United States and Mexico. This narrative revived the debate on the treatment of immigrants and immigration in cross-national media. Within this context, this study analyzes the construction of the image of the Mexican migrant to the United States by both President Enrique Peña Nieto and President Donald Trump during the first 100 days of the latter’s presidency, through news stories published in two U.S newspapers and two Mexican newspapers. Findings show that news stories describe Mexican migrants in contrasting ways, ranging from criminals (in the U.S. framing) to good migrants (in the Mexican efforts), and both frames are picked up by the transnational media, hindering long-standing public diplomacy efforts in both countries.
Partisanship and the Reaction to Sexual Harassment Allegations: An Experimental Examination of Political Image Repair • Jonathan Graffeo, The University of Alabama; Ethan Stokes, University of Alabama; Kenon Brown, The University of Alabama; Stephen Rush, The University of Alabama • This study addresses how an individual’s partisanship impacts his or her opinions in cases of sexual harassment allegations specifically in the U.S. political context. Specifically, a between-subjects, double blind experiment was conducted among 292 participants to explore how partisanship, particularly in terms of ideology and preferred political media consumption, impacts the effectiveness of certain image repair strategies used by politicians facing sexual harassment allegations. Using Benoit’s (1995) typology, findings show that overall, participants accepted a politician’s response more when he uses the denial or mortification strategies rather than the attacking the accuser strategy. Also, findings show that while participants on both ends of the political spectrum viewed politicians with their same ideology more favorably than politicians with opposing ideologies, right-leaning participants overall viewed politicians facing sexual harassment allegations more favorably than left-leaning participants, regardless of political affiliation.
Manifestations of Authoritarianism in 2016 U.S. Primaries: Factors Triggering Innate and Latent Authoritarian Tendenceis • Nicholas Browning, Indiana University • While authoritarianism played a significant role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it was more nuanced. Findings based on original survey research fielded during the Super Tuesday primaries indicate latent authoritarianism manifested as increased deference to institutional authority. Support for Republican candidates was closely aligned with deference to financial, corporate, and religious authorities. Support for Democratic candidates was strongest among those who deferred to the authority of government, science, and the press.
Where Independents are getting news? Beyond partisan media and polarization • Hyesun Choung; Ayellet Pelled, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Yin Wu; Song Wang; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although the number of Independents has steadily risen, there hasn’t been much effort to construct a systematic characterization of Independent voters and their media consumption patterns. This study attempts to create a typology of political Independents in the context of 2016 Presidential election and examines how different groups of Independents engage with different news sources in the fragmented media environment. Our result reports four types of Independent groups, two anti-establishment clusters and two moderate clusters. We also find considerable evidence that certain Independent cluster engage in partisan-like news viewership while others prefer centrist media outlets.
Identifying the Motivations of Political Donors using Social Media Data • Ross Dahlke, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The 2016 election showed that online, small-dollar donors can impact political campaigns. My research asks: What motivates political donors in Wisconsin state-legislative elections? My analysis finds a link between candidates discussing certain issues online and donations from specific donor communities. However, donor communities are found to be connected by geography more than to specific policy issues. More broadly, this research shows that geography should play a greater role in the study of political communications.
They’re Not ‘Just’ Words: The Verbal Style of U.S. Presidential Debates • David Painter; Juliana Fernandes • This longitudinal content analysis investigated the effects of election level, candidate partisanship, and decade on the 563 U.S. presidential candidates’ verbal style in 138 televised debates. Results indicate general election rhetoric contains more optimism, certainty, and realism than primary election rhetoric; Democratic’s rhetoric contains more commonality than Republican’s rhetoric; and there is less certainty in debate rhetoric from the 2000s and 2010s than from the 1960s and 1970s. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Social capital, civic engagement and identity: Exploring a model for political talk on Facebook • Toby Hopp, University of Colorado Boulder; Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder; Chris Vargo, U of Colorado Boulder • Using a method incorporating both survey and trace data measures and the framework of social identity theory, this study presents a model for understanding political talk on Facebook. It found substantial and statistically significant relationships between offline civic engagement, bonded social capital, and political attitude extremity. It also identifies a substantive relationship between civic engagement, social capital and political talk on Facebook. Specifically, online civic engagement was robustly associated with political content generation on Facebook.
The (non)Americans: Analyzing Russian Disinformation on Twitter • Deen Freelon, UNC-Chapel Hill; Michael Bossetta; Chris Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kirsten Adams; Yiping Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Disinformation has been wielded by state- and non-state actors for millennia, yet it has rarely been the object of political communication research. We analyze nearly 200,000 tweets by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a disinformation operation funded by the Russian government. We find that 1) the IRA favored a small set of divergent political identities; 2) their tweets were not all political; and 3) Black activist and Trump-supporting messages spread farthest.
Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves: Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Hybrid Media Campaign • Katherine Haenschen, Virginia Tech University • Hillary Clinton ran a hybrid media campaign in her 2016 pursuit of the presidency, grounded in outreach to digital outlets influential with youth, women, communities of color, and LGBT Americans. Yet to date, this extensive effort by the campaign has been largely overlooked. Chadwick’s (2017) theoretical framework of the hybrid media system emphasizes the ways in which “old” and “new” media interact, how information flows in strategic ways, and how actors in this system are adaptive and interdependent. Interviews with campaign staff and an analysis of 16 outreach efforts by the campaign illustrate the way in which her efforts fit this theorization. This paper argues for the categorization of Clinton’s 2016 effort as a hybrid media campaign, based on its blurring of distinctions within the campaign structure, emphasis on reaching niche audiences online regardless of platform, and manner in which digital sharing enabled strategic information flows.
A Citizen-Based Profile of Fake News Dissemination on Facebook • Toby Hopp, University of Colorado Boulder; Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder; Chris Vargo, U of Colorado Boulder • This study explored the relationship between dissemination of fake news on Facebook and citizen behaviors, beliefs, and resources. A novel method that melded survey-based self-report data and trace data was employed. The results suggested that fake news sharing on Facebook was highest among those with low levels of bonded social capital, those with low levels of media trust, those with extreme political attitudes, and those who use the Internet for civic purposes.
Speaking in a woman’s name: Gender difference of political expressive participation on Twitter • Lingshu Hu, Missouri School of Journalism; Mike Kearney • This study examined gender difference of expressive participation in 9 political topics on Twitter. Through analyzing over 3 million tweets data, this study found that, although the number of women in political discussion is not dramatically smaller than men, their behaviors in sending original tweets, retweeting, quoting and replying are different from men, indicating that women might lack political confidence or sense a higher level of hostility when participating in political discussions on Twitter.
Debatable sphere: major party hegemony, minor party marginalization in the UK Leaders’ debate • Ceri Hughes, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The United Kingdom political landscape has historically been dominated by the two main political parties; Labour and the Conservatives. For much of the twentieth century these parties would share 80+% of the vote in general elections. However, by the 2010 General Election their share had dropped to 65%. The 2010 election also saw a new development enter the UK political landscape – televised leaders’ debates, which featured the leaders of the three largest political parties. Discussions before the 2015 General Election resulted in a decision to repeat the debate experiment, but this time, partly due to changes in projected vote shares, seven leaders were invited to the main debate. Using content analysis of the debate and subsequent media coverage, this research questions the presentation of the debate as an equal platform for all participants. Analysis illustrates the dominance of major party leaders and questions the efficacy of multi-party debates in a limited-party political structure.
Campaign Strategies on Twitter in 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Real-time Event, Negativity, and Online Engagement • Daud Isa; Qin Li, Washington State university; Meredith Wang, Washington State University; Porismita Borah; Itai Himelboim • This study examines Twitter posts of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates to understand their campaign strategies in 2016 election. All data – posts and engagement metrics – between September 5 and November 8, 2016 were collected. Results show Hillary Clinton focused mainly on mobilization while Donald Trump focused more on fundraising and real-time events. Furthermore, while Clinton posted more tweets, including more negative tweets than Trump, the latter was more successful eliciting engagement using negative content.
Discursively Empowered and Distrustful: The Impact of the Taxpayer Framing on Political Trust • Volha Kananovich • This study experimentally tests (N=207) if various ways to construct tax-related discourse, by portraying the taxpayer as either a subordinate to the state or an equal partner to whom the government is accountable, can influence the level of citizens’ political trust. The findings show that the “taxpayer-as-an-equal-partner” rhetoric can boost citizens’ trust, but this effect is limited to individuals with no direct taxpaying experience and those with lower perceptions of tax contribution to government revenues.
Press and U.S. Policy toward Iran: Studying The New York Times, Washington Post and Nuclear Negotiations • Mehdi Semati, Northern Illinois University; Bill Cassidy, Northern Illinois University; Mehrnaz Khanjani, University of Iowa • This research examines the press coverage of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West, applying “indexing” theory. Results present evidence of indexing, showing Iran deal coverage in coverage of The New York Times and Washington Post reflected official views within a framework of institutional debates among congressional leaders and the executive branch sources. The coverage indexed both consensus among the officials within the executive branch and the congressional opposition during different time periods studied.
From Information Reception to Political Learning on Social Media: Advancing the Interaction Mediation Model • Dam Hee Kim, University of Michigan; Brian Weeks, University of Michigan; Daniel Lane, University of Michigan; Lauren B Potts, University of Michigan; Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan • Despite social media’s potential as a resource for political learning, exposure to political content on social media does not promote significant gains in political knowledge. By applying the communication mediation model on social media, we advance the interaction mediation model of political learning. Analyses of a two-wave national online survey prior to the 2016 Presidential election suggest that political interactions on Facebook, particularly sharing and commenting on content, following information reception, promote political knowledge gain.
Please Mind the Platform Gap: How Online News Source Impacts Civic and Political Engagement • Nuri Kim, NTU Singapore; Andrew Duffy, NTU; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Rich Ling; Alice Huang, NTU Singapore • Online news platforms have often been grouped together in scholarly thought. Yet each one delivers news in a distinctive way, which merits closer consideration as each will have a distinctive impact on civic and political engagement. This paper considers the use of different online news platforms, from legacy news organizations apps to instant messaging services, to Facebook and YouTube. Based on a survey of over 2,500 Singaporeans, it finds differential effects of news platforms on civic and political participation. We also report that the significant effects were largely mediated by expressive participation online and, to a lesser degree, further information search behaviors.
Peers versus Pros: Confirmation Bias in Selective Exposure to User-Generated versus Mass Media Messages • Axel Westerwick; Daniel Sude, The Ohio State University; Melissa Robinson; Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick • News is now commonly consumed embedded in user-generated content and social media. This experiment tested competing hypotheses on whether selective exposure to attitude-consistent versus -discrepant political messages (confirmation bias) differs in such computer-mediated interpersonal (CMI) contexts from mass communication contexts, through observational data and multi-level modeling. An overarching confirmation bias was differentiated in that attitude importance fostered it only in the CMI condition. The more social media users care the more they prefer attitude-consistent content.
Correcting misinformation at the local level? Potential for local media’s fact-checking on local issues • Jianing Li • This paper examines the potential for local fact checkers, the “invisible half” of the U.S. fact-checking ecosystem. The findings suggest that local media attracts significantly more attention than national media when fact checking a local issue, while having a disadvantage when fact checking a national issue. The findings offer important implications for local journalists to play a distinct role in the fact-checking industry, and call for an expanded model of group-based processing of corrective information.
Zero Day Twitter: How Russian Propaganda Infiltrated the U.S. Hybrid Media System • Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jiyoun Suk, UW Madison; Yini Zhang, University of Wisconsin Madison; Larisa Doroshenko, University of Wisconsin Madison; Min-Hsin Su, University of Wisconsin Madison; Sang Jung Kim; Yiping Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Chris Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Russia’s Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) use of social media to influence American political discussion has received considerable attention. Most observers’ focus on the social media space, however, overlooks the role that American news media played in distributing IRA content. In this article, we build on studies documenting the appearance of IRA messages in American news media, with three aims. First, we provide an expanded view of the journalistic context in which the infiltration occurred, taking into account the economic, temporal, political, and media ecological realities in which news organizations now operate. Second, we expand on existing analyses and provide a more rigorous assessment of the evidence, which offers an opportunity to explore the use of social media by news organizations, and the ways in which contemporary uses expose news media to potential manipulation. Our results reveal that certain types of practices by news organizations made them susceptible to disinformation, and that news organizations that engaged in those practices more were most affected by the IRA campaign.
Likeminded and Cross-Cutting Talk, Network Characteristics, and Political Participation Online- and Offline: A Panel Study • Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; Franziska Marquart, University of Amsterdam; Christian von Sikorski • This study tests the role of likeminded and cross-cutting political discussion as a facilitator of online and offline political participation and examines the role of strong versus weak network ties. Most prior research on the topic has employed cross-sectional designs that may lead to spurious relationships due to the lack of controlled variables, and therefore overestimate potential effects of cross-cutting and likeminded discussions. In order to address this concern, we conducted a two-wave panel survey controlling the autoregressive effects of participation. Our findings suggest that cross-cutting talk with weak ties significantly dampens online, but not offline political participation. However, no such effects were detectable for cross-cutting talk with strong network ties. In addition, we found no effect of discussions with likeminded individuals in either weak or strong network connections on online and offline forms of political engagement. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Examining How Moral Emotions Mediate the Effects of Partisan Media Consumption on Pro-Immigration Policy Support • Rachel Neo • The immigration debate has received considerable partisan media attention. However, little research has examined how partisan media influence support for pro-immigration policies. Using a representative online survey (N= 525), I examine whether partisan media elicit moral emotions prompting people to advance immigrant welfare. Findings show that regardless of partisan affiliation, liberal media indirectly increase support for pro-immigration policies via moral outrage toward the Trump administration and empathy toward immigrants, with conservative media having opposite effects.
“Fake News Effect?” False Beliefs and Vote Choice in the 2016 Presidential Election • erik nisbet; Kelly Garrett; Paul Beck; Richard Gunther • Electoral disinformation, or “fake news,” was widespread during the 2016 election, yet to date, no study has directly examined the impact that endorsement of disinformation had on voter behavior. Analyzing two surveys independently conducted during and after the election, we hypothesize that endorsement of electoral disinformation will significantly increase the likelihood of voting for Donald Trump independent of other predictors of the vote. Our analysis supports this hypothesis with endorsement of electoral disinformation almost doubling the odds in both surveys of voting for Trump above and beyond the impact of partisanship, issue preferences and candidate favorability. The findings of the second study are especially compelling as they can address the issue of causal direction based on a fixed-effects model analyzing three waves of survey panel data collected before and after the election campaign. Our study highlights the vulnerability of our core democratic decision-making processes to disinformation spread by either domestic or foreign actors.
Young Adults, Passive and Active Forms of News Use on Social Media, and Political Engagement • Chang Sup Park, University at Albany, SUNY; Masahiro Yamamoto • Social media users not only access news but also evaluate, combine, and restructure news. This study conceptualizes such news use via social media as news curation. Drawing on a survey of 900 South Korean young adults, the present study finds that social media news curation is positively associated with political efficacy and offline and online political participation. Social media news curation moderates the relationship between social media news use and political efficacy and political participation.
Spoofing presidential hopefuls: The roles of affective disposition, emotions, and intertextuality in prompting the social transmission of debate parody • Jason Peifer; Kristen Landreville, University of Wyoming • This study explores factors that contribute to the diffusion of political humor, employing the conceptual lenses of affective disposition, discrete emotions, and intertextuality. Participants (N = 236) were exposed to an SNL debate parody featuring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Moderated mediation analyses indicate that both feelings of favorability toward Clinton and unfavorability toward Trump indirectly influenced a willingness to share the humor, as variously mediated by mirth and hope and moderated by political engagement.
“Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” and the “Dishonest” Media: Trump’s Use of Twitter to Attack and Amplify his Press Coverage • Ayellet Pelled, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison; JUNGHWAN YANG; Fred Boehm; Dhavan Shah • “The use of Twitter by Donald Trump, and the amplification of his voice in the form of retweets, has been demonstrated to be one of the most consistent and powerful predictors of Trump’s news coverage, suggesting that he was able to leverage his interactions on social media into earned media attention worth billions of dollars (Patterson, 2016b; Wells et al., 2016).
In the present study, we analyze a unique dataset of 313,047 retweets of Trump’s original tweets during his presidential campaign (a 1% sample). We implement multiple linguistic analysis methods in two stages. First, we conduct natural language processing using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). This topic modeling is followed by computerized text analysis of selected topics using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2015) system, to gauge the psychological meaning of word choice along multiple dimensions, and Diction 7.0, to assess the tonal qualities of word choice in terms of certainty, activity, optimism, realism, and commonality. We find that a main focus of Trump’s messages is to target “enemies,” employing terms of conflict and intergroup differentiation. Three main targets emerged in his followers’ retweets: Ted Cruz (“Lyin’ Ted”), Hillary Clinton (“Crooked Hillary”), and “”the media,”” which Trump refers to as biased and dishonest.
We examine the trends and linguistic characteristics of each topic, noting fluctuations in relation to campaign events and the psychological and tonal characteristics. We conclude by considering how this pattern of amplified attacks propelled Trump’s campaign and drove his attention in the press.”
The Will of the People? Effects of Subjective References to Public Opinion by Politicians • Christina Peter, University of Vienna • Subjective references to public opinion are the most common public opinion cue in the news media and are used especially by populist politicians as a communication strategy to appeal to voters. These subjective references are not based on polling data and may even be in contrast to those. Yet, there is little research on how effective this communication strategy actually is. In the present study, we looked at effects of subjective references to public opinion by politicians on their evaluation and on people’s perception of public opinion. In addition, we tested whether this communication strategy resonates especially well with people already holding populist attitudes. In a 2×4-experiment, we could show that the use of subjective references by a politician strongly shaped public opinion perceptions, but did not necessarily increase his evaluation. Effects occurred regardless of populist attitudes.
Banned: How Discriminatory Policy Heightens U.S. Muslims’ Identity Centrality and In-Group Preferences • Annisa Meirita Rochadiat, Wayne State University; Elizabeth Stoycheff, Wayne State University • Using identity process theory and a unique natural experiment, we investigate how anti-Muslim social media messages and nativist policy (Executive Order 13769 aka the ‘Travel Ban’) activates U.S. Muslims’ religious identities and in-group priorities. We find that nativist policy, but not anti-Muslim messaging, heightens religious identities, which produces a significant shift toward in-group preferences and away from national security priorities. Political implications are discussed.
Unpacking Fake News: Understanding Partisan Consumption of Fake News During the 2016 US Presidential Election • Ken Rogerson; Christopher Hill • News bias and distortion is not new. Its most recent iteration, which we call “fake news,” coupled with social media distribution networks, became a prominent element during the 2016 presidential election. While it is valuable to understand what fake news is, it is more important to explore its impact. What differences exist between the ways that conservatives and liberals disseminated and consumed fake news during the 2016 presidential election? Analyzing a dataset of fake news articles, we categorize their level of deception and evaluate the extent to which partisans find salience in them. While we find that liberal and conservative fake news were equally false, the critical difference lies in the complexity, professionalism, and quantity with which conservative fake news was produced. These disparities suggest a more concerted and successful effort among conservatives or producers of pro-Trump fake news to effectively spread misinformation.
Social Media for Political Campaigns: An Examination of Donald Trump’s Frame Building and its Effect on Audience Engagement • Abdulsamad Sahly, Arizona State University; K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University; CHUN SHAO, Arizona State University • “Abstract
This study examined frame building and frame effects on Twitter and Facebook for the GOP 2016 presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. From his official nomination leading up to Election Day, we analyzed the content of 1,281 tweets and 313 Facebook posts from Trump’s official social media accounts. We examined how messages were framed and how that framing affected audience engagement on Twitter and Facebook. The results showed that conflict, human interest, and morality were the dominant frames on both platforms. The study also found that the conflict, morality, and loss frames affected people’s retweeting and favoriting behaviors on Twitter and sharing behaviors on Facebook. The attribution of responsibility affected retweeting and favoriting behaviors on Twitter and commenting behaviors on Facebook. The human interest frame affected retweeting and favoriting behaviors on Twitter, but not on Facebook. This study expands the scholarship of political social media campaigns by applying framing theory to understand the presidential candidate’s social media strategies.”
“Nothing that I did was wrong:” Image repair and the Hillary Clinton email controversy • Miles Sari, Washington State University • Using image repair theory, this rhetorical criticism analyzes Hillary Clinton’s response to her email scandal during the 2016 election. This study finds that Clinton relied heavily on denial strategies, attempted to reduce the perceived offensiveness of her actions, and focused on hindsight corrective measures. This paper concludes that Clinton’s response to the email scandal was ineffective, because she refused to admit any wrongdoing and her attempts at mortification were largely qualified attempts to evade responsibility.
Should the Media Be More or Less Powerful in Politics? Individual and Contextual Explanations for Politicians and Journalists • Sebastian Scherr, University of Leuven; Philip Baugut, University of Munich (LMU) • The normative question regarding whether the media should have more or less impact on politics, as viewed by politicians and journalists, has gained only little attention, despite the large body of research on mediatization. The present study is the first that combines individual and structural factors that explain political actors’ and journalists’ normative views on the media’s influence on politics. Based on a conceptualization of political communication cultures, representative micro-level survey data from more than 600 political actors and journalists within 52 German cities were combined with macro-level indicators for the political and media competition in each city. Multilevel analyses show that interactions between the actors’ characteristics and their competitive working conditions help explain their normative evaluations of the media’s influence on politics. However, individual characteristics such as actors’ role conceptions influence normative views more so than media and political competition do.
Muslims’ Responses to Terrorism News: Perceived Journalistic Quality, Discrimination, and Attitudes toward the Majority Population • Desiree Schmuck; Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; Christian von Sikorski; Mona Rahmanian; Beril Bulat • Across two experimental studies, we explored Muslim news consumers’ responses to news coverage of terrorist attacks committed by members of the Islamic State (IS) depending on news differentiation (i.e., explicitly distinguishing between Muslims and IS terrorists) and the terrorist attack’s proximity. Results indicated that Muslims evaluated the journalistic quality of differentiated compared to undifferentiated news reports higher irrespective of the terrorist attack’s proximity, which decreased perceived discrimination and negative attitudes toward the non-Muslim majority population.
“In Spite Of” and “Alongside”: Disillusion and Success in Advocacy Communication for the Roma • Adina Schneeweis • This article examines advocacy communication as experienced by activists themselves. Grounded in the case of Romanian activism for Roma rights, the study reveals discursive practices of disillusion (in connection typically to large-scale fissures in socio-cultural, politico-economic systems) and success (evident primarily at a micro-level, in the lives of individual people, and in hyper-localized action). The findings suggest the vision of activism and the funding system need to be mindful of such reality, and adjust accordingly.
Media Quality and Democracy: Claims and Reality—a Cross-Media Study • Maren Beaufort, Austrian Academy of Sciences; Josef Seethaler, Austrian Academy of Sciences • The study explores new paths in media quality research by using the first representative, cross-media investigation of daily news in 36 Austrian media outlets as an example. Based on the assumption that the quality of media reporting is inseparably tied to the quality of a democracy, but has to be understood in relation to changing notions of what democracy means, the content analytical design operationalizes a liberal-representative, a deliberative, and a participatory understanding of democracy. Results reveal four clusters of media outlets, whose reporting can be linked to these different conceptions of democracy, sometimes in a mixed manner.
Evolution and Issue Ownership of the issue of digital privacy • Ashik Shafi, Wiley College • Ownership of political issues are used as a framing technique in political public relations. Political parties attach neutral issues with the issues the public perceives the parties to own. This project investigated ownership of the issue of digital privacy in US senator’s tweets since June 2013, when the news of NSA surveillance broke out. Findings reveal absence of issue ownership in the Tweets, and evidence of issue trespassing. Republican senators referred to nearly equal amount of self-owned and opposition owned issues, whereas Democrats referred more to opposition-owned issues than self-owned. The findings suggest senators are less likely to frame issues without moral dimensions as owned issue on Twitter. Rather, the senators tend to show attachment and involvement with those issues as a way to self-promote.
Donald Trump in Visual Dimension: Content Analysis of Cross-National Intermedia Agenda Setting • Tarasevich Sofiya, 1988; Liudmila Khalitova, University of Florida; OSAMA ALBISHRI, University of Florida; Spiro Kiousis, University of Florida; Barbara Myslik • This study analyzes the visual framing of Donald Trump’s image in the international media during the 2016 presidential campaign in the context of intermedia agenda setting. As emotion recognition software was used in the coding process, it expands the body of literature on computer evaluation of tonality in visual framing. The quantitative content analysis of 801 images from 16 media revealed differences among eight counties in tonality, Trump’s image reflection and display of social distance.
A Knight in sheep’s clothing: Media framing of the Alt-Right • Burton Speakman, Kennesaw State University • The Alt-Right increased its national profile during the 2016 presidential election based on its support of Donald Trump. This study uses qualitative framing analysis to review the coverage of the Alt-Right as a manner examining if the group was successful in advancing its desired frames into mainstream media coverage. The results of this study suggest overall the Alt-Right was successful in reducing direct discussion about the racist beliefs of the group within press coverage.
Partisan Media, News Events, and Asymmetric Political Evaluations in the 2016 Election • Jiyoun Suk, UW Madison; Dhavan Shah; Leticia Bode; Stephanie Edgerly, Northwestern; Kjerstin Thorson, Michigan State University; Emily Vraga; Chris Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jon Pevehouse • Using national rolling cross-sectional survey data collected daily over the last seven weeks of the election, we examine support for Trump and Clinton using daily-fixed effects regressions followed by temporal analyses of the unexplained variance from these models. Results reveal the influence of different media sources among partisan audiences, the asymmetric influence of conservative and liberal media on different partisan subgroups, and the impact of major events on candidate appraisals on any given day.
News and Entertainment Preferences, Political Knowledge and Attentiveness in Campaign 2016 • Matthew Thornton, Drake University • Scholars have argued the transition from a broadcast environment to a cable and internet landscape has significantly altered our political sphere. While some scholars have argued expanded media choice has brought about fragmentation and increasing partisan news consumption, other scholars have focused on the potential for more media options to encourage individuals to opt out of consuming public affairs programming in favor of entertainment-based content, thus leading to political knowledge declines for those transitioning away from news. The following study applies both theoretical approaches to the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. A media environment whereby individuals may be leaving news in favor of entertainment content encourages non-traditional candidates with the ability to exploit celebrity status (i.e. Donald Trump) in courting more politically disinterested, entertainment-centric voters. At the same time, the divisive campaign style of Trump coupled with his disdain for news media may encourage more fervent partisan news consumption. Analyses of ANES data reveal, consistent with expectations, significantly different news and entertainment preferences among supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. While supporters of both candidates engage in partisan news viewing, the entertainment preferences of Trump are shown to be associated with decreased public affairs knowledge and political attentiveness.
To Label or Not To Label? Hostile Perceptions of Fact-Checks and Their Sources in the United States • Jianing Li; Jordan Foley, UW-Madison; Omar Dumdum, U of Wisconsin-Madison; MIchael Wagner, University of Wisconsin-Madison • A survey experiment of 510 American adults reveals that labeling a fact-check as a fact-check increases the likelihood of the hostile media perception. Post-hoc analyses also found that, when engaging in fact-checks, ideological sources were rated as more biased than the Associated Press. Finally, we found no major differences between Republican, Independent and Democratic responses to the fact-check – a story examining a claim from President Trump about gun laws in Chicago. Discovering how Americans react to this new form of accountability journalism will help us understand how the public reacts to specific fact-checking content while also assisting news organizations in deciding whether they should label their fact-checks as a unique type of journalism or simply report them without the “fact-check” moniker.
Gender, Nonverbal Communication, and Televised Debates: Examining Clinton and Trump’s Nonverbal Language During the 2016 Town Hall Debate • Ben Wasike, university of texas rio grande valley • This study analyzed nonverbal cues during the 2016 town hall debate. Variables were facial expressions, posture, eye contact, and spatial distance. Clinton was friendlier, took more expansive postures, and maintained more eye contact. The candidates largely kept within social distance, except for an instance that created post-debate controversy. While some of Clinton’s nonverbal behavior conformed to established gendered cues, her nonverbal behavior largely transcends gender norms. Also addressed are the media’s shortcomings in contextualizing debates
Chinese Players’ Participation in Online Games and its Influence on Online Social Capital & Political Participation • Yue Wu, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences • Based on the theory of social capital, this paper discusses the relationship between online game participation and online social capital and political participation in China. In this study, 1050 valid questionnaires were collected through an online survey. We found that frequency of playing online games is positively correlated with online social capital, information acquisition, and online action. At the same time, online social capital has a significantly positive correlation with online opinion expression. As for online political participation, online information acquisition promotes both online opinion expression and online action, and online opinion expression also promotes online action. Finally, because users of the offline single-player game can only communicate with the non-player characters set by the program, the impact of the pure human-machine interaction on the users is not significant. These findings confirm the application of social capital theory in online game research.
The Agenda-Opinion Dynamics: Public Opinion and Government Attention in Post-Handover Hong Kong • Chuanli Xia; Fei Shen • The capacity of governments to respond to public opinion is essential to democratic theory and its practice. However, previous research examining the relationship between public opinion and government attention dominantly focuses on Western societies. Consequently, we know little about such relationship in non-western societies. Drawing upon time series data of public opinion polls and governmental press releases, this study examines the causal relationship between public opinion and government attention in post-handover Hong Kong. The findings demonstrate that public opinion drives government attention and such “democratic influence” varies across issue domains and is subject to the exercise of political sanctions such as mass demonstrations.
Winning through Words? A Computational Linguistic Study of Presidential Candidates’ Language Styles on Social Media in the Age of Populism • Weiai (Wayne) Xu, University of Massachusetts; Jayeon (Janey) Lee, Lehigh University • The present study examines language styles in presidential candidates’ social media posts in the waves of populism and perception politics. Using Facebook data from the 2016 Election, we show how language styles have different appeals and effectiveness for populist and establishment candidates. Donald Trump, the quintessential populist candidate, sounded less analytic and confident/certain, and more emotional, than the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. The populist-leaning Bernie Sanders sounded more self-revealing than both Trump and Clinton. Clinton used the most analytic and confident/certain language, whereas she was the least self-revealing. Trump attracted more word-of-mouth when using self-revealing and confident/certain language styles. Clinton attracted more word-of-mouth when using more emotional style. For the three candidates, the analytic language style is universally unappealing whereas styles traditionally associated with presidency still hold appeal.
How Informed Are Messaging App Users About Politics? A Linkage of Messaging App Use and Political Knowledge and Participation • Masahiro Yamamoto; Matthew Kushin, Shepherd University; Dalisay Francis • Mobile messaging apps, such as Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, were new and unique campaign and information platforms in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This study investigates how use of such apps for campaign information is related to political knowledge and participation. Data from an online survey conducted prior to the election indicate that using messaging apps for news is positively related to miscalibration of knowledge, a discrepancy between subjective and factual political knowledge. Knowledge miscalibration is positively related to offline and online political participation. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of messaging apps in the political process.
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