Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 45 Issue s1

Issue of Communications

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Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available December 18, 2020

Focus on Media Policy and Strategic Communication

November 22, 2019

Social bureaucracy? The integration of social media into government communication

Tine Ustad Figenschou

Page range: 513-534

Abstract

Inspired by an institutional logics approach, this article analyzes the barriers to and drivers of the integration of social media in the communication practices in Norwegian ministries. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the paper analyzes the process of integrating social media logic into government communication units that were largely organized through a news media regime. To understand the process, it emphasizes four dimensions: how the symbolic resources, material resources, formal rules and practices have defined the logics of government communication in the period studied (May 2015–May 2016). The analysis meets the call for more empirical investigation into the interplay between the traditional news logics and new digital logics.

April 15, 2020

Data-driven campaigns in public sensemaking: Discursive positions, contextualization, and maneuvers in American, British, and German debates around computational politics

Christian Pentzold, Lena Fölsche

Page range: 535-559

Abstract

Our article examines how journalistic reports and online comments have made sense of computational politics. It treats the discourse around data-driven campaigns as its object of analysis and codifies four main perspectives that have structured the debates about the use of large data sets and data analytics in elections. We study American, British, and German sources on the 2016 United States presidential election, the 2017 United Kingdom general election, and the 2017 German federal election. There, groups of speakers maneuvered between enthusiastic, skeptical, agnostic, or admonitory stances and so cannot be clearly mapped onto these four discursive positions. Coming along with the inconsistent accounts, public sensemaking was marked by an atmosphere of speculation about the substance and effects of computational politics. We conclude that this equivocality helped journalists and commentators to sideline prior reporting on the issue in order to repeatedly rediscover the practices they had already covered.

February 20, 2020

Public discourse, political legitimacy, and collective identity: Cases from Iraq, Brazil and China

Max Hänska, Ahmed Bahiya, Fernanda Amaral, Yu Sui

Page range: 560-585

Abstract

Through the examination of recent developments in Iraq, Brazil and China, this paper explores the role of public communication in a) generating, corralling, and buttressing political legitimacy, and b) negotiating, demarcating, and reproducing collective identities. The transformation of Iraq’s public sphere after the fall of the Ba’ath regime saw it shift from a tightly controlled and unified communication space to unencumbered yet fragmented spheres split along ethno-sectarian lines, buttressing sectarian politics and identities. The emergence of subaltern publics in Brazil’s favelas empowered residents to express public dissent, assert their voice, and develop pride in their community. Chinese efforts to control online public discourse provide the government with ways of managing its perceived legitimacy and foster patriotic fellowship online. Legitimation and the affirmation of identity interact and support one another in public discourse, as we illustrate.

Open Access March 21, 2020

The effects of five public information campaigns: The role of interpersonal communication

Adriana Solovei, Bas van den Putte

Page range: 586-602

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Abstract

For five Dutch public information campaigns, this study assessed whether interpersonal communication mediated the effects of exposure (to TV, radio, or online banners) on five persuasive outcomes: awareness, knowledge, attitude, intention, and self-reported behavior. Structural equation modeling was used to test 23 models relating exposure to one of these outcome variables. Few direct effects of media exposure were found (for online banners, TV, and radio in, respectively, one, four, and seven of the 23 models). In contrast, results revealed that interpersonal communication had direct effects on the outcomes in 17 of the 23 models. Moreover, indirect effects of media exposure via interpersonal communication were found for online banner, TV, and radio exposure in, respectively, eight, nine, and ten models. These results indicate that interpersonal communication plays an important role in explaining media exposure persuasive effects and should be taken into account in the development and evaluation of public information campaigns.

Focus on Audiences

September 27, 2019

Sensitizing the concept of mediatization for the study of social movements

Mojca Pajnik, Marko Ribać, Peter Sekloča

Page range: 603-623

Abstract

We suggest the “sensitizing concept of mediatization” as an analytical tool to analyze public communication of social movements in times of social, economic and political crisis, and we apply the tool to explore the case of the Slovenian uprisings of 2012–13. First, theoretically, we couple Tilly’s understanding of social movements’ practices with Hjarvard’s distinction between “direct” and “indirect” forms of mediatization. Second, in the empirical part, we categorize and classify movement organizations, activist initiatives and political groups into two distinct groups and observe how they respond to the media logic of newsworthiness and the political logic of office-seeking during the contentious actions of mass mobilization. We observe asymmetrical responses to processes of mediatization, which vary according to organizational structure, practices and movements’ vision of social transformation. The article shows how different protest groups respond to the three media logic techniques: a) personalization of political actors, b) decontextualization and simplification of transformative potential that are inherent to protest cycles, and how the two mobilized groups interact with the journalistic focus on c) spectacle and images of violence. We argue that the more the specific movement/group expresses criticism over the interplay of the media and the political logic, marked by the three discursive modes mentioned, the less it adopts the dominant media logic and the more it seeks for alternative and innovative media action.

April 15, 2020

Upset with the refugee policy: Exploring the relations between policy malaise, media use, trust in news media, and issue fatigue

Dorothee Arlt, Christina Schumann, Jens Wolling

Page range: 624-647

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the concept of policy malaise, which refers to citizens’ dissatisfaction with the way political institutions and processes handle specific problems such as the refugee issue in Germany. Based on a representative online panel survey with two waves conducted in 2016 and 2017 (N = 836), we explore the occurrence of policy malaise among the German population and its relation to issue-specific media use, trust in news media, and issue fatigue. First, the results indicate that policy malaise toward the refugee issue is widespread in Germany. Second, we found that media use relates differentially to policy malaise: While high exposure to public broadcasting was negatively associated with policy malaise, we found the opposite for private broadcasting. Third, policy malaise is higher for people who experience issue fatigue and lower for people who trust the news media. Finally, trust in media reinforces the negative and positive relations between media use and policy malaise. Implications concerning the associations between policy malaise and political alienation in its broader sense are discussed.

October 14, 2020

Information-sharing practices on Facebook during the 2017 French presidential campaign: An “unreliable information bubble” within the extreme right

Julien Figeac, Nikos Smyrnaios, Tristan Salord, Guillaume Cabanac, Ophélie Fraisier, Pierre Ratinaud, Fanny Seffusatti

Page range: 648-670

Abstract

This research explores the spread of unreliable information on Facebook during the 2017 French presidential campaign. By analyzing information-sharing behavior on 252 Facebook pages, our study highlights the wide variety of information sources shared by several political communities, notably news published by partisan websites or activist blogs. Our results demonstrate that political parties – particularly, those on the extreme ends of the political spectrum – tend to re-share a large amount of information reflecting the same ideological positions as their own. This trend is amplified by a phenomenon of endo-citation, that is, a “circular circulation” of information between Facebook pages within the same political community. Our results focus on the information practices of the far-right, tracing a clear over-representation of sources that are unreliable or likely to relay disinformation. We argue that this circular transmission of information creates an “unreliable information bubble” that characterizes far-right information-sharing behavior.

Open Access April 12, 2019

Pathways to political (dis-)engagement: motivations behind social media use and the role of incidental and intentional exposure modes in adolescents’ political engagement

Raffael Heiss, Johannes Knoll, Jörg Matthes

Page range: 671-693

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Abstract

Based on the Social Media Political Participation Model (SMPPM), this study investigates the relationship between four key motivations behind the use of Social Network Sites (SNS) and political engagement among adolescents. We collected our data in a paper-pencil survey with 15- to 20-year-old adolescents (N=294), a highly underexplored group, which is most active on social media. We theorize that adolescents’ user motivations are related to political engagement via two modes of exposure: The intentional mode, which is related to active information seeking, and the incidental mode, in which adolescents run into politics only by accident. We found that political information and self-expression motivations were positively related to political engagement via the intentional mode. By contrast, entertainment motivations were negatively related to offline, but not to online engagement via the incidental mode.

October 22, 2020

Does fake news lead to more engaging effects on social media? Evidence from Romania

Nicoleta Corbu, Alina Bârgăoanu, Raluca Buturoiu, Oana Ștefăniță

Page range: 694-717

Abstract

This study examines the potential of fake news to produce effects on social media engagement as well as the moderating role of education and government approval. We report on a 2x2x2 online experiment conducted in Romania (N=813), in which we manipulated the level of facticity of a news story, its valence, and intention to deceive. Results show that ideologically driven news with a negative valence (rather than fabricated news or other genres, such as satire and parody) have a greater virality potential. However, neither the level of education nor government approval moderate this effect. Additionally, both positive and negative ideologically driven news stories enhance the probability that people will sign a document to support the government (i. e., potential for political engagement on social media). These latter effects are moderated by government approval: Lower levels of government approval lead to less support for the government on social media, as a consequence of fake news exposure.

Focus on Media Content

Open Access November 21, 2019

Reconsidering churnalism: How news factors in corporate press releases influence how journalists treat these press releases after initial selection

Pytrik Schafraad, Ward Van Zoonen

Page range: 718-743

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Abstract

This study examines how news factors in press releases influence journalists’ decisions and the journalistic treatment of press release information after its initial selection for the news agenda: These journalists can transform press releases into a news story, which involves little journalistic capital investment, or use these releases for a unique news production, which requires significant journalistic capital investment. The data elicited from the content analysis show that the more profound the presence of certain news factors in press releases, the higher the chance that journalists will choose to invest their journalistic capital in these press releases. This result means that journalists will only invest journalistic capital in press releases that contain specific news factors.

Open Access November 19, 2019

Clouded reality: News representations of culturally close and distant ethnic outgroups

Anne C. Kroon, Damian Trilling, Toni G. L. A. van der Meer, Jeroen G. F. Jonkman

Page range: 744-764

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Abstract

The current study explores how the cultural distance of ethnic outgroups relative to the ethnic ingroup is related to stereotypical news representations. It does so by drawing on a sample of more than three million Dutch newspaper articles and uses advanced methods of automated content analysis, namely word embeddings. The results show that distant ethnic outgroup members (i. e., Moroccans) are associated with negative characteristics and issues, while this is not the case for close ethnic outgroup members (i. e., Belgians). The current study demonstrates the usefulness of word embeddings as a tool to study subtle aspects of ethnic bias in mass-mediated content.

October 27, 2020

The construction of the Arab-Islamic issue in foreign news: Spanish newspaper coverage of the Egyptian revolution

Alfonso Corral, Leen d’Haenens

Page range: 765-787

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze how the Spanish newspapers covered an international event such as the Egyptian spring from 2011 to 2013. From the perspective of the representation of Arab-Islamic issues, this study carries out a quantitative content analysis on the four reference newspapers in Spain (ABC, El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia) to find out whether there was an Islamophobic or Islamophilic treatment during the Egyptian revolution. The results of the 3,045 articles analyzed show that Spanish newspapers were remarkably interested in Egyptian events and that cultural discourses were not relevant in the coverage. However, it is necessary to specify these outcomes by newspaper, because each paper proposed its own take on the matter based on information provided by press agencies.

November 14, 2020

The world’s first mainly female cabinet: “The council of female ministers” in the Spanish cabinet (2018) on Twitter

Asunción Bernárdez-Rodal, Maria Luz Congosto, Nuria López-Priego

Page range: 788-813

Abstract

1 June 2018 marked a historic moment in Spanish politics, when the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) announced a cabinet with the largest proportion of female ministers in the world. This announcement received extensive coverage in the traditional media. The objective of this research was to measure whether the news had an equivalent impact on Twitter users. To this end, we analyzed the reaction to the appointments based on the popularity of the hashtags #GobiernoSanchez (“Sanchez Government”), #GobiernoFeminista (“Feminist Government”) and #ConsejoMinistras (“Council of Female Ministers”). The most significant findings are that women had even less visibility than they were given in traditional media because of what is not retweeted does not exist, and that the extreme polarization of political life and the media in the public sphere appears to extend to the digital environment of Twitter.

December 18, 2020

From Wanderers to Strangers. The shifting space of Scandinavian immigration debate 1970–2016

Jan Fredrik Hovden

Page range: 814-840

Abstract

The media coverage of immigration serves as an important test for modern democracies’ ability to handle difficult public issues. Systematic and comparative studies over longer time periods are, however, still rare. This is deeply unfortunate as the nature of both immigration and the press systems vary considerably not only across nations but also over time. This article charts the immigration debate in seven Scandinavian newspapers from the birth of modern immigration in the early seventies to the present-day situation. While supporting claims about a general historical shift towards a more problematizing and cultural discourse in Scandinavia, the analysis also identifies major differences in how countries, publications, and genres have handled this complex issue, which brings out fundamental dilemmas for both modern welfare states and journalists. Using the method of multiple correspondence analysis and subsequent cluster analysis, the article also demonstrates how historical press coverage can be fruitfully studied using Geometric Data Analysis as an alternative to frequentist methods.

December 18, 2019

The 2015 refugee crisis, uncertainty and the media: Representations of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in Austrian and French media

Anita Gottlob, Hajo Boomgaarden

Page range: 841-863

Abstract

Media coverage of migration and migrants can exert considerable influence on the public’s understanding of and attitudes towards migration. During the peak of what has been called ‘the refugee crisis’ in 2015, heated discussions about immigration and its possible impact filled the media landscape. This study focuses specifically on the news framing of insecurities regarding immigration, exploring what we have termed ‘uncertainty frames’ in the coverage of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. This study will thus lend empirical support to a novel attempt to combine the concepts of uncertainty, risk, and framing. These frames were analyzed within French and Austrian media from 2015 to 2016. Drawing on a content analysis of tabloid and broadsheet articles, different types of uncertainty frames (economy, values, society, etc.) as well as different types of solution frames (the kind of solutions provided for the issue of immigration) were examined. Results suggest that even though all frames decrease in salience over time, important variations in different types of uncertainty frames do appear. It is argued that frames related to abstract issues seem to stay more salient throughout time in both countries.

May 8, 2020

Austerity and fragmentation: Dynamics of Europeanization of media discourses in Greece and Italy

Cristiano Bee, Stavroula Chrona

Page range: 864-892

Abstract

This article investigates media representations of the European financial crisis in Greece and Italy. We study the Euro crisis as an ‘emergency situation’ with domino effects, where media played a central role in shaping communication practices at the national level as well as between the two countries. Drawing upon vertical and horizontal dynamics of Europeanization, we map the convergences and divergences in media discourses that surround the period 2011–2015. In doing so, we elaborate a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles focusing, in particular, on the themes of austerity and the fragmentation of Europe. Our argument suggests that national public spheres in times of transnational crisis become increasingly nationalized; yet under certain circumstances such as when the supranational infrastructure is the target of blame, they converge, opening the path toward a transnational discursive dialogue.

Open Access September 24, 2020

“As quiet as a mouse”: Media use in Azerbaijan

Ilgar Seyidov

Page range: 893-911

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Abstract

During the Soviet period, the media served as one of the main propagandist tools of the authoritarian regime, using a standardized and monotype media system across the Soviet Republics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 15 countries became independent. The transition from Soviet communism to capitalism has led to the reconstruction of economic, socio-cultural, and political systems. One of the most affected institutions in post-Soviet countries was the media. Media have played a supportive role during rough times, when there was, on the one hand, the struggle for liberation and sovereignty, and, on the other hand, the need for nation building. It has been almost 30 years since the Soviet Republics achieved independence, yet the media have not been freed from political control and continue to serve as ideological apparatuses of authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet countries. Freedom of speech and independent media are still under threat. The current study focuses on media use in Azerbaijan, one of the under-researched post-Soviet countries. The interviews for this study were conducted with 40 participants living in Nakhichevan and Baku. In-depth, semi-structured interview techniques were used as research method. Findings are discussed under six main themes in the conclusion.

About this journal

Objective
Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research is an established forum for scholarship and academic debate in the field of communication science and research from a European perspective. Communication science is concerned with the investigation of the structure and function of communication processes and their impact on society, social groups and individuals. Communications highlights the concerns of this discipline through the publication of articles, research reports, review essays and book reviews on theoretical and methodological developments considered from a European perspective. The journal encompasses the entire field of communication science as its domain of interest. The contributions published in the journal cover a wide range of subfields in communication science.

Topics

Communication reseach
Structure and function of communication
Impact on society, social groups and individuals
Interpersonal communication
Intercultural communication
Mass communication
Communication theory
Philosophy of communication
Media history
Media development and communication technology

Article formats
Original articles, research reports, review essays, and book reviews

Volume 45 Issue s1

Issue of Communications

Titelseiten

Social bureaucracy? The integration of social media into government communication

Abstract

Data-driven campaigns in public sensemaking: Discursive positions, contextualization, and maneuvers in American, British, and German debates around computational politics

Abstract

Public discourse, political legitimacy, and collective identity: Cases from Iraq, Brazil and China

Abstract

The effects of five public information campaigns: The role of interpersonal communication

Abstract

Sensitizing the concept of mediatization for the study of social movements

Abstract

Upset with the refugee policy: Exploring the relations between policy malaise, media use, trust in news media, and issue fatigue

Abstract

Information-sharing practices on Facebook during the 2017 French presidential campaign: An “unreliable information bubble” within the extreme right

Abstract

Pathways to political (dis-)engagement: motivations behind social media use and the role of incidental and intentional exposure modes in adolescents’ political engagement

Abstract

Does fake news lead to more engaging effects on social media? Evidence from Romania

Abstract

Reconsidering churnalism: How news factors in corporate press releases influence how journalists treat these press releases after initial selection

Abstract

Clouded reality: News representations of culturally close and distant ethnic outgroups

Abstract

The construction of the Arab-Islamic issue in foreign news: Spanish newspaper coverage of the Egyptian revolution

Abstract

The world’s first mainly female cabinet: “The council of female ministers” in the Spanish cabinet (2018) on Twitter

Abstract

From Wanderers to Strangers. The shifting space of Scandinavian immigration debate 1970–2016

Abstract

The 2015 refugee crisis, uncertainty and the media: Representations of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in Austrian and French media

Abstract

Austerity and fragmentation: Dynamics of Europeanization of media discourses in Greece and Italy

Abstract

“As quiet as a mouse”: Media use in Azerbaijan

Abstract