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Defending Democracy: Prioritizing the Study of Epistemic Inequalities Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-07-11 Emilija Gagrčin, Hallvard Moe
Digital media have fundamentally altered how knowledge is produced and distributed, often being blamed for contemporary democratic problems. This short essay examines recent contributions to normat...
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Engaging Populism? The Popularity of European Populist Political Parties on Facebook and Twitter, 2010–2020 Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Thomas R. Davidson, Jenny Enos
Scholars have argued that populists disproportionately benefit from social media, and there is evidence that they attract more engagement than other politicians and parties in several countries. We...
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Editors’ Introduction: Global Crises, Contentious Politics and Social Media Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-19 Holli A. Semetko, S. Shyam Sundar
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 41, No. 4, 2024)
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The Effects of COVID-19 Infection on Opposition to COVID-19 Policies: Evidence from the U.S. Congress Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-10 Zachary P. Dickson, Tevfik Murat Yildirim
Elites’ skepticism of scientific consensus presents a formidable challenge in addressing critical issues like climate change and global pandemics. While extensive research has explored the capacity...
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Epistemic Vulnerability: Theory and Measurement at the System Level Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-07 Julien Labarre
Research about the epistemic crisis has largely treated epistemic threats in isolation, overlooking what they collectively say about the health of news environments. This study integrates the liter...
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Justifying an Invasion: When Is Disinformation Successful? Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-22 Jan Zilinsky, Yannis Theocharis, Franziska Pradel, Marina Tulin, Claes de Vreese, Toril Aalberg, Ana Sofía Cardenal, Nicoleta Corbu, Frank Esser, Luisa Gehle, Denis Halagiera, Michael Hameleers, David Nicolas Hopmann, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Jörg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Václav Štětka, Jesper Strömbäck, Ludovic Terren, Sergio Splendore, James Stanyer, Agnieszka Stępińska, Peter Van Aelst, Alon Zoizner
Conventional wisdom suggests that social media, especially when used by authoritarian powers with nefarious aims, leaves citizens of democratic countries vulnerable to psychological influence campa...
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Emotionalized Social Media Environments: How Alternative News Media and Populist Actors Drive Angry Reactions Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Edda Humprecht, Michael Amsler, Frank Esser, Peter Van Aelst
This study employs a comparative analytical framework to enhance our understanding of the conducive opportunity structures that foster emotionally charged political discourse. We examined 175,539 F...
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The Nature of Visual Disinformation Online: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Alternative and Social Media in the Netherlands Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Michael Hameleers
Online political disinformation often relies on decontextualized or manipulated images. Visual content can make disinformation more attention-grabbing and credible as it offers a direct index of re...
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The Same Views, the Same News? A 15-Country Study on News Sharing on Social Media by European Politicians Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-09 Willem Buyens, Peter Van Aelst, Cristian Vaccari
Social media allow politicians to circumvent the gatekeeping role of news media by providing a platform on which they can communicate directly with and to their electorates. Still, politicians shar...
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Refuse to Say Just What You Mean: Anti- “Woke” Rhetoric As an Exercise in Destructive Abstraction Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-04 Meredith D. Clark
Published in Political Communication (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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Trump Goes to Tulsa on Juneteenth: Placing the Study of Identity, Social Groups, and Power at the Center of Political Communication Research Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-27 Daniel Kreiss, Regina G. Lawrence, Shannon C. McGregor
The increase in elites’ use of racial appeals has compelled some scholars of political communication to tell a more comprehensive story about political identity in the United States and elsewhere a...
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Facebook as an Avenue to News: A Comparison and Validation of Approaches to Identify Facebook Referrals Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-25 Felix Schmidt, Frank Mangold, Sebastian Stier, Roberto Ulloa
Given that Facebook is still the most widely used social networking site in the world, its influence on democratic processes is under constant scrutiny. Academics have put a special focus on Facebo...
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Auditing Entertainment Traps on YouTube: How Do Recommendation Algorithms Pull Users Away from News Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Shengchun Huang, Tian Yang
Recommendation algorithms that customize information feeds for individuals have raised concerns about exacerbating inequalities in news exposure among citizens. In response to these concerns, we co...
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Countering the “Climate Cult” – Framing Cascades in Far-Right Digital Networks Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Curd Knüpfer, Matthias Hoffmann
In many contemporary democracies, digital networks on the far-right have established themselves as “alternatives” to liberal institutions. Within this nexus of parties, hyper-partisan news, and soc...
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Media Coverage, Advertising, and Electoral Volatility: The Crucial Role of Party Competence Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-17 Adrien Petitpas
This paper aims to clarify the mechanism linking media coverage and advertising to electoral volatility. It is argued that the link is indirect rather than direct: Parties’ communication affects el...
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‘’Reenviado Muchas Veces”: How Platform Warnings Affect WhatsApp Users in Mexico and Colombia Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Kevin Munger, Angel Villegas-Cruz, Jorge Gallego, Mateo Vásquez-Cortés
Digital literacy affects how people use the internet. However, we argue that the concept of “digital literacy” cannot usefully be applied to all internet users; there is simply too much heterogenei...
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Hyperpartisan, Alternative, and Conspiracy Media Users: An Anti-Establishment Portrait Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Ernesto de León, Mykola Makhortykh, Silke Adam
While there is growing academic attention to readers of hyperpartisan, alternative, and conspiracy (HAC) media, our understanding of these sites has developed in separate bodies of work. We make a ...
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Social Media Use and Political Engagement in Polarized Times. Examining the Contextual Roles of Issue and Affective Polarization in Developed Democracies Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-09 Michael Chan, Jingjing Yi
Studies addressing the normative questions of whether social media use positively or negatively affects citizens’ levels of democratic engagement and satisfaction with democracy have produced mixed...
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The Honest Broker versus the Epistocrat: Attenuating Distrust in Science by Disentangling Science from Politics Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Senja Post, Nils Bienzeisler
People’s trust in science is generally high. Yet in public policy disputes invoking scientific issues, people’s trust in science is typically polarized, aligned with their political preferences. Th...
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Politicians, Newspapers, and Immigration Referendums: Exploring the Boundaries of Media Effects Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Judith Spirig
Does acquiring a media company pay off politically? A growing body of literature suggests that politically motivated media owners shape media coverage and that media coverage affects political beha...
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Discourse Networks of the Far Right: How Far-Right Actors Become Mainstream in Public Debates Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Teresa Völker, Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti
How do far-right actors and issues structure public debates and become mainstream over time? Previous research has shown that far-right actors are central actors in political conflicts in Western E...
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The Mobilizing Power of Visual Media Across Stages of Social-Mediated Protests Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Yingdan Lu, Yilang Peng
The popularity of camera phones, the availability of photo-editing apps, and the rise of visually oriented social media platforms have made it convenient for citizens to produce and circulate visua...
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The Fleeting Allure of Dark Campaigns: Backlash from Negative and Uncivil Campaigning in the Presence of (Better) Alternatives Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Philipp Mendoza, Alessandro Nai, Linda Bos
More aggressive campaigning styles focusing on criticizing opponents (negativity) or using inappropriate language to vilify opponents (incivility) tend to be disliked by voters, and remain thus ris...
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A Virtual Battlefield for Embassies: Longitudinal Network Analysis of Competing Mediated Public Diplomacy on Social Media Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Zhi Lin
Mediated public diplomacy is a critical way of strategic communication for governments to influence global public opinion, especially during international conflicts. Based on the theories of mediat...
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The Geopolitics of Deplatforming: A Study of Suspensions of Politically-Interested Iranian Accounts on Twitter Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Andreu Casas
Social media companies increasingly play a role in regulating freedom of speech. Debates over ideological motivations behind suspension policies of major platforms are on the rise. This study contr...
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Partisan Differences in the Sharing of Low-Quality News Sources by U.S Political Elites Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-11 Kevin T. Greene
How often do political elites in the U.S. share low-quality news sources? Are there differences between the parties? While past work has investigated individuals sharing low-quality news sources, t...
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Polarization All the Way Down: How Coverage of Elite and Partisan Polarization Spills Over to Perceptions of the U.S. Mass Public Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Gavin Ploger
How do ordinary citizens perceive and respond to different kinds of political polarization in the U.S.? Recent work shows that people believe that the parties are intensely polarized but, in realit...
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Forum Editor’s Introduction: Artificial Intelligence, Political Ad Libraries, and Transgender Health Misinformation Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Michael W. Wagner
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 41, No. 2, 2024)
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The Impact of New Transparency in Digital Advertising on Media Coverage Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Travis N. Ridout, Furkan Cakmak
In response to foreign meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign through social media – and subsequent congressional threats to tightly regulate online political advertising – major digital p...
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The Politics of Transgender Health Misinformation Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Thomas J Billard
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 41, No. 2, 2024)
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The Battle for the Soul of the Nation: Nationalist Polarization in the 2020 American Presidential Election and the Threat to Democracy Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Eric Taylor Woods, Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard, Marcus Closen, Catherine Ouellet, Robert Schertzer
This article examines the nationalist rhetoric of Biden and Trump in the 2020 presidential election, focusing on how the candidates represented, and contested, the meaning of American national iden...
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A Scholarly Definition of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Advancing AI as a Conceptual Framework in Communication Research Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Homero Gil de Zúñiga, Manuel Goyanes, Timilehin Durotoye
Research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in communication research is gaining broader interest. This interdisciplinary interest has yet to be supported by a systematic scholarly definition and by a...
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Thinking for Themselves: Bootstraps Discourse and the Imagined Epistemology of Reactionary YouTube Audiences Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Cindy Ma
In recent years, popular interest in disinformation has coalesced around a series of high-profile events, starting with the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. While Faceboo...
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Do Online Ads Sway Voters? Understanding the Persuasiveness of Online Political Ads Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Xiaotong Chu, Rens Vliegenthart, Lukas Otto, Sophie Lecheler, Claes de Vreese, Sanne Kruikemeier
This study investigates the effect of online political ads on party preference, and whether this effect is more pronounced for newer political parties and voters who are less politically knowledgea...
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Negotiating News: How Cross-Cutting Romantic Partners Select, Consume, and Discuss News Together Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Emily Van Duyn
As political partisanship intensifies, political similarity in romantic partnerships has become increasingly common. Still, there exist many for whom their romantic partnership is “cross-cutting,” ...
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Talking Past Each Other on Twitter: Thematic, Event, and Temporal Divergences in Polarized Partisan Expression on Immigration Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Xiaoya Jiang, Yini Zhang, Jisoo Kim, Jon Pevehouse, Dhavan Shah
Extending literature on political polarization and political expression, we study patterns of polarized expression by vocal partisans from opposing camps on social media. Specifically, we argue tha...
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Attacks and Issue Competition: Do Parties Attack Based on Issue Salience or Issue Ownership? Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Željko Poljak, Henrik Bech Seeberg
Various studies have been devoted to explaining the conditions under which parties engage in attack behavior. However, the existing literature has overlooked the issues on which parties attack. Thi...
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Spanish Vs. English Language Media Consumption and Latino Political Trust and Efficacy Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Walter Clark Wilson, Robert Preuhs, Bryan T. Gervais
Do Latinos who consume more Spanish language media relative to English language media express greater political trust and efficacy? While research produces increasing evidence that variations in En...
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The Art of Self-Criticism: How Autocrats Propagate Their Own Political Scandals Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-13 Charles Chang
In liberal democracies, journalists can engage the government by unearthing its scandals. Authoritarian regimes, where negative news about the government is heavily guarded, lack this process. Yet,...
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Right-Wing Authoritarian Attitudes, Fast-Paced Decision-Making, and the Spread of Misinformation About COVID-19 Vaccines Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Julia Schulte-Cloos, Veronica Anghel
Social media played a prominent role in the spread of vaccine-related fake news during the global COVID-19 crisis. Previous work has shown that both trait-related and situational factors influence ...
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Local Government, Social Media and Management of COVID-19: The Case of Chilean Mayoral Communication Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-09 Juan Pablo Luna, Daniel Alcatruz, Cristian Pérez Muñoz, Fernando Rosenblatt, Sergio Toro Maureira, Sebastián Valenzuela
Most research on governments’ use of social media focuses on the national or federal level. We therefore know little about the way local authorities harness social media platforms to communicate wi...
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Editor’s Note Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-03 Regina G. Lawrence
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 41, No. 1, 2024)
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Fake News for All: How Citizens Discern Disinformation in Autocracies Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-03 Anton Shirikov
Research on autocracies often posits that propaganda can manipulate citizens’ beliefs, but existing work does not systematically investigate how well individuals recognize misinformation in authori...
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Scholarly Solidarity: Building an Inclusive Field for Junior and Minority Researchers Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-03 Josephine Lukito
The goal of this reflective essay is to highlight challenges that junior and minority political communication researchers face and to advocate for scholarly solidarity practices, defined as actions...
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Threats as Political Communication Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-03 Nathan P. Kalmoe, Lilliana Mason
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 41, No. 1, 2024)
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Correction Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-03
Published in Political Communication (Vol. 41, No. 1, 2024)
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Unequal Tweets: Black Disadvantage is (Re)tweeted More but Discussed Less Than White Privilege Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Annette Malapally, Andreas Blombach, Philipp Heinrich, Julia Schnepf, Susanne Bruckmüller
Disadvantage and privilege work together to uphold systems of inequality. Nevertheless, racial inequality is often described as Black disadvantage, while White privilege remains less visible. This ...
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Politicizing Masks? Examining the Volume and Content of Local News Coverage of Face Coverings in the U.S. Through the COVID-19 Pandemic Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-15 Markus Neumann, Steven T. Moore, Laura M. Baum, Pavel Oleinikov, Yiwei Xu, Jeff Niederdeppe, Neil Lewis Jr., Sarah E. Gollust, Erika Franklin Fowler
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a political and health communication crisis whose impact varied by geographic location in the United States. Although local television is known to be an importa...
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Non-News Websites Expose People to More Political Content Than News Websites: Evidence from Browsing Data in Three Countries Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Magdalena Wojcieszak, Ericka Menchen-Trevino, Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, Sjifra de Leeuw, João Gonçalves, Sam Davidson, Alexandre Gonçalves
Most scholars focus on the prevalence and democratic effects of (partisan) news exposure. This focus misses large parts of online activities of a majority of politically disinterested citizens. Alt...
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Going Beyond Affective Polarization: How Emotions and Identities are Used in Anti-Vaccination TikTok Videos Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Sang Jung Kim, Isabel Iruani Villanueva, Kaiping Chen
The rise of social media as a source of science and health information has brought challenges to informed citizenship and social trust due to the spread of misinformation, particularly anti-vaccina...
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The Media and Democratization: A Long-Term Macro-Level Perspective on the Role of the Press During a Democratic Transition Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Florian Arendt
The media are assumed to play a key role in democratization. Much of the available evidence on the media’s role in democratic transitions is based on a comparative and global perspective, focusing ...
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The Unintended Consequences of Amplifying the Radical Right on Twitter Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Jorge M. Fernandes, Miguel Won
The emergence of the radical right signals that social norms and values are changing. Existing literature suggests that citizens choose to voice their concerns when faced with the erosion of democr...
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Broadcasting Messages via Telegram: Pro-Government Social Media Control During the 2020 Protests in Belarus and 2022 Anti-War Protests in Russia Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-07-08 Daria Kuznetsova
ABSTRACT What is the role of digital media in contentious politics? On the one hand, digital media plays a central role in informing the public and organizing political movements. On the other hand, it has become a valuable tool for digital repression in authoritarian states. This study concentrates on the patterns of digital media use by pro-government actors in times of nationwide protests in autocracies
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Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication: Special Issue Introduction Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-27 Stewart M. Coles, Daniel Lane
ABSTRACT Despite the centrality of race and ethnicity in social and political life, they are often absent from studies of the urgent questions in contemporary political communication research. In this essay introducing a special issue focused on “Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication,” we examine factors that may contribute to the relative absence of race/ethnicity in
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Reconceptualizing Cross-Cutting Political Expression on Social Media: A Case Study of Facebook Comments During the 2016 Brexit Referendum Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Michael Bossetta, Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Duje Bonacci
Political communication research has long sought to understand the effects of cross-cutting exposure on political participation. Here, we argue for a paradigm shift that acknowledges the agency of ...
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The Stability of Cable and Broadcast News Intermedia Agenda Setting Across the COVID-19 Issue Attention Cycle Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-16 Ceren Budak, Natalie Jomini Stroud, Ashley Muddiman, Caroline C. Murray, Yujin Kim
In today’s fragmented media environment, it is unclear whether the correspondence between media agendas that characterizes intermedia agenda setting persists. Through a combination of manual and co...
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Uninformed or Misinformed in the Digital News Environment? How Social Media News Use Affects Two Dimensions of Political Knowledge Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-15 Atle Haugsgjerd, Rune Karlsen, Kari Steen-Johnsen
This article examines how the use of social media for news affects citizens’ knowledge about politics and current affairs. We employ a two-dimensional perspective on political knowledge and investi...
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Partisan Memes as a Catalyst for Homophilous Networks Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Yujin Kim, Jessica R. Collier, Caroline Murray, Natalie Jomini Stroud
Although diverse political networks are seen as democratically valuable, online social networks enable the construction and maintenance of networks that are less diverse. In this study, we explore ...
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Recognition Crisis: Coming to Terms with Identity, Attention and Political Communication in the Twenty-First Century Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Chris Wells, Lewis A. Friedland
The theory of recognition has much to offer the field of political communication as it struggles to comprehend communicative dysfunctions, political polarization and governing crises across the ind...
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Correction Political Communication (IF 4.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-07
Published in Political Communication (Ahead of Print, 2023)