Suchergebnisse

Members of parliament's (MPs) social media channels are significant arenas for communication between the public and national leaders. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to explore how these channels function during emergencies. We present findings from a mixed-method study of automatic and manual content analysis of a unique dataset composed of all posts on Israeli MPs' Facebook pages during the entire 19th Israeli parliament. We compare scope of posting, engagement with posts, and the content in MPs' Facebook pages during "ordinary" periods and an "emergency" period, focusing on the 2014 Israel/Gaza war. Findings present MPs' social media pages as hubs of interaction between MPs and audiences in emergencies, even more so than during ordinary periods. MPs' social media pages involve significantly more posts (and engagement with posts) during emergencies. In addition, the content in them becomes more emotional, less personal, and focused on the emergency situation and the national leaders responding to it.

One of the most consistent findings in experimental studies of social dilemmas is the positive influence of face-to-face communication on cooperation. The face-to-face `communication effect' has been recently explained in terms of a `focus theory of norms': successful communication focuses agents on pro-social norms, and induces preferences and expectations conducive to cooperation. 1 Many of the studies that point to a communication effect, however, do not further explore whether and to what extent the communication medium affects cooperative behavior. In this article, we ask if pro-social behavior can emerge and survive in computer-mediated environments. We show that, like face-to-face communication, computer-mediated communication also positively affects cooperation in social dilemmas, but cooperation is more difficult to establish and maintain. We argue that the discrepancy between the computer-mediated and the face-to-face communication effects is a consequence of the distinct capabilities of different media to focus agents on pro-social norms and to allow them to develop mutual expectations about future behavior.

On célèbre souvent les possibilités d'échange et de communication sur le réseau mondial. Mais celui-ci ouvre-t-il des perspectives en termes de participation et de délibération politiques ? Internet favorise-t-il, au-delà du partage d'information ou d'opinion, la confrontation avec des idées qui ne sont pas les nôtres ? Cette condition minimale d'une authentique délibération démocratique est-elle présente sur internet ?

In recent years, usage of text messages sent by political parties and candidates to potential voters has been on the rise. Such messages may also offer response options, which create bilateral communications with potential voters. This article examines responsiveness to political text messages during election campaigns and the factors that affect such responsiveness, using a natural experiment in which the campaign headquarters of 3 municipal candidates sent text messages to the residents of 3 municipalities. Findings indicate that response rates ranged from 4% to 18%, which approximate the response rates to marketing campaigns and other forms of text-based political participation. Age and gender did not have a significant effect on response rates, but message personalization (texts that include recipient identity) and response mode (text reply/landing page) did. These findings offer new empirical evidence of certain patterns of mobile interactions that encourage political participation.

Research demonstrates that good looks matter in politics. The global trend today is toward more visual ballots, which include candidates' photographs. Because voters are exposed to a candidate's appearance right before they vote, physical attractiveness may be a significant contributor to electoral success. But does appearance matter equally in high-information elections, where all candidates are well known to voters, and low-information elections, where voters have little or no knowledge of who the candidates are? How does enhancing the photos of candidates through software programs affect their electability? To our knowledge, this article is the first to examine the impact of candidates' appearance in high- and low-information elections in the field using two experiments involving the manipulation of their appearance. Data for the first study were collected in a low-information election in which a student population was asked to select from a list of fictitious candidates for city council. In this study, we found that the candidates' looks had an impact on the votes they received. Data for the second study were collected right before a high-information election: A straw poll that took place immediately before the primaries for a major political party in Israel, involving party members selecting from a list of real candidates. Here the candidates' appearance had no impact on the votes they received, even for the lesser known candidates on the list. The results indicate that the impact of visual manipulation of candidate images does influence voters, but is limited by the informational context of the elections.

The article analyzes whether Facebook campaigning is consistent with the Normalization or Equalization hypothesis, drawing on data from the election campaigns for the 20th Israeli Parliament in 2015. We looked at six indicators of Facebook activity (number of fans, number of posts, and scope of engagement [likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement]) of all parties running for the Knesset as well as candidates with realistic electability rankings. We found that a comparison between dominant and peripheral parties across all indicators is consistent with the Normalization hypothesis, but when it is framed in terms of expectations and is forward-looking rather than backward-looking, that is, the difference in Facebook performance is between parties that expect to gain a significant number of seats in the parliament, and those that do not anticipate significant parliamentary achievements.