Suchergebnisse

We investigate the interplay between party communication and media coverage in putting EU issues on the agenda during the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. A temporal pattern analysis focuses on the dynamic perspective of media–parties' interactions based on a quantitative content analysis of (a) the press releases published by parties and (b) the coverage of two leading newspapers per country 12 weeks prior to the elections. We find that most public discourses are started by the media; however, political parties especially in Austria are also quite successful in initiating discussions about EU issues. Interestingly, once an issue has been placed on the agenda, only a few parties take the opportunity of exploiting their issue-ownership in response to the media agenda. On the other side, media react to publications of all party types, even radical parties.

We examine how the political context in which actors are embedded relates to their online communication. We argue that the degree of contentiousness of an issue (high vs. low conflict) is a decisive factor in explaining the distinct network structures generated by the actors' hyperlink patterns. Comparing two such networks originating in the United States and Germany in the area of clilmate change, we found systematic differences between them that result in distinct political hyperlink topologies, which reflect the underlying issue context. These differences become visible in the reciprocity of the actors' hyperlink communication, the fragmentation of the networks along the political divide, the recognition issue opponents receive from the media, and the transnational orientation of climate advocates and skeptics. This research implies that hyperlink communication is responsive to the political context, and that countermovements, in particular, manage to reap the benefits from online communication mobilization efforts.

This study explores shifts in political trust during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, examining the role that media consumption and threat perceptions played in individuals' trust in politics. We combine panel surveys taken before and during the first nation-wide lockdown with webtracking data of participants' online behaviour to paint a nuanced picture of media effects during the crisis. Our work has several findings. First, political trust, an attitude known for its stability, increased following lockdown. Second, consumption of mainstream news on COVID-19 directly hindered this increase, with those reading more news having lower over-time trust, while the relatively minor alternative news consumption had no direct effect on political trust. Third, threat perceptions a) to health and b) from the policy response to the pandemic, have strong and opposite effects on political trust, with threats to health increasing trust, and threats from the government policy response decreasing it. Lastly, these threat perceptions condition the effect of COVID-19 news consumption on political trust: perceptions of threat had the power to both exacerbate and mute the effect of media consumption on government trust during the pandemic. Notably, we show that the expected negative effect of alternative news on political trust only exists for those who did not think COVID-19 posed a threat to their health, while public service news consumption reduced the negative effect produced by government threat perceptions. The paper therefore advances our understanding of the nuanced nature of media effects, particularly as relates to alternative media, especially during moments of crisis.

Studies assessing citizens' attitudes towards Europe have mostly used explicit concepts and measures. However, psychologists have shown that human behaviour is not only determined by explicit attitudes which can be assessed via self-report, but also by implicit attitudes which require indirect measurement. We combine a self-report questionnaire with an implicit Affective Misattribution Procedure for the first time in an online environment to estimate the reliability, validity and predictive power of this implicit measure for the explanation of European Union-skeptical behaviour. Based on a survey with a sample representative for Germany, we found evidence for good reliability and validity of the implicit measure. In addition, the implicit attitude had a significant incremental impact beyond explicit attitudes on citizens' proneness to engage in EU-skeptical information and voting behaviour.

We analyze short-term media trust changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, their ideological drivers and consequences based on panel data in German-speaking Switzerland. We thereby differentiate trust in political information from different types of traditional and non-traditional media. COVID-19 serves as a natural experiment, in which citizens' media trust at the outbreak of the crisis is compared with the same variables after the severe lockdown measures were lifted. Our data reveal that (1) media trust is consequential as it is associated with people's willingness to follow Covid-19 regulations; (2) media trust changes during the pandemic, with trust levels for most media decreasing, with the exception of public service broadcasting; (3) trust losses are hardly connected to ideological divides in Switzerland. Our findings highlight that public service broadcasting plays an exceptional role in the fight against a pandemic and that contrary to the US, no partisan trust divide occurs.

We ask how pro-European parties communicate in the face of a Eurosceptic challenge and how this affects the politicization of European Union integration within a country. We draw on a quantitative content analysis of parties' press releases issued in the run-up to the 2014 European Parliament elections in seven countries. Our results show that pro-European parties as such put Europe on the agenda, debate issues similar to those voiced by Eurosceptics and defend their pro-European positions: yet, they do so to varying degrees and with major exceptions. It is pro-European catch-all parties with strong internal dissent that silence Europe and choose blurring or adoption strategies. Consequently, the politicization of European integration varies among countries, thereby high topic visibility is accompanied by low levels of party ...

We ask how pro-European parties communicate in the face of a Eurosceptic challenge and how this affects the politicization of European Union integration within a country. We draw on a quantitative content analysis of parties' press releases issued in the run-up to the 2014 European Parliament elections in seven countries. Our results show that pro-European parties as such put Europe on the agenda, debate issues similar to those voiced by Eurosceptics and defend their pro-European positions: yet, they do so to varying degrees and with major exceptions. It is pro-European catch-all parties with strong internal dissent that silence Europe and choose blurring or adoption strategies. Consequently, the politicization of European integration varies among countries, thereby high topic visibility is accompanied by low levels of party conflict.

This article examines which parties included European issues in their 2014 European Parliament campaigns, and what influenced whether they did so, based on innovative data from the content analysis of 9,100 press releases in seven countries. Overall, established and especially governing parties no longer shied away from EU issues, referring to them as often as challenger parties did. The likelihood of EU issues in campaigns derives from a combination of predictors from the selective emphasis and co-orientation approaches. In general, parties with high internal dissent on EU integration avoid European issues, and weak leaders will only dare talk about the EU if internal dissent is low. However, between-party-type comparisons indicate that successful leaderships of governing parties facing strong internal divisions are even less likely to put EU issues on the agenda. With respect to the co-orientation model, parties' EU focus seems to be mainly determined by the communication of (other) opposition parties.

Economic considerations, identity related considerations and cueing theory are used for explaining citizens' attitudes towards the European Union. Yet, all of this research has failed to show how elite cues on interests and identities actually reach the citizens. As a consequence, the author argues that domestic mass media as the most widely used source for citizens' information about the European Union has the potential to fill this missing link. Mass media actively construct reality by promoting ideas (agenda-setting and framing) and thereby shaping processes of socialization and persuasion. In this article the author discusses theoretical concepts of how mass media might affect citizens' attitudes, summarizes what we know about the role of domestic mass media in the course of EU integration, derives research desiderates and finally shows why knowledge on the link between mass media and citizens is paramount to understand the future of EU integration.

We conceptualize and measure right‐wing populism (RWP) as a three‐dimensional concept, explicitly and implicitly, based on online surveys and implicit association tests (IATs) in Germany and Switzerland. Confirmatory factor analyses show that explicit populism, nativism, and authoritarianism establish the latent RWP‐construct and that they are each related to their respective implicit counterpart. However, RWP ideology does not exist as an equally robust construct in the implicit realm as it does in the explicit realm. Resulting implicit‐explicit incongruence is psychologically meaningful in that it is moderated by willingness to comply with perceived social norms: For participants who perceive that their own political views differ from their social environment and who conceal their diverging opinions, implicit attitudes differ more strongly from explicit attitudes. This supports our rationale that explicit expression of RWP‐ideology is subject to social‐compatibility concerns. Hence, corresponding implicit attitudes are useful to fully assess the RWP potential within society.

Der Datensatz enthält Variablen einer manuellen Inhaltsanalyse zum Thema Lebensmittelsicherheit, für den drei verschiedene Typen von Dokumenten analysiert wurden: 1. Texte von Webseiten, 2. Artikel aus Printmedien sowie 3. Dokumente der politischen Agenda (Plenardebatten sowie Dokumente relevanter Ausschüsse).
Die Variablen lassen sich auf zwei verschiedenen Ebenen verorten – auf der Ebene der Dokumente sowie auf der Ebene der Sprechenden/Aussagen. Für die Webseiten-Texte sowie Printmedien-Artikel konnten maximal drei verschiedene Sprechende/Aussagen codiert werden, für die Dokumente der politischen Agenda beliebig viele Sprechende/Aussagen.
Die Codierungen auf der Ebene der Dokumente umfassen neben Metadaten (bspw. Veröffentlichungsdatum, Zentralität des Themas Lebensmittelsicherheit im Artikel) auch Angaben zur Initiierung der Dokumente (Ereignisse) sowie Referenzen innerhalb der Dokumente zu (anderen) Medien.
Die Codierungen auf der Ebene der Sprechenden/Aussagen umfasst einzelne Elemente von Frames. Dabei handelt es sich um Variablen zur genaueren Spezifizierung des angesprochenen Problems innerhalb des Themas Lebensmittelsicherheit, sowie die Benennung von Gründen / Folgen / Lösungsvorschlägen.

Themen: Art des Dokuments; Monat des Crawlens / der Veröffentlichung; Land; Name der Zeitung; Titel (Überschrift Offline-Dokumente); URL der Seite; Domain, zu der die Seite gehört; Organisation, zu der die Domain der Seite gehört; soziale Gruppe und Land des Akteurs, der die Seite herausgibt; Datum der Veröffentlichung; Art des Artikels; Art des politischen Dokuments; Art des Plenumsdokuments; Initiator des Geschäfts im politischen Dokument; reales Ereignis, das das Verfassen des Dokuments angeregt hat; Zentralität des Themas; Verweis auf andere Online- oder Offline-Medien; Rang des wichtigsten Akteurs; Name und Vorname des Akteurs; Name der Organisation, der der Akteur angehört; zusätzliche Informationen über die Funktion des Akteurs; soziale Gruppe des Akteurs; organisatorische Ausdehnung der Organisation oder Institution, der der Akteur angehört; Land des Akteurs/der Organisation, der der Akteur angehört; Parteizugehörigkeit des Akteurs; vom Autor angesprochener Adressat; soziale Gruppe des Adressaten; Reichweite des Adressaten; Land des Adressaten; Parteizugehörigkeit des Adressaten; Problemdefinition des Lebensmittelproblems; Art des fraglichen Lebensmittels; Bewertung des Lebensmittelproblems durch den Autor; spezifische Perspektive, die der Akteur auf das Lebensmittelproblem einnimmt; Ursache des Problems; Folgen; Lösungsvorschläge.

Zusätzlich kodiert: ID des Dokuments; Name des Codierers; Indikator für Primärfälle; Filter.

Der Datenbank-Dump in SIARD-Format liegt unter der Studiennummer ZA5183 vor.

Die SIARD-Datenbank enthält die Inhaltsanalyse zum Thema Lebensmittelsicherheit, für den drei verschiedene Typen von Dokumenten analysiert wurden: 1. Texte von Webseiten, 2. Artikel aus Printmedien sowie 3. Dokumente der politischen Agenda (Plenardebatten sowie Dokumente relevanter Ausschüsse).
Die Variablen lassen sich auf zwei verschiedenen Ebenen verorten – auf der Ebene der Dokumente sowie auf der Ebene der Sprechenden/Aussagen. Für die Webseiten-Texte sowie Printmedien-Artikel konnten maximal drei verschiedene Sprechende/Aussagen codiert werden, für die Dokumente der politischen Agenda beliebig viele Sprechende/Aussagen.
Die Codierungen auf der Ebene der Dokumente umfassen neben Metadaten (bspw. Veröffentlichungsdatum, Zentralität des Themas Lebensmittelsicherheit im Artikel) auch Angaben zur Initiierung der Dokumente (Ereignisse) sowie Referenzen innerhalb der Dokumente zu (anderen) Medien.
Die Codierungen auf der Ebene der Sprechenden/Aussagen umfasst einzelne Elemente von Frames. Dabei handelt es sich um Variablen zur genaueren Spezifizierung des angesprochenen Problems innerhalb des Themas Lebensmittelsicherheit, sowie die Benennung von Gründen / Folgen / Lösungsvorschlägen.

Themen: Art des Dokuments; Monat des Crawlens / der Veröffentlichung; Land; Name der Zeitung; Titel (Überschrift Offline-Dokumente); URL der Seite; Domain, zu der die Seite gehört; Organisation, zu der die Domain der Seite gehört; soziale Gruppe und Land des Akteurs, der die Seite herausgibt; Datum der Veröffentlichung; Art des Artikels; Art des politischen Dokuments; Art des Plenumsdokuments; Initiator des Geschäfts im politischen Dokument; reales Ereignis, das das Verfassen des Dokuments angeregt hat; Zentralität des Themas; Verweis auf andere Online- oder Offline-Medien; Rang des wichtigsten Akteurs; Name und Vorname des Akteurs; Name der Organisation, der der Akteur angehört; zusätzliche Informationen über die Funktion des Akteurs; soziale Gruppe des Akteurs; organisatorische Ausdehnung der Organisation oder Institution, der der Akteur angehört; Land des Akteurs/der Organisation, der der Akteur angehört; Parteizugehörigkeit des Akteurs; vom Autor angesprochener Adressat; soziale Gruppe des Adressaten; Reichweite des Adressaten; Land des Adressaten; Parteizugehörigkeit des Adressaten; Problemdefinition des Lebensmittelproblems; Art des fraglichen Lebensmittels; Bewertung des Lebensmittelproblems durch den Autor; spezifische Perspektive, die der Akteur auf das Lebensmittelproblem einnimmt; Ursache des Problems; Folgen; Lösungsvorschläge.

Eine Vercodung der Analyse im SPSS- und Stata-Format liegt unter der Studiennummer ZA6794 vor.