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Focusing events, that is, crises and catastrophes, provide an opportunity for political change, learning and evaluation of governmental performance. The aim of this study was to analyse the politicization of four focusing events in the parliamentary arena, concerning framing, blame attribution, emotional appeal and solutions presented. Are there any differences between events with a varying degree of strength (stronger vs. weaker) and origin (human‐made vs. natural disasters) concerning the debate in the plenary sessions? The findings show that a stronger degree of focus results in more tendencies to portray the event as an opportunity for change. Moreover, concerning origin, natural disasters are more often discussed in terms of anger, with debate contributions posed by the opposition parties.

Democratic innovations are brought forward by political scientists as a response to worrying democratic deficits. This paper aims to evaluate the design, process, and outcome of digital democratic innovations. We study a mobile application for following local politics. Data is collected using three online surveys with different groups, and a workshop with young citizens. The results show that the app did not fully meet the democratic ideal of inclusiveness at the process stage, especially in reaching young people. However, the user groups that had used the app reported positive democratic effects.

This study sheds light on how political leaders engage in visual meaning-making on social media during a major crisis. In addition, it explores which kinds of visual messages by political leaders on social media drive high popular engagement in times of crisis. The study employs content analysis, including automatic facial expression analysis, to investigate visual communication on the Instagram accounts of three Nordic prime ministers (PMs) during the critical initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis covers visual personalization, depicted individuals, national symbols and facial expressions. Furthermore, the study explores the visual elements within the posts that garnered the highest public engagement, as measured by the number of likes and comments. The findings indicate that the PMs primarily projected an image of professional, capable and credible crisis leadership through their visual content. However, the potential for leaders to convey compassion, empathy and authenticity through visual imagery is also evident, particularly exemplified by the Danish PM. The visual content that generated the most significant public engagement predominantly consisted of videos featuring the PMs in formal professional settings, directly addressing the audience about serious matters.

Civic technology is used to improve not only policies but to reinforce politics and has the potential to strengthen democracy. A search for new ways of involving citizens in decision-making processes combined with a growing smartphone penetration rate has generated expectations around smartphones as democratic tools. However, if civic applications do not meet citizens' expectations and function poorly, they might remain unused and fail to increase interest in public issues. Therefore, there is a need to apply a citizen's perspective on civic technology. The aim of this study is to gain knowledge about how citizens' wishes and needs can be included in the design and evaluation process of a civic application. The study has an explorative approach and uses mixed methods. We analyze which democratic criteria citizens emphasize in a user-centered design process of a civic application by conducting focus groups and interviews. Moreover, a laboratory usability study measures how well two democratic criteria, inclusiveness and publicity, are met in an application. The results show that citizens do emphasize democratic criteria when participating in the design of a civic application. A user-centered design process will increase the likelihood of a usable application and can help fulfill the democratic criteria designers aim for.

The use of visual self-personalization by politicians to shape perceptions of their character and personality is a prominent form of modern political communication, especially on social media. Yet, little is known about the effect these portrayals have on the visual attention of voters and their impressions of the traits of the politicians depicted. This exploratory study examines the effects of visual self-personalization (professional vs. private focus) by Finnish political leaders of both genders on Instagram. Through a pilot laboratory study, viewers' visual attention was measured using eye-tracking technology and, in combination with this, leader trait impressions were experimentally examined. The results indicate that photos depicting politicians in professional settings are more attention grabbing and effective in shaping trait impressions than photos showing politicians in private life. Among the recommendations for future research, it is noted that gender aspects should be further explored as this study, by focusing on a gender-egalitarian country, had a limited scope in that respect.

This edited volume compares experiences of how the Covid-19 pandemic was communicated in the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The Nordic countries are often discussed in terms of similarities concerning an extensive welfare system, economic policies, media systems, and high levels of trust in societal actors. However, in the wake of a global pandemic, the countries' coping strategies varied, creating certain question marks on the existence of a "Nordic model". The chapters give a broad overview of crisis communication in the Nordic countries during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic by combining organisational and societal theoretical perspectives and encompassing crisis response from governments, public health authorities, lobbyists, corporations, news media, and citizens. The results show several similarities, such as political and governmental responses highlighting solidarity and the need for exceptional measures, as expressed in press conferences, social media posts, information campaigns, and speeches. The media coverage relied on experts and was mainly informative, with few critical investigations during the initial phases. Moreover, surveys and interviews show the importance of news media for citizens' coping strategies, but also that citizens mostly trusted both politicians and health authorities during the crisis. This book is of interest to all who are looking to understand societal crisis management on a comprehensive level. The volume contains chapters from leading experts from all the Nordic countries and is edited by a team with complementary expertise on crisis communication, political communication, and journalism, consisting of Bengt Johansson, Øyvind Ihlen, Jenny Lindholm, and Mark Blach-Ørsten.

This exploratory laboratory study analyzes emotional responses to two types of populist strategies on social media platforms. We focus on emotional responses to content expressing ordinariness (on Instagram) and victimhood (on TikTok), where the content creator is a right-wing populist leader who is unfavorably perceived by the respondents in the study. Thus, the study critically tests the effectiveness of de-demonization strategies used by populist leaders to diversify the electorate. The research employs a combination of facial expressions analysis and two self-report measures of emotions to investigate the emotional responses elicited by populist strategies in individuals belonging to an out-group. Additionally, we examine the interrelation between psychophysiological measures and self-reported emotions. In doing so, the study makes a methodological contribution by advancing our understanding of emotional response processes and the methodologies employed to measure emotional responses. The results reveal positive and negative emotional responses, challenging the prevailing emphasis on negative emotions in response to out-group communication. However, the facial expressions and the self-reported emotions do not correlate. Our interpretation underscores the role of cognitive reasoning processes in differentiating emotional responses to political out-group social media content.

Focusing events, i.e. crises and catastrophes, provide an opportunity for political change, learning and evaluation of governmental performance. Likewise, it is essential that citizens trust that their society can provide credence towards managing these situations. This study tests, in a controlled laboratory experiment, in what manner the origin (man-made versus natural disasters) and strength of focusing events affect the emotional and cognitive reactions of citizens. We used a 2-x-2 basic factorial design with post-test-only between-groups comparisons testing self-reported emotions, psychophysiological and cognitive reactions among the test subjects ( N = 30) to four different focusing events. Our findings show that an event with a stronger degree of focus brings about more emotional and cognitive reactions than an event with a weaker degree of focus, although only among events originating from man. Also, events originating from man caused stronger reactions than those originating from nature, albeit only among events with a strong degree of focus.