0000000000010744
AUTHOR
Jörg Haßler
Keep Them Engaged! Investigating the Effects of Self-centered Social Media Communication Style on User Engagement in 12 European Countries
On Facebook, patterns of user engagement largely shape what types of political contents citizens can see on the platform. Higher engagement leads to higher visibility. Therefore, one of the major goals of political actors' Facebook communication is to produce content with the potential to provoke user engagement, and thereby increase their own visibility. This study introduces the concept of self-centered social media communication style which focuses on 'salient' and 'owned' issues with populist and negative appeals and investigates how user engagement is related to its main elements. We also explore how users' receptivity to these content-related factors is shaped by country context. More…
Ergebnisse: Der Klimawandel in Medien und Politik
Der direkte Vergleich medialer und politischer Kommunikationskanale macht einen Abgleich der inhaltlichen Erfolgsbedingungen von Medien und Politik moglich. Um ein umfassendes Bild der Klimaberichterstattung in den beiden untersuchten gesellschaftlichen Teilbereichen sowie in Offline- und Online-Kommunikationskanalen zu erhalten, wird im folgenden Kapitel dreistufig vorgegangen.
Die Mediatisierung der Politik
Zwischen Politik und Medien besteht in modernen Demokratien eine enge Wechselbeziehung. In der massenmedialen Berichterstattung nehmen Beitrage uber Politik einen wesentlichen Teil ein. Die Medien sind hierdurch auch kontinuierlich auf Informationen aus der Politik angewiesen (Bennett, 1990; Bennett, Lawrence & Livingston, 2006; Hagen, 1992).
Campaigning in the fourth age of political communication. A multi-method study on the use of Facebook by German and Austrian parties in the 2013 national election campaigns
Starting from the contribution to the discussion on a fourth age of political communication, here we argue that, as a consequence of how the Web 2.0 has changed political campaigns, the theoretical...
Reaching Out to the Europeans. Political Parties’ Facebook Strategies of Issue Ownership and the Second-Order Character of European Election Campaigns
The European Election campaign 2019 enjoyed heightened attention in the European and global public due to the recent emergence of populist actors, new parties, and large European issues such as immigration, climate change, and Brexit. Starting theoretically from the issue ownership theory, shareworthiness, and the second-order character of European elections, the study at hand investigates the campaigns of 69 parties from 9 countries on Facebook as one of the current central spheres of electoral contest. Facebook enables parties to provide users with selected issues considered advantageous for themselves. The number of posts’ shares indicates whether the parties manage to reach out to the v…
Information Greater than Mobilisation Greater than Interaction: Contours of a Pan-European Style of Social Media Campaigning
This chapter compares the Facebook campaigns of 90 political parties aggregated by the political groups in the EP to which they belong from 12 countries in the 2019 EP election. Based on these results we identify the contours of a pan-European style of social media campaigning that can be described as follows: national contexts dominated and framed the EP elections. In comparison to the three key functions of election campaigns, parties place the most importance by far on information in their use of social media. Calls for mobilisation play a certain role, while the parties seem hardly interested in interactions. The ongoing neglect of social media’s interactive potential in politics calls …
Campaigning for Strasbourg on Facebook: Introduction to a 12-Country Comparison on Parties’ Facebook Campaigns in the 2019 European Parliament Election
European Parliament (EP) elections provide an ideal context for comparative studies on the communication strategies of political parties at national and European level. The 2019 EP election campaign allows analysing how the different political parties use Facebook to inform, interact with and mobilise voters. The study of the electoral campaign also enables the identification of differences and similarities between countries and between parties. This chapter introduces an edited volume that presents results of a quantitative content analysis of more than 12,000 Facebook posts published by political parties from 12 European countries in the last four weeks before the 2019 EP election. It des…
Looking over the channel: The balance of media coverage about the “refugee crisis” in Germany and the UK
Abstract This study compares the balance of newspaper and television news coverage about migration in two countries that were differently affected by the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 in terms of the geopolitical involvement and numbers of migrants being admitted. Based on a broad consensus among political elites, Germany left its borders open and received about one million migrants mainly from Syria during 2015. In contrast, the conservative British government was heavily attacked by oppositional parties for closing Britain’s borders and, thus, restricting immigration. These different initial situations led to remarkable differences between the news coverage in both countries. In line…
Wie Menschen zukünftige Temperaturveränderungen durch den Klimawandel einschätzen
In seinen nunmehr 25 Jahren am Mainzer Institut fur Publizistik hat sich Erich Lamp nicht nur immer wieder mit der Macht der offentlichen Meinung beschaftigt, sondern auch in unzahligen Methodenkursen Umfrageforschung gemeinsam mit den Studierenden sogenannte Split-Ballot-Experimente durchgefuhrt.
European Issues, but National Campaigning of German Parties
Germany is a political and economic heavyweight in the European Union and political issues that demand for European solutions rather than national policies, like migration or climate change, gained importance on the German public agenda in recent years. Nonetheless, EP elections regularly have the status of second-order elections when it comes to campaigning efforts as well as voter turnout. In 2019, the election turnout was extraordinarily high, and as this chapter shows, German parties focused on political issues mostly addressing the EU level. Implementing successful Facebook campaigns by initiating user engagement and emphasising issues ‘owned’ by their parties, the Greens and the right…
Die Mediatisierung der Klimapolitik
Die Mediatisierungsthese lautet, dass die Politik zunehmend mediale Erfolgsbedingungen ubernimmt (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999). Diese Annahme betrifft sowohl den Wahlkampf als auch die Tagespolitik. Da Politik insgesamt ein auserst komplexer gesellschaftlicher Teilbereich ist, bietet es sich aus analytischen Grunden an, einzelne Aspekte in den Blick zu nehmen.
Instagram and political campaigning in the 2017 German federal election. A quantitative content analysis of German top politicians’ and parliamentary parties’ posts
This article compares the communication strategies of party and candidate accounts on Instagram during the 2017 German federal election. Building upon previous research, we conceptualize how the di...
Social Media as a Campaigning Tool in Elections: Theoretical Considerations and State of Research
To extend their reach to supporters and voters, three election campaign functions are key to political actors: information, interaction and mobilisation. We argue that these three functions are interrelated and function most successfully through interrelationship. Thus, the distinction between top-down and bottom-up communication appears to be rather artificial in the context of online campaigns. In campaign practice, both directions are rather closely linked. Our theoretical framework shows how Facebook can be used specifically to realise the three key functions and provides the background for the following chapters for analysing how political parties actually use Facebook in European Parl…
Empirische Befunde zur Mediatisierung der Politik
Das offentliche Bild von Politik wird durch die Inhalte in medialen und direkten politischen Kommunikationskanalen gepragt. In modernen Demokratien bestimmt diese Offentlichkeit, welche Entscheidungen sich durchsetzen lassen und welche Akteure Amter besetzen konnen und dadurch zur Machtausubung gelangen (Gerhards, 1994). Die Inhalte der offentlichen Kommunikation sind zwar ein geeigneter Indikator fur die Beurteilung einer Ubernahme der Medienlogik durch die Politik, aber selbst wiederum durch das Handeln von Akteuren und Organisationen, durch prozessuale Zwange und formelle Vorgaben determiniert.