0000000000135958
AUTHOR
Sven Engesser
What Drives Populist Styles? Analyzing Immigration and Labor Market News in 11 Countries
The success of populist political actors in Western democracies and the dramatization and emotionality of political communication in news media have been the object of several theoretical and empirical studies in the past decade. It has been argued that the mediatization of politics and the convergence of populist and tabloid communication styles foster these developments by mutual promotion in mass communication. This article uses a cross-national quantitative content analysis to disentangle associations among news genres, populist actors, content, and style. In spite of indisputable prevalence of populist styles in tabloid style media, populist ideology is identified as their strongest s…
The Polarizing Impact of News Coverage on Populist Attitudes in the Public: Evidence From a Panel Study in Four European Democracies
This study explores how news messages carrying parts of the populist ideology contribute to a polarization of public opinion about populism. It combines a content analysis of news coverage on two policy areas (N = 7,119 stories) with a two-wave panel survey (N = 2,338) in four European metropolitan regions (Berlin, Paris, London, and Zurich). In three regions, unopposed media messages with a populist stance have a conditional effect on populist attitudes that depends on prior convictions. A higher dose of exposure to populist news coverage enhances both prior agreement and disagreement with populism. Although the observed interaction patterns vary between regions, the general picture sugges…
An Agenda for Open Science in Communication
Contains fulltext : 226720.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called "replication crisis" has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replicatio…
Between idiosyncratic self-interests and professional standards: A contribution to the understanding of participatory journalism in Web 2.0. Results from an online survey in Germany
Not much is known about participatory journalists in Germany or further afield. We conducted a standardized quantitative online survey of participatory journalists at the German-language website myheimat, a German-based hyperlocal participatory journalism portal with about 37,000 contributors (as at September 2010). The purpose of the survey was to examine the individual characteristics of participatory journalists (sociodemographics, expertise, qualification and gender aspects). The survey also explored why they write articles for myheimat (societal/individual motivations), what they think about their role and function as grassroots journalists (identity/self-concept), what they know and …