0000000000634206
AUTHOR
Frank Esser
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…
sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_14614448211045666 – Supplemental material for Does the platform matter? Social media and COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_14614448211045666 for Does the platform matter? Social media and COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries by Yannis Theocharis, Ana Cardenal, Soyeon Jin, Toril Aalberg, David Nicolas Hopmann, Jesper Strömbäck, Laia Castro, Frank Esser, Peter Van Aelst, Claes de Vreese, Nicoleta Corbu, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Joerg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Tamir Sheafer, Sergio Splendore, James Stanyer, Agnieszka Stępińska and Václav Štětka in New Media & Society
Comparative International Communication Projects: Overcoming the Challenges
Over the last 10-20 years, comparative research in the feld of communication has almost become fashionable. Many factors are responsible for this, for example: an increased awareness of globalisation as a communication-driven process; an awareness of increased transnational conglomerization of media organizations; and the increasing use of the Internet which facilitates easier access to information around the world. But the big question is how to organize collaborative international communication research efectively? Which models of cooperation are available to us, and what are their advantages and disadvantages? In this article, I analyze fve ways of doing collaborative researches and thei…
Navigating high-choice European political information environments : a comparative analysis of news user profiles and political knowledge
The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals in 17 European countries. Our aim is to (i) profile different types of news consumers and (ii) understand how each user profile is linked to political knowledge acquisition. Our results show that five user profiles – news minimalists, social m…
Does the platform matter? Social media and COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries
While the role of social media in the spread of conspiracy theories has received much attention, a key deficit in previous research is the lack of distinction between different types of platforms. This study places the role of social media affordances in facilitating the spread of conspiracy beliefs at the center of its enquiry. We examine the relationship between platform use and conspiracy theory beliefs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on the concept of technological affordances, we theorize that variation across key features make some platforms more fertile places for conspiracy beliefs than others. Using data from a crossnational dataset based on a two-wave online survey cond…
Does a Crisis Change News Habits? A Comparative Study of the Effects of COVID-19 on News Media Use in 17 European Countries
Abstract: Exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic unleashes multiple fundamental questions about society beyond public health. Based on the classical concept of 'need for orientation' and the literature on the role of the media in times of crisis, we investigate to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected news consumption in comparative perspective. Based on a two-wave panel survey in 17 mostly European countries, our study targets the role of both legacy news brands (TV, radio, newspapers) and so-called contemporary news media (Internet-based and social media) during this global health crisis. Our results show an overall rise of news use across countries, but only for some types of n…
Online_Appendix – Supplemental material for The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants
Supplemental material, Online_Appendix for The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants by Dominique S. Wirz, Martin Wettstein, Anne Schulz, Philipp Müller, Christian Schemer, Nicole Ernst, Frank Esser and Werner Wirth in The International Journal of Press/Politics
Framing the Press and the Publicity Process
This study examines meta-coverage in Campaign 2000, defined as (a) coverage of the behaviors, products, and performance of the news media and (b) coverage of candidates’ use of paid media, communication personnel, and other forms of strategic communication. Using a new model of press framing, a content analysis was conducted on 284 stories aired from September 4 to November 6 on ABC and NBC evening news programs. Results show that 55 stories contained enough press designators and 75 stories contained enough publicity designators to qualify for framing analysis. A small percentage (12%) contained overlapping press and publicity designators, resulting in 116 stories that qualified for framin…
The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants
The persuasiveness of right-wing populist communication has become a widely discussed topic; it is often assumed that such messages might foster anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens. The present study explores the effects of the different components of right-wing populist communication—anti-immigrant messages, populist content, and populist style—on attitudes toward immigrants. By combining a media content analysis ( N = 605 articles) with a panel survey ( N = 1,968) in metropolitan areas of four Western European countries (France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), this study analyzes how citizens’ attitudes toward immigrants are influenced by the right-wing populist commun…
News Management as News
Abstract This paper argues that the widely noticed increase in news reports about news management, government publicity and media relations must be seen as a logical outgrowth of a new, modernized and media-centred approach to policy-making and campaigning. It offers a systematic introduction to the concepts of media politics and metacoverage, develops a theoretical model to examine their relationship and applies it to the political communication dynamics of Great Britain. This paper breaks new ground in two respects: it broadens our understanding of what counter-measures media professionals take in response to political news management, and it lays out a comprehensive theoretical scheme of…
sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_14614448211045666 – Supplemental material for Does the platform matter? Social media and COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_14614448211045666 for Does the platform matter? Social media and COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries by Yannis Theocharis, Ana Cardenal, Soyeon Jin, Toril Aalberg, David Nicolas Hopmann, Jesper Strömbäck, Laia Castro, Frank Esser, Peter Van Aelst, Claes de Vreese, Nicoleta Corbu, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Joerg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Tamir Sheafer, Sergio Splendore, James Stanyer, Agnieszka Stępińska and Václav Štětka in New Media & Society
Journalistische Kultur in Großbritannien und Deutschland
Die alliierten britischen Journalismuslehrer kritisierten 1945 an der deutschen Journalismustradition vor allem die mangelnde Trennung von Nachricht und Meinung und die mangelnde Unabhangigkeit der Presse von Staat und Politik. Die historischen Ursachen fur abweichende Journalismusideale im deutschen und angelsachsischen Raum liegen unter anderem in Unterschieden der politischen Kultur, der Erfahrungen der Pressefreiheit, der Rolle der Herausbildung des Objektivitatsverstadnisses Heute spielen viele der damals fetgestellten Divergenzen keine Rolle mehr. Trotz klarer Annaherungstendenzen auf einigen Gebieten haben jedoch Entwicklungen auf anderen Gebieten dafur gesorgt, das sich die britisch…
Spin Doctors in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany: Metacommunication about Media Manipulation
This study develops a new concept in political communication theory called metacommunication. It argues that metacommunication (1) describes a new, third stage in election coverage after issue and strategy coverage; (2) reflects the mass media's new role as a political institution in the third age of political communication; and (3) can be seen as the news media's response to a new, third force in news making: professional political PR. Metacommunication is defined as the news media's self-referential reflections on the nature of the interplay between political public relations and political journalism. While metacoverage can take two forms, self-referential news and process news, the pres…
sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612211012572 - Supplemental material for Navigating High-Choice European Political Information Environments: a Comparative Analysis of News User Profiles and Political Knowledge
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612211012572 for Navigating High-Choice European Political Information Environments: a Comparative Analysis of News User Profiles and Political Knowledge by Laia Castro, Jesper Strömbäck, Frank Esser, Peter Van Aelst, Claes de Vreese, Toril Aalberg, Ana S. Cardenal, Nicoleta Corbu, David Nicolas Hopmann, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Jörg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Tamir Sheafer, Sergio Splendore, James Stanyer, Agnieszka Stępińska, Václav Štětka and Yannis Theocharis in The International Journal of Press/Politics
Spin doctoring in British and German election campaigns: How the press is being confronted with a new quality of political PR
The 1997 British and 1998 German general elections showed striking parallels and distinctive differences in the way Blair and Schroeder delivered their campaigns and defeated long-sitting conservative governments. Of vital importance was a new quality of political public relations called `spin doctoring'. In this, the British Labour Party served as a kind of role model for the German Social Democratic Party. This article traces the origins and different meanings of `spin doctoring' in both countries, distinguishes between media-related and non-media-related spin activities and analyses it against the background of the specific national contexts. The aims and methods of political spin doctor…
Nazis, Pollution, and no Sex
This article briefly summarizes the German research literature on scandal and then outlines a theory of scandal as a socially constructed communication pattern. The theory distinguishes macro- and micro-level approaches for addressing the question of which malfunctions a society selects for scandal. The manifest and latent functions of scandals are discussed with special emphasis on the role of the mass media. The authors’concept of scandal is linked to the concept of political culture. The article then reviews, from a comparative cross-national point of view, (a) scandals that were formative for the development of democratic political culture in Germany, (b) scandals that are linked to th…