an article by Edda Humprecht (University of Zurich, Switzerland) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 22 Issue 13 (2019)
Abstract
How does the content of so-called ‘fake news’ differ across Western democracies?
While previous research on online disinformation has focused on the individual level, the current study aims to shed light on cross-national differences. It compares online disinformation re-published by fact checkers from four Western democracies (the US, the UK, Germany, and Austria).
The findings reveal significant differences between English-speaking and German-speaking countries.
In the US and the UK, the largest shares of partisan disinformation are found, while in Germany and Austria sensationalist stories prevail. Moreover, in English-speaking countries, disinformation frequently attacks political actors, whereas in German-speaking countries, immigrants are most frequently targeted.
Across all of the countries, topics of false stories strongly mirror national news agendas.
Based on these results, the paper argues that online disinformation is not only a technology-driven phenomenon but also shaped by national information environments.
Showing posts with label content_analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label content_analysis. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 November 2019
Tuesday, 25 June 2019
It’s the EU immigrants stupid! UKIP’s core-issue and populist rhetoric on the road to Brexit
an article by Ceri Hughes (University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA) published in European Journal of Communication Volume 34 Issue 3 (June 2019)
Abstract
The 2016 vote to leave the European Union was one of the biggest developments in recent United Kingdom political history. Only one political party was wholly united for Brexit – the United Kingdom Independence Party.
This research finds that in the years leading up to Brexit, the United Kingdom Independence Party presented itself as a rigid core-issue complete-populist party. Content analysis shows how pervasive the European Union was in much of the party output and in the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the party.
The party also utilizes complete-populist rhetoric, with ‘othering’ populism as the most prevalent form. The consistent concentration on the European Union collocated with populist messaging, in both news releases and select newspaper coverage, may have helped afford the United Kingdom Independence Party issue-eliteness in the referendum campaign.
But this same work may have also ultimately contributed to make them irrelevant by 2017, and possibly moribund by 2018.
Hazel’s comment:
So irrelevant that Farage set up yet another minot political party!
Abstract
The 2016 vote to leave the European Union was one of the biggest developments in recent United Kingdom political history. Only one political party was wholly united for Brexit – the United Kingdom Independence Party.
This research finds that in the years leading up to Brexit, the United Kingdom Independence Party presented itself as a rigid core-issue complete-populist party. Content analysis shows how pervasive the European Union was in much of the party output and in the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the party.
The party also utilizes complete-populist rhetoric, with ‘othering’ populism as the most prevalent form. The consistent concentration on the European Union collocated with populist messaging, in both news releases and select newspaper coverage, may have helped afford the United Kingdom Independence Party issue-eliteness in the referendum campaign.
But this same work may have also ultimately contributed to make them irrelevant by 2017, and possibly moribund by 2018.
Hazel’s comment:
So irrelevant that Farage set up yet another minot political party!
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
Voice, silence and social class on television
an article by Peter Jakobsson and Fredrik Stiernstedt (Södertörn University, Sweden) published in European Journal of Communication Volume 33 Issue 5 (October 2018)
Abstract
The question of voice is a central and timeless political issue. Who gets to speak? Who is silenced? Who is listening? One of the main arenas for voice in modern, advanced democracies is the media.
Media infrastructures, technologies, institutions and organizations are a precondition for political voice in large-scale societies, but are also an important factor in distributing the possibilities for voice among different groups and sectors of the population.
In this article, we take on the question of voice in relation to social class and aim to analyse how the medium of television gives voice to people from different social classes.
This study operationalizes the theoretical notion of voice by asking the following questions:
Television thus constructs a social hierarchy of voice and authority that reproduces and legitimizes already existing social hierarchies.
Abstract
The question of voice is a central and timeless political issue. Who gets to speak? Who is silenced? Who is listening? One of the main arenas for voice in modern, advanced democracies is the media.
Media infrastructures, technologies, institutions and organizations are a precondition for political voice in large-scale societies, but are also an important factor in distributing the possibilities for voice among different groups and sectors of the population.
In this article, we take on the question of voice in relation to social class and aim to analyse how the medium of television gives voice to people from different social classes.
This study operationalizes the theoretical notion of voice by asking the following questions:
- who has the opportunity to appear and speak on television,
- to whom do they speak and
- under what circumstances does this communication occur?
Television thus constructs a social hierarchy of voice and authority that reproduces and legitimizes already existing social hierarchies.
Monday, 13 October 2014
Framing fraud: Discourse on benefit cheating in Sweden and the UK
an article by Ragnar Lundström (Umeå University, Sweden) published in European Journal of Communication Volume 28 Number 6 (December 2013)
Abstract
This article analyses discourse on benefit fraud in Swedish and British newspapers. It furthermore compares discourse on fraud in newspapers and political blogs in the two countries. In Sweden, fraud is primarily articulated as a collective social problem in policy discussions related to the health insurance programme. In the UK, it is often articulated employing strategies commonly associated with crime news narratives, and centred on images of individual cheaters.
The main result of the analysis presented here is that these observed differences between British and Swedish media representations are related to the ways in which the relationship between the welfare state and the citizens traditionally have been constructed in liberal and social democratic contexts respectively. Political attempts to highlight the issue of benefit fraud, and dominant media representations of such attempts, must therefore be understood not as attempts to combat fraud, but rather as attempts to delegitimise the more general aim and purpose of the welfare state.
They challenge the deservingness of welfare recipients in general, not just the ones that cheat, and they thereby transform the conditions for public trust in the welfare state. News discourse on fraud in both countries establishes a neoliberal, financialised and individualised notion of welfare dependency, through which the relationship between social and structural circumstances on the one hand, and poverty, exclusion and inequality on the other, become blurred.
The comparison of newspapers and blogs suggests that although dominant media representations are contested through citizen-created journalism in both contexts, they also limit the conditions for discursive struggles over the issue of benefit fraud significantly.
Abstract
This article analyses discourse on benefit fraud in Swedish and British newspapers. It furthermore compares discourse on fraud in newspapers and political blogs in the two countries. In Sweden, fraud is primarily articulated as a collective social problem in policy discussions related to the health insurance programme. In the UK, it is often articulated employing strategies commonly associated with crime news narratives, and centred on images of individual cheaters.
The main result of the analysis presented here is that these observed differences between British and Swedish media representations are related to the ways in which the relationship between the welfare state and the citizens traditionally have been constructed in liberal and social democratic contexts respectively. Political attempts to highlight the issue of benefit fraud, and dominant media representations of such attempts, must therefore be understood not as attempts to combat fraud, but rather as attempts to delegitimise the more general aim and purpose of the welfare state.
They challenge the deservingness of welfare recipients in general, not just the ones that cheat, and they thereby transform the conditions for public trust in the welfare state. News discourse on fraud in both countries establishes a neoliberal, financialised and individualised notion of welfare dependency, through which the relationship between social and structural circumstances on the one hand, and poverty, exclusion and inequality on the other, become blurred.
The comparison of newspapers and blogs suggests that although dominant media representations are contested through citizen-created journalism in both contexts, they also limit the conditions for discursive struggles over the issue of benefit fraud significantly.
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