definition selective exposure
audience are increasingly likely to receive info that is customized to their personal tastes, interests and political viewpoint to the possible exclusion of other info
- hyperpersonalisation
- news fatigue and news avoidance
- exposure to partisan sources (strong supporters of a party) → negative impact on people’s political knowledge, they only watch one type of news and exclude the rest
differences between hard and soft news
hard news
- episodic (present an issue by offering a specific example or event)
- unemotional (presents it in a matter-of-fact style)
- political
- societal
soft news
- thematic (place issues into a broader context: covering unemployment by reporting unemployment figures, economics talking about etc.)emotional (dramatizing events, presenting them as exceptional)
- not political
- for individual
differences between low and high need for cognition
low need for cognition: people find little reward in collecting and evaluating new info to solve problems. They are likely to relay on cognitive short cuts (favor trump more)
high need for cognition: have a positive attitude towards tasks that require reading and effortful thinking. Invest more time and resources in evaluating complex issues (favor clintion and trump equally)
- strong related to political knowledge
what does antonucci’s research say about “lower and middle people are offered less socio-economic protection”
- not the lower educated, but the middle class (no education voted less for the brexit than people who graduated from high school)
- emotions and anxiety matter as well
- middle class were crucial for the final results of the brexit
somewhere’s vs anywhere’s
Somewhere’s
- more rooted (live close to where they grew up)
- ascribed identities and find rapid change unsettling
- partly the left behind: older white working class
- cultural loss by disappearance of working class culture
- ambivalent about recent social trends
- mistrust in politics, uncomfortable about cultural and economic change
- they don’t want different things than anywhere’s, just slow and in moderation
Anywhere’s:
- dominate our culture and society
- tend to do well at school (move away from home to study early in life)
- professional careers usually in urban centers (even abroad)
- achieved identities, based on educational and career success, - making them generally more comfortable and confident with new places and people.
Affective vs. ideological polarization
Ideological distance: Left liberal and right conservative
your own party is on the other side of the spectrum than the opposing party, or you rate it very differently
Affective distance: party A dislikes party B, and party B dislikes A
what type of shift happened overtime between democratic and republic voters
media are more politically polarized, as niche sources associated with extreme ideological positions appeal to growing sections of the audience. The 2 biggest left and right streamer are getting more viewers.
- increased diversification and fragmentation of communication environment
3 important processes with political campaigns (article stromback & kiousis)
- Americanisation
- Modernisation (see model for explanation)
- professionalisation
what is americanisation + why does this happen
campaigns of other countries are starting to look more like those from the USA
- by visiting campaign practitioners
- by US political consultants working abroad
- by media-coverage
2 models of campaign diffusion
- adoption model: parties import practices that are successful in the US election → result: standardization (country-soecific campaign styles go away)
- shopping model: parties study the US election and spending if it fits their own country, they use it as well. This creates professionalization of political campaigning → result: hybridization
what is meant with the professionalisation of campaign
- process of revision of structures and practices make them more rational and appropriate for contemporary politics
- more use of campaign professionals
- increasing specialization of tasks related in campaigning / communication. → focus on polling, voters segmentation and tactics
- using different campaign strategies (computerized databases, conduct research, use pr, use opinion polling etc)
contemporary politics
a process of adaptation to systematic changes in the relationships between politics, media and the electorate
internal professionalisation vs external professionalisation
internal professionalisation= process where more people working within the parties acquire greater knowledge within the field. Size of staff grows.
external professionalization= process where parties and consultants with increasingly hire professional, external advisors
small explanation of the model from stromback & kiousis
- policy-seeking parties (product oriented)
- office-seeking parties (sales oriented)
- vote-seeking parties (market-oriented)
–> they come together and do face-to-face meetings, phonem direct mail, webpages, social media, blogs etc etc.
–> each party seperates again: - parliamentary arena (maxime parliamentarly influence, stakeholders: parliament members)
- internal arena (maximize internal cohesion, stakeholders: representatives for and within political party)
- electoral arena (maximize voter support, stakeholders: different voter groups and segments target by the party)
<–
! media arena influences all arena (maximize positive visibility, stakeholder: journalists and editior swith influence on media visibility)
conclusion article van prooijen & Krouwel: psychological features of extreme political ideologies
- they argue that psychological distress –> extreme ideological outlook
- extreme ideologies are characterized by a black and white perception of the social world
- because of such mental this, they are overconfident in their judgment
- they are less tolerant of different groups and opinions than political moderators
mental and cognitive simplicity vs. complexity
- simplicity: this is all you get to see and know. Opinions, perceptions and vbelieves are constructed at this level rather than the fundamentals and foundational elements
- complexity: this is what is hidden and forced to be ignored but needs to be comprehended. It consists of fundamentals and foundational elements. Understanding of this guarantees high level of cognition abilities. Knowing this also mean you know the outcome of simplicity.
belief superiority
the (over) confidence that some person accurately understand reality better than others
what happend if you have cognitive simplicty and belief superiority at once
less tolerant of different groups and opinions.
They believe that their moral judgements are moral absolutes that reflect a simple and universal truth.
RQ and results Article Narayanan et al.: polarization, partisanshio and junk news consumption over social media in the US
RQ:
- on Twitter, a network of Trump supporters share the widest range of known junk news sources and circulates more junk news than all the other groups put together
- on Facebook, extreme hard right pages share the widest range of known junk news sources and circulate more junk news than all the other audiences out together
- on average, the audience on twitter share a wider range of known junk news sources than audiences on facebook’s public pages
results:
- trump support & conservative media has a high coverage & a high consistency
- they share the widest range of junk sources
- they contribute more to the dissemination of junk news, compared to all other groups put together
- RQ are true
- trump supporters are very isolated and is a strong in-group
most important characteristics factors of junk news
- professionalism: don’t employ the standards and best practices. They lack transparency, accountability and don’t publish corrections on debunked info
- style: emotionally driven language with emotive expressions, hyperbole, misleading headlines tec.
- credibility: rely on false info and conspiracy theories. Reporting without consulting multiple sources and don’t employ fact-checking methods
- bias: highly biased and ideologically skewed. Hyper-partisan reporting.
- counterfeit: mimicking professional news media, Counterfeit fonts, branding and stylistic content strategies. It’s disguised as news
difference between coverage and consistency
coverage = the percentage of all propaganda domains identified in the junk news sources list that a group posted links to. High coverages values shows that the group is sharing a wide range of propaganda
consistency= the percentage of the total number of links to all the propaganda domains in the junk news sources list, that is shared by the group. High consistency values shows that the group is playing a key role in the spreading of such propaganda.
heterophily in the articles about trumps (re)tweets and his supporters
measure of connections between groups in a network. It’s a ratio calculated of the actual ties between 2 groups, compared with the expected number of ties between them.
high score: more connections between 2 groups
low score: indicates a high number within-group connections
- trump was low score, hillary a high score
RQ and results article van Prooijen & Krouwel: political extremism predicts belief in conspiracy theories
RQ: political extremisms and conspiracy belief are strongly related due to a highly structured thinking style that is aimed at making sense of social events.
- 4 studies done about this topic
all had similar results
- research question is true
- left wing solution –> left higher and the same goes for right
- simple soltions”left and right had the same thinking style
what are characteristics that you’re more likely to have if your’re an extremist?
- have economic fear and anxiety
- have dogmatic intolerance
- denial that there’s free speech
- support for antisocial behavior
- overclaim knowledge
- derogation of societal groups
