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Data de publicació electrònica: 29 de novembre de 2022 Data suggests that the majority of citizens in various countries came across ‘fake news’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. We test the relationship between perceived prevalence of misinformation and people’s worries about COVID-19. In Study 1, analyses of a survey across 17 countries indicate a positive association: perceptions of high prevalence of misinformation are correlated with high worries about COVID-19. However, the relationship is weaker in countries with higher levels of case-fatality ratios, and independent from the actual amount of misinformation per country. Study 2 replicates the relationship using experimental data. Furthermore, Study 2 demonstrates the underlying mechanism, that is, perceived prevalence of misinformation fosters the belief that COVID-19 is spiralling out of control, which in turn, increases worries. Our findings suggest that perceived prevalence of misinformation can have significant psychological effects, even though audience members reject the information as being false.

A widely believed claim is that citizens tend to selectively expose themselves to like-minded information. However, when individuals find the information useful, they are more likely to consume cross-cutting sources. While crises such as terror attacks and pandemics can enhance the utility of cross-cutting information, empirical evidence on the role of real-world external threats in selective exposure is scarce. This paper examines the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to test the extent to which citizens were exposed to information from cross-cutting sources on traditional and social media after the outbreak. Utilizing a two-wave panel survey among 14,218 participants across 17 countries - conducted before and after the initial outbreak - we show that citizens concerned about COVID-19 were more exposed to cross-cutting information on traditional and social media. The positive relationship with cross-cutting exposure to traditional news was stronger in countries where governments adopted less stringent policy responses, and in countries with greater pandemic severity and weaker democratic institutions. Our comparative approach thus sheds light on the social and political contexts in which cross-cutting exposure can occur.

In contrast to beliefs in specific conspiracy theories, conspiratorial predispositions refer to people's propensity to view the world in conspiratorial terms. As such, they are one of the most important antecedents of beliefs in specific conspiracy theories. Understanding the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions is hence important. Despite this, there is still only limited research on the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions. Previous research has also not taken the role of media use into account, even though media constitute the most important source of politically and societally information. To remedy this, in the current study we use a large-scale panel study in Sweden to investigate the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions, with a particular focus on the role of media use. Among other things, the results show that use of right-wing political alternative media is one of the most important antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions, even when accounting for ideological leaning and ideological extremity.

This chapter reviews how the transformation from low-choice to high-choice media environments has facilitated (a) the flow of mis- and disinformation and (b) politically motivated selective exposure and reasoning, and how this combination facilitates and increases knowledge resistance.

While ample research on audience trust in the news media uses survey questions that ask respondents about their trust in a generic “news media,” only scant research has investigated what types of news outlets respondents have in mind when answering such questions. These previous investigations originated mostly in the US and resulted in inconsistent findings. To further investigate this question, we use data from a large-scale survey (N = 2,337), collected in Sweden, including both general media trust measures and specific measures about trust in 20 mainstream and nonmainstream news outlets. The results demonstrate that our respondents seemingly averaged across all mainstream sources when they formed their general evaluations of the news media’s trustworthiness.

This chapter reviews current threats again public service broadcasting in Sweden, based on a literature review and analysis of the political debate. The major threats identified are an ambition from political parties to the right to decrease the resources of public service and limits its mission, an ambition from political parties to the right to increase the political control of public service, and a long-term campaign of politically motivated criticism – not supported by research – depicting public service as politically biased to the left.

There are three overarching threats to public broad- casting in Sweden. As this report will show, one is the threat to the capacity of public broadcast- ing institutions to fulfil their mission, the secondis the threat to the independence of public broadcasting institutions themselves, and the third is the long-term campaign to portray the public broadcasting as left-wing and biased, thereby undermine trust in public broadcasting. In order to understand these threats, it is important to first paint a picture of what the mission of public broadcasting in Sweden is.

Whether political communication research is media-centric or politics-centric is an interesting question. In this article, I argue however that it is important is to clarify whether the answer depe...

This report builds on interviews with former politicians who have turned lobbyists, and investigates how those who have experiences of both being lobbied and being lobbyists reflects on the relationship between politicians and political decision-making on the one hand and lobbyists and lobbyism on the other.

Against the background of claims that Sweden is a country in steep decline or on the verge of collapsing or experiencing a system collapse, this report examines how Sweden is ranked in altogether 49 internationally comparative indices and rankings.

How citizens’ perceptions of societal problems are shaped by media use has been a critical question in media effects research for decades. This study addresses a specific puzzle concerning media effects in contemporary fragmented media environments: the dual role of media trust as both (a) an antecedent variable guiding news selection and (b) a moderator variable conditioning the effects of news use on perceptions of societal problems. Building upon the differential susceptibility to media effects model, we analyze the role of media trust for citizens’ orientation towards mainstream and alternative news media—and how such usage influences perceptions of two major societal issues: health care and school. Findings from a four-wave panel survey conducted in Sweden suggest that public service and alternative news use matter for citizens’ perceptions of societal problems and that media trust influences news choices and may, partly, condition media effects.

This chapter investigates the antecedents and correlates of conspiratorial predispositions, using the annual Swedish SOM-survey. Among other things, the results show that there is a correlation between stronger conspiratorial predispositions on the one hand, and education, social trust, and media use on the other.

In this report, it is compared how Sweden is ranked in 49 international indices and rankings that have been published during the last five years. The results show that Sweden generally is ranked as one of the leading countries.

The policy of free movement—one of the core principles of the European Union—has become increasingly politicized. This makes it more important to understand how attitudes toward free movement are shaped, and the role of the media. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how news frames affect attitudes toward free movement, and whether education moderates framing effects. The findings from a survey experiment conducted in seven European countries show that the effects are few and inconsistent across countries. This suggest that these attitudes are not easily shifted by exposure to a single news frame.

In a time when freedom of movement is being challenged by an increasing number of European Union member states, and where immigration has been dominating public debate for years, this study investi...

Over the last decade, issues related to immigration have become increasingly salient across Western democracies. This increasing salience has made it more important to understand people’s attitudes toward immigration, including the effects of media use on those attitudes. Differentiating between attitudes toward different types of immigration, attitudes toward immigration from different parts of the world, and perceptions of immigration’s impact, this article investigates the effects of media use on attitudes toward and perceptions of immigration in Sweden. Based on a three-year, three-wave panel study, it investigates the effects of media use on the individual level. Among other things, results show that there are limited effects of using traditional news media but more substantial effects on people’s immigration attitudes of using anti-immigration, right-wing alternative media and pro-immigration, left-wing alternative media. These findings imply that it is highly relevant to account for media use, especially alternative media use, when studying public attitudes toward immigration. Further, we find that variations in people’s immigration attitudes, to a high degree, depend on the type of immigration and on where migrants are coming from. This finding underlines the importance of measuring both of these aspects when the aim is understanding general attitudes toward immigration and/or key predictors behind immigration attitudes.

The transformation from low- to high-choice media environments has triggered concerns of rising inequalities in news media use. This concern has been buttressed by research showing that motivational factors have become more important predictors of news media use. Less attention has been paid to how changes in media environments have altered the impact of socioeconomic status on news media use. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the changing impact of socioeconomic status on newspaper and television news consumption, empirically focussing on Sweden between 2000 and 2016. Among other things, results suggest that the impact of socioeconomic status on news media use has increased with respect to reading morning newspapers but decreased for reading tabloids and watching television news.

Scholars have raised concerns that on many issues, citizens are reluctant to trust factual evidence and statistics. One factor that has been shown to impact the perceived truth in statistics is how they are presented, where negatively framed statistics are perceived as truer than positive. This study explores when this bias applies and not. Results from a survey experiment confirm the presence of a negativity bias in truth perceptions, but also that effects are heterogeneous and moderated by, in particular, the recipients’ preexisting opinions. These findings provide valuable information to public actors responsible for disseminating factual information to diverse publics.

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 conducted in 17 countries before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Twitter has a negative effect on conspiracy beliefs—as opposed to all other platforms under examination which are found to have a positive effect.

Although research shows that there is a correlation between political interest and news media use, whether there are reciprocal effects between political interest and news media use remain unsettled. To remedy this and go beyond previous research, this study seeks to investigate the reciprocal relationship between political interest and TV news use (a) across elections, (b) across election periods and a nonelection period, and (c) comparing public service and commercial TV news. Using four representative panel surveys, findings show that there is a reciprocal relationship between political interest and watching public service but not commercial TV news.

With the migration from traditional news media to social media, understanding how citizens learn about politics and current affairs from these sources has become increasingly important. Based on the concept of network media logic, distinct from traditional mass media logic, this study investigates whether using social media as a source of political news compensates for not using traditional news media in terms of political and current affairs learning. Using two panel studies conducted in two different political contexts—an election setting and a nonelection setting—the results show positive learning effects from using traditional news media and online news websites, but not from using social media. Taken together, the findings suggest that using social media to follow news about politics and current affairs does not compensate for not using traditional news media in terms of learning a diverse and broad set of general political news.

One of the key democratic functions of the media is to provide people with the kind of information they need to be free and self-governing. This is equally important when it comes to the coverage of opinion polls. Thus far, there is however only limited research on the quality of the media’s coverage of opinion polls, including factors that might help to explain variation in the quality of opinion poll coverage. Against this background, the purpose of this study is (1) to investigate the extent to which news media take statistical uncertainties into account when covering opinion polls and making causal interpretations based on opinion polls, and (2) to explore some factors that might help to explain variation in the quality of opinion poll coverage. Among other things, the results show that journalists very often fail to take statistical uncertainties into account and that they, in about half of the cases, provide explanations for changes that are within the margin of error. The results also show that the...

Political public relations as practice dates back to ancient times, but today, public relations strategies and tactics are probably more ubiquitous in political communication processes than ever. Still, there is only limited theory and research that focuses on political public relations which manages to bridge the gap between political communication, public relations, and political science theory and research. Against this background, this chapter reviews theory and research from different disciplines that are relevant to understand political public relations, maps the field of political public relations research, and offers a definition of political public relations. More specifically, political public relations is defined as the management process by which an actor for political purposes, through communication and action, seeks to influence and to establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with key publics and stakeholders to help support its mission and achieve its goals. The chapter ends by outlining the chapters in the book.

As shown throughout the chapters in this volume, the topic of political public relations is a vibrant one meriting additional theoretical development and empirical scrutiny. Based on the conceptualizations presented throughout the previous chapters, political public relations is clearly an interdisciplinary subject lying at the crossroads of public relations, political communication, political science, and adjacent fields. While much work in this area has been isolated and independent in the past, we continue to advocate for the integration and convergence of theories, concepts, and principles in contemporary and future research. This is largely based on the notion that political public relations has a rich scholarly history that has developed in isolation in multiple fields.

In recent years, a number of studies have suggested a positive linkage between public service broadcasting and public knowledge about current affairs. Most studies are, however, based on aggregate, cross-sectional data. On the individual level they fall short of establishing any causal linkage between TV news exposure and public knowledge. In addition, studies which investigate whether the intensity of the political information environment matters for learning effects from watching TV news, are missing. Against this background, this study compares knowledge effects from watching public service and commercial TV news in three contexts that vary in the intensity of the political information environment: a national election campaign, a European parliamentary election campaign and a non-election period. Among other things, the results show stronger knowledge effects from watching public service than commercial TV news.

In his famous book, Social science concepts: A systematic analysis (1984), Giovanni Sartori (1984) is hard on his fellow scholars in the social sciences. Bemoaning a lack of conceptual clarity and a widespread collective ambiguity of social science concepts, he diagnoses a “state of chaos” in most social science disciplines and calls for concept reconstruction as “a highly needed therapy” (pp. 41-42). Although Sartori did not explicitly refer to populism in the context of these remarks, it seems fair to say that they apply to this concept. Populism surely ranks among the most popular and, at the same time, most contested concepts in the social sciences. Numerous articles and chapters have been written about how populism should best be dened and which elements “really” constitute populism. However, there is still no consensus about what the term should describe. Of course, it can be argued that it is usual for social science concepts to be contested and that alternative conceptualizations and denitions provide scholars with the opportunity to select the specic version of a concept that suits them and their research interests best. Nonetheless, problems like collective conceptual ambiguity, lack of precision, and the widespread use of different terms for describing the same phenomena (synonymy) or of the same term for describing different phenomena (homonymy) can have negative consequences. Most importantly, such inconsistencies hamper scientic discourse and communication between science and society. Further, they endanger the comparability of ndings and, as a consequence, impede the accumulation and integration of research results, theory building, and the thorough explanation of the social phenomena at hand.

Politics, Policy, Populism and Online Media: Investigating Possible (Dis)Connections and Actors in Modern Democracies. (reference IF/01451/2014/CP1239/CT0004)

The United Kingdom has traditionally not witnessed examples of successful populist parties in the way that they have been observed in many continental European countries. The recent success of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at a number of elections, however, has led some to claim that there is a growing populist influence in politics. This chapter reviews the literature on populist political communication, identifying the main actors and what has been said about them. Populists constitute small opposition parties with limited chance of governing in the current electoral system, and radical right populism in ethnocentric or Euroskeptic forms dominates. There is a gap in the literature on populist actors approach to the media. Most scholars focus on subtypes of populism, such as right-wing extremism and Euroskepticism. Most empirical investigations examine the British National Party's (BNP) media strategy and its attempt to both shed its former neo-Nazi image and to openly adopt a more populist rhetoric.

Political journalism constitutes one of the most prominent domains of journalism, and is essential for the functioning of democracy. Ideally, political journalism should function as an information provider, watchdog, and forum for political discussions, thereby helping citizens understand political matters and help prevent abuses of power. The extent to which it does is, however, debated. Apart from normative ideals, political journalism is shaped by factors at several levels of analysis, including the system level, the media organizational level, and the individual level. Not least important for political journalism is the close, interdependent, and contentious relationship with political actors, shaping both the processes and the content of political journalism. In terms of content, four key concepts in research on political journalism in Western democratic systems are the framing of politics as a strategic game, interpretive versus straight news, conflict framing and media negativity, and political or partisan bias. A review of research related to these four concepts suggests that political journalism has a strong tendency to frame politics as a strategic game rather than as issues, particularly during election campaigns; that interpretive journalism has become more common; that political journalism has a penchant for conflict framing and media negativity; and that there is only limited evidence that political journalism is influenced by political or partisan bias. Significantly more important than political or partisan bias are different structural and situational biases. In all these and other respects, there are important differences across countries and media systems, which follows from the notion that political journalism is always influenced by the media systems in which it is produced and consumed.

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Mediatization of Politics: Towards a Theoretical Framework Jesper Stroemback and Frank Esser PART II: FOUNDATIONS 2. Mediatization and Democracy Jay G. Blumler 3. Mediatization and Political Populism Gianpietro Mazzoleni 4. Mediatization and New Media Winfried Schulz 5. Mediatization and Political Autonomy: A Systems Approach Frank Marcinkowski and Adrian Steiner Part III: DIMENSIONS OF MEDIATIZATION 6. Mediation of Political Realities: Media as Crucial Source of Information Adam Shehata and Jesper Stroemback 7. Mediatization at the Structural Level: Independence from Politics, Dependence on the Market Linards Udris and Jens Lucht 8. Mediatization of News: The Role of Journalistic Framing Claes H. de Vreese 9. Mediatization of Campaign Coverage: Metacoverage of U.S. Elections Paul D'Angelo, Florin Buchel and Frank Esser 10. Mediatization of Political Organizations: Changing Parties and Interest Groups? Patrick Donges and Otfried Jarren 11. Mediatization and Political Agenda Setting: Changing Issue Priorities? Peter Van Aelst, Gunnar Thesen, Stefaan Walgrave and Rens Vliegenthart PART IV: CONCLUSION 12. A Paradigm in the Making: Lessons for the Future of Mediatization Research Frank Esser and Jesper Stroemback

1. Making Sense of the Mediatization of Politics Jesper Stromback & Frank Esser 2. News Media Logic in a New Institutional Perspective Kent Asp 3. Mass Media Logic and the Mediatization of Politics: A Theoretical Framework Michael Meyen, Markus Thieroff & Steffi Strenger 4. Mediatization and Political Leadership: Perspectives of the Finnish Newspapers and Party Leaders Pekka Isotalus & Merja Almonkari 5. Opposing the Government but Governing the Audience? Exploring the Differential Mediatization of Parliamentary Actors in Switzerland Nono Landerer 6. The Mediatization of Political Accountability: Politics, the News Media Logic and Industrial Crises in the 1980s and 2000s Monika Djerf-Pierre, Mats Ekstrom, Nicklas Hakansson & Bengt Johansson 7. News Coverage of Politics and Conflict Levels: A Cross-National Study of Journalists' and Politicians' Perspections of Two Elements of Mediatization Peter Maurer & Barbara Pfetsch 8. Phases of Mediatization: Empirical Evidence from Austrian Election Campaigns Since 1970 Josef Seethaler & Gabriele Melischek 9. Jumping the Shark: Mediatization of Canadian Party Leadership Contests, 1975-2012 Shannon Sampert, Linda Trimble, Angelia Wagner & Bailey Gerrits 10. Metacoverage and Mediatization in US Presidential Elections: A Theoretical Model and Qualitative Case Study Paul D'Angelo & Frank Esser 11. Mediatization, Legal Logic and the Coverage of Israeli Politicians on Trial Anat Peleg & Bryna Bogoch 12. Media Logic and Political Logic Online and Offline: The Case of Climate Change Communication Jorg Hassler, Marcus Maurer & Corinna Oschatz 13. Passive Accomplice or Active Disruptor: The Role of Audiences in the Mediatization of Politics Tamara Witschge

During the last decade, the concept of a mediatization of politics has become increasingly popular. A search in Google Scholar, for example, reveals that there were about 2000 citations in the year...

This article investigates how media use differs across age groups- and whether this matters for people’s inclination to participate politically. More specifically, the study investigates the impact of social media use for political purposes and of attention to political news in traditional media, on political interest and offline political participation. The findings, based on a four-wave panel study conducted during the 2010 Swedish national election campaign, show (1) clear differences in media use between age groups and (2) that both political social media use and attention to political news in traditional media increase political engagement over time. Thus, this study suggests that frequent social media use among young citizens can function as a leveller in terms of motivating political participation.

In highly mediatized democracies, political parties and other political actors have to manage the news and adapt to the fact that news media have become largely independent and highly influential. In this chapter, the authors bridge theory and research on strategic party behavior, mediatization, and political public relations to analyze why and how political parties seek to manage the news to further their strategic goals. Based on a review of the literature, the authors suggest a typology of strategies and tactics that political parties can use to manage the news. One conclusion is that adaption to news media need to follow from the strategic goals of the party. Otherwise adapting to news media is not strategic but rather surrendering to news media and news media logic.

In recent years, profound media environmental changes have sparked a controversy regarding whether we are entering a new era of minimal effects. Focusing on one of the most important media effect theories, agenda setting, this study combines a panel survey and a media content analysis to test three claims derived from the new era of minimal effects discussion: (1) that recent media environmental changes have reduced the agenda setting influence of traditional news media to non-significance, (2) that increased opportunities for media choice have made partisan selective exposure the key mechanism behind media effects, and (3) that the availability of alternative online news sources reduces susceptibility to agenda setting effects from the traditional news media. Among other things, the results show that traditional news media still exert agenda-setting influence on both the aggregate and individual levels, but that these effects are weakened by use of multiple online news media. Overall, the results suggest that a generalized “we” have not (yet) entered a new era of minimal effects, and that certain media system characteristics are likely to condition the pace of any potential transition to a new minimal effects era.

During election campaigns, the three most important sets of actors are voters, political parties and candidates, and the media. The purpose of this chapter is thus to describe and analyze Swedish election campaigns with a focus on four interrelated aspects: how voters learn about politics and the issues at stake during election campaigns; how the news media cover election campaigns; how the parties plan and run their election campaigns; and the importance of election campaigns in terms of campaign effects. Among other things, the analysis shows that the mass media are highly important for an understanding of Swedish election campaigns that the parties’ campaigning can be considered semi-professionalized, and that election campaigns have become more important as electoral volatility has increased. Overall, the analysis also suggests that Swedish election campaigns work quite well in terms of mobilizing voters politically.