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Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper draws on a unique, extensive, and comparative experiment in sixteen European countries (N = 15,412) to test the effects of populist communication on political engagement. The findings show that anti-elitist populism has the strongest mobilizing effects, and anti-immigrant messages have the strongest demobilizing effects. Moreover, national conditions such as the level of unemployment and the electoral success of the populist Left and Right condition the impact of populist communication. These findings provide important insights into the persuasiveness of populist messages spread throughout the European continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is empirical evidence of media influence on parliamentary agenda, especially when media coverage privileges conflict framing of reality and negativity. This article addresses the impact of media presence (traditional and social media) and NGOs on European parliamentary discussions about violent conflicts in the Middle East and their role during phases of escalation and pacification. The authors content analysed 7,633 minutes from debates involving the Syrian (from January 2011 to June 2015) and Israeli–Palestinian (from March 2006 to June 2015) conflicts, from the European Parliament (N = 2,541), the German Bundestag (N = 2,138), the UK House of Commons (N = 2,514) and the French Assemblée Nationale (N = 440). Conflict-related paragraphs were filtered and analysed. Using the multilingual and cross-validated dictionary adapted to conflict and media analysis created by INFOCORE, they measured the presence of media and actors as well as the inclusion of conflict-key concepts within parliamentary discussions. Findings revealed that social media (when compared to traditional media and NGOs) are the main actors quoted in parliamentary minutes when they refer to violent conflicts and that this attention varies over time and is driven by focusing events. The presence of traditional and social media as well as NGOs in the debates was significantly different depending on the parliament studied and the conflict under consideration. The authors found empirical evidence supporting the claim that such concepts as limited violence, crisis, assistance and pacification are correlated with the presence of media and NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the supply of political information programming across thirteen European broadcast systems over three decades. The cross-national and cross-temporal design traces the composition and development of political information environments with regard to the amount and placement of news and current affairs programs on the largest public and private television channels. It finds that the televisual information environments of Israel and Norway offer the most advantageous opportunity structure for informed citizenship because of their high levels of airtime and a diverse scheduling strategy. The study contributes to political communication research by establishing “political information environments” as a theoretically and empirically grounded concept that informs and supplements the comparison of “media systems.” If developed further, it could provide an information-rich, easy-to-measure macro-unit for future comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of negativity in political news has not reached the status of a homogenous, overarching theoretical concept. This article proposes conceptual understandings, categorizations and practical operationalizations of negativity in the news that reflect the consensus of existing work paying special attention to recent European research. This work aims to systematize existing concepts and categories in order to increase comparability and cumulativity of empirical evidence. To structure and standardize dimensions of negativity in the news we differentiate firstly between negativity and confrontation, secondly between frame-related negativity and individual actor-related negativity, and thirdly between non-directional and directional dimensions of negativity. This article provides a common set of indicators and matrice-based classifications of negativity (and its antithesis) in the news to measure and categorize its intensity and multi-dimensionality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Surveying 1,700 journalists from seventeen countries, this study investigates perceived influences on news work. Analysis reveals a dimensional structure of six distinct domains--political, economic, organizational, professional, and procedural influences, as well as reference groups. Across countries, these six dimensions build up a hierarchical structure where organizational, professional, and procedural influences are perceived as more powerful limits to journalists' work than political and economic influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]