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Alternative news media (ANM) have become an important information source for certain audiences. Research shows that ANM usage is linked to a preference for populist parties and the use of digital media. However, ANM existed before the rise of populism and digital media over the last two decades. Thus, we must assume that additional factors are related to ANM usage. To investigate such factors, we conducted a cross-sectional online survey (N  = 1,212) of the Swiss population. We analyze how affinity toward conspiracy myths, preference for populist parties, the usage of social media, and the Telegram messenger app are related to ANM usage. The results indicate that people with a high affinity toward conspiracy myths are more likely to use ANM. Different than in previous studies, preference for populist politics is not related to higher ANM usage in Switzerland. Our results suggest that the political context matters when studying ANM usage and that the strong focus on right-wing populism might lead to scholars missing part of the bigger picture. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the use of social media and Telegram, which recently gained relevance as a channel for mobilizing protests during the COVID-19 pandemic, positively connect with ANM consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of disinformation features strongly in public discourse, but scientific findings remain conflicted about disinformation effects and reach. Accordingly, indiscriminate warnings about disinformation risk overestimating its effects and associated dangers. Balanced accounts that document the presence of digital disinformation while accounting for empirically established limits offer a promising alternative. In a preregistered experiment, U.S. respondents were exposed to two treatments designed to resemble typical journalistic contributions discussing disinformation. The treatment emphasizing the dangers of disinformation indiscriminately (T1) raised the perceived dangers of disinformation among recipients. The balanced treatment (T2) lowered the perceived threat level. T1, but not T2, had negative downstream effects, increasing respondent support for heavily restrictive regulation of speech in digital communication environments. Overall, we see a positive correlation among all respondents between the perceived threat of disinformation to societies and dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern democracies, large societal crises like the COVID-19 pandemic are accompanied by intensified public discourse about which policies and strategies are adequate to fight the crisis. In such times, the public sphere switches to crisis mode with fundamentally different communicative dynamics compared to routinised periods. Data from social media platforms like Twitter offers new possibilities to study such dynamics. However, comprehensive studies on how crises affect discourse in distinct national publics are missing up to now. Based on 1,762,262 tweets referring to COVID-19 written between 1 January and 30 April 2020 by 56,418 validated Swiss users, we illustrate how the lockdown of public life in Switzerland affected the discourse in the Swiss Twitter-sphere. Based on public sphere theories, we identify four crisis-related dimensions for our analysis. We show that the pandemic led to a narrowing of the topic agenda and to a more inwardly oriented public sphere with increased Twitter activity by experts. Furthermore, actors from the social periphery were able to reach the centre of public discourse with their tweets. Overall our study shows how methodological innovation allows us to better connect an empirical analysis with the concept of a public sphere as a communication network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars from different theoretical schools have posited that in recent decades, science and society have moved closer together, and the concept of academic engagement has been proposed to capture one part of this approximation empirically. This study analyzes the academic engagement of individual scholars towards politicians, industry representatives and journalists. It uses comprehensive survey data on Swiss professors from all disciplines, all the country's universities and from associated research institutes. It assesses, firstly, the degree to which these professors have professional contacts to journalists, politicians and industry representatives. Secondly, it explains the extent of these contacts, using multi-level modelling that incorporates individual factors as well as organizational and institutional contexts. Our study shows that academic engagement is quite common with strong differences between disciplines. Furthermore, professors with higher academic productivity, positive personal attitude towards communication activities as well as a leadership position have more outside contacts. The gender and nationality of the professors, however, only play a role for some of the contacts with non-scientific actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of bots is an important and complicated task. The bot classifier "Botometer" was successfully introduced as a way to estimate the number of bots in a given list of accounts and, as a consequence, has been frequently used in academic publications. Given its relevance for academic research and our understanding of the presence of automated accounts in any given Twitter discourse, we are interested in Botometer's diagnostic ability over time. To do so, we collected the Botometer scores for five datasets (three verified as bots, two verified as human; n = 4,134) in two languages (English/German) over three months. We show that the Botometer scores are imprecise when it comes to estimating bots; especially in a different language. We further show in an analysis of Botometer scores over time that Botometer's thresholds, even when used very conservatively, are prone to variance, which, in turn, will lead to false negatives (i.e., bots being classified as humans) and false positives (i.e., humans being classified as bots). This has immediate consequences for academic research as most studies in social science using the tool will unknowingly count a high number of human users as bots and vice versa. We conclude our study with a discussion about how computational social scientists should evaluate machine learning systems that are developed for identifying bots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the formation of far-right online communities on YouTube and whether the rise of three new actors (Pegida, Identitarian movement, AfD) can also be observed with user behavior on YouTube. We map the network of far-right, conspiracy and alternative media channels in the German-language YouTube sphere, how this network evolves over time and identify the topics that users discuss. Our analysis shows that the overall common denominator within the German far-right YouTube sphere is the refugee crisis and the problems associated with it. Furthermore, we show that the community is getting denser and more centralized over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sphere theory has come to an epistemic crossroads. The rise of right-wing movements in Europe and the U.S., for example, pose a challenge to public sphere theorists. This holds especially true since they make use of social media to articulate their messages, network, recruit, dissent or attack. In this conceptual paper we suggest a functionalist approach that integrates the concept of counterpublics within the public sphere based on the two generalised functions agenda-setting and identity formation. We describe how counterpublics may become regular publics, but also emphasise on how strong collective identities may lead to a vicious cycle of extremism. Based on the examples of the far-right Stormfront forum and the Generation Identity, the concept of the vicious cycle of extremism is being proposed to highlight the internet's role in the formation and radicalisation of counterpublics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online harassment is increasingly applied as a form of information control to curb free speech and exert power in online public spheres. In recent years, states have appeared to be particularly invested in weaponizing information against dissidents in an attempt at dominating social and political discourses. Reports by prominent human rights institutions, as well as anecdotal evidence, indicate that Iran remains among the states with a track record of such actions. The scope of targeted cyber abuse varies by case. This study investigates the size and perpetrators of online violence, harassment, and abuse against critical members of the Iranian diaspora, including journalists, civil society activists, and artists, among many others. This study substantiates findings of qualitative interviews with a quantitative study of Instagram accounts of related individuals and explores the patterns and communities involved in disseminating hate speech in an attempt at manipulating public opinion and suppressing voices of dissidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we analyze whether the mere volume of presence in mass media and the mere volume of activity on social media convey advantages to candidates in parliamentary elections. Based on the theoretical model of bounded rationality, we call these potential effects brute force effects. During the last month of the election campaign of the Swiss federal election of 2015, we tracked the presence of all 873 candidates in the canton of Zurich, the most populous canton, in a broad sample of mass media. Additionally, we tracked those candidates’ activity on Facebook and Twitter. The results of our multilevel Bayesian estimates show that mass media presence has a consistent nontrivial impact on different aspects of electoral outcome. Furthermore, social media activity also has a nontrivial impact, but only in terms of resonance (reactions to candidates’ social media activity). Overall, our results suggest that brute force effects of of mass media presence and social media activity can have substantial impact on voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the use of Twitter in political communication in Switzerland because, in comparison with other democracies, Switzerland with its strong federalism, fragmented party system, small country size and semi-professional politicians can be seen as the least-likely critical case, thus creating unique conditions for the use of social media. The study investigates the individual characteristics of Swiss Members of Parliament that could influence social media usage. Thus, the study contributes to the debate about equalization and normalization with respect to Twitter as a relevant microblogging channel for political communication and to the significance of country-specific conditions for the adoption of innovations in political online communication. The study explains the shift from equalization towards normalization with the diffusion of innovations theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of online media, and particularly social media, has led to scholarly debates about their implications. Authoritarian countries are interesting in this respect because social media might facilitate open and critical debates that are not possible in traditional media. China is arguably the most relevant and interesting case in this respect, because it limits the influx of non-domestic social media communication, has established its own microcosm of social media and tries to closely monitor and control it and censor problematic content. While such censorship is very effective in some instances, however, it fails to shut down all open debates completely. We analyse the pre-eminent Chinese social media platform – Sina Weibo – and present a typology of different kinds of public spheres that exist on this platform in which open and critical debates can occur under specific circumstances: Thematic public spheres include phenomena of common concern, such as environmental pollution or food safety; short-term public spheres emerge after unexpected events; encoded public spheres are deliberate attempts of users to circumvent censorship; local public spheres focus on sub-national phenomena and problems; non-domestic political public spheres exist on political topics from other countries but are often referenced back to China; mobile public spheres exist because many people use Weibo on their smartphones and also have access to deleted content there and meta public spheres are debates about censorship itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the content and effects of political humor on late-night television. Besides conducting a systematic content analysis of a Swiss late-night show, this article examines the effects of late-night political parody on competence evaluations of politicians. An experiment manipulated the televised parody of a politician and measured political knowledge. Results show that exposure to a televised political parody decreased competence ratings of politicians only for individuals high in political knowledge. The reason is that viewers must already have an understanding of current political affairs to “get the joke”—that is, the implicit message transported by the parody. The implications of such a negative “Tina Fey Effect” are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]