{"title":"Who Verifies the Verifiers? AI, Local Knowledge Production, and Credibility in Tanzania’s 2025 Election","authors":"Gregory Gondwe","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2745832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2745832","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"67 1","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149151746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Politics of the “Non-Political”: A Conceptual Review","authors":"Yufan Guo,Yibin Fan","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2745844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2745844","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"53 1","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149151723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does the TikTok Feed Lean Right? Exposure to Political Content Among Non-Partisan Users in Germany","authors":"Jasper Tjaden,Johannes Wolfgram,Aaron Philipp,Sarah Weissmann,Licia Bobzien,Ulrich Kohler,Roland Verwiebe","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2733320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2733320","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"190 1","pages":"1-22"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149093324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Political Actors and Their Media Practices: Analyzing the Role of Media Participation in Democratic Backsliding and Resilience","authors":"Daniel Kreiss, Kate Wright","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2735919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2735919","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"35 1","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149124423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does Office Type Determine Gendered Campaign Messages?","authors":"Tae Hyun Lim,Yu Jeong Hwang","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2722250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2722250","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how candidates’ gender shapes campaign messaging across different branches and levels of political office. Prior research offers mixed evidence on whether women are more likely than men to emphasize communal traits and women-related policies, often because gender effects are examined without fully accounting for institutional context. We address this inconsistency by foregrounding the role of electoral institutions. Building on strategic stereotype theory, we argue that gendered campaign messaging is a strategic response to office-specific incentives and expectations. In particular, we expect gendered appeals to be more prevalent at lower levels of government than at higher levels, and more pronounced in legislative than in executive races. We test these expectations using an original dataset of 46,966 official campaign booklets issued by all candidates competing for district-based executive and legislative offices in seventeen national and local elections in South Korea from 2000 to 2022. These booklets are legally standardized, page-limited documents distributed to voters and provide a rare opportunity to compare campaign messages across offices while holding the communication medium constant. We measure gendered messaging through candidates’ use of relational language and women-related policy terms. The results show that female candidates emphasize relational identities and women’s policy concerns more than male candidates. Crucially, the magnitude of this gender gap varies across institutional contexts. Gender differences are larger in legislative contests than in executive races and increase as elections move from national to subnational levels.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149003620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Democratic Cost of Pursuing Virality: A Study into Parliamentary Communications","authors":"André K. Rodarte","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2733316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2733316","url":null,"abstract":"The transformation of parliamentarians into media producers has heightened concerns about emerging forms of political communication. This mixed-methods paper examines the strategies they employ to enhance their digital presence. Based on in-depth interviews, it shows that Brazilian parliamentarians believe that social media penalize them for posting about congressional matters, reporting that content about legislative work and constituency services receives little engagement online. Conversely, they view the production of antagonistic content and alignment with news cycles as essential to maintaining an engaging social media presence. A computational analysis of 4,5 million posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter supports these evaluations: posts about congressional matters are associated with lower engagement metrics, while the use of antagonistic language increases them. The analysis further discusses pathways through which visibility is sustained at the intersection of platform incentives and communicative practices. In sum, this mixed-methods study demonstrates that the mediatization of politics has created perverse incentives for parliamentarians to downplay congressional activity and prioritize confrontations on social media, weakening accountability in ways that may resonate far beyond Brazil.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"81 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149003591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do Your Own Research: What Skepticism of Expertise Means for the News Media in the U.S.","authors":"Ariel Hasell,Sedona Chinn","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2729428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2729428","url":null,"abstract":"In the U.S. the availability of news information has grown exponentially while trust in traditional sources of news and information has declined. Amid this high-information, low-trust environment, many now advocate for doing your own research (DYOR) to discern accurate claims from false, misleading, or biased information. The perception that it is better to do one’s own research has important implications for information seeking and attitudes toward mainstream news and journalism. In this study, we use a panel survey to investigate DYOR perceptions in the context of the 2020 U.S. election. We find that DYOR perceptions are associated with decreased nonpartisan news use, decreased belief accuracy, and more negative attitudes toward media, highlighting how information skepticism may be contributing to adversarial views toward mainstream media and expertise. Results suggest that such perceptions encourage negative views of news media and may contribute to distrust of public institutions.","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"395 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149003585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Language of Democratic Resilience and Decline: A Comparative Study of Politicians’ Communication on Facebook in Sweden and Hungary","authors":"Xénia Farkas,Simon Lindgren","doi":"10.1080/10584609.2026.2727043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2727043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":20264,"journal":{"name":"Political Communication","volume":"25 1","pages":"1-23"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}