{"title":"Social Media and Belief in Misinformation in Mexico: A Case of Maximal Panic, Minimal Effects?","authors":"S. Valenzuela, Carlos Muñiz, Marcelo Santos","doi":"10.1177/19401612221088988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221088988","url":null,"abstract":"Contrary to popular narratives, it is not clear whether using social media for news increases belief in political misinformation. Several of the most methodologically sound studies find small to nonexistent effects. However, extant research is limited by focusing on few platforms (usually Facebook, Twitter or YouTube) and is heavily U.S. centered. This leaves open the possibility that other platforms, such as those that rely on visual communication (e.g., Instagram) or are tailored to strong-tie network communication (e.g., WhatsApp), are more influential. Furthermore, the few studies conducted in other countries suggest that social media use increases political misperceptions. Still, these works use cross-sectional designs, which are ill suited to dealing with omitted variable bias and temporal ordering of processes. Using a two-wave survey fielded in Mexico during the 2021 midterm elections (N = 596), we estimate the relationship between frequency of news exposure on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp, and belief in political misinformation, while controlling for both time-invariant and time-dependent individual differences. In contrast to political discussion, information literacy and digital skills, none of the social platforms analyzed exhibits a significant association with misinformed beliefs. We also tested for possible indirect, moderated, and reciprocal relationships, but none of these analyses yielded a statistically significant result. We conclude that the study is consistent with the “minimal media effects” paradigm, which suggests that efforts to address misinformation need to go beyond social platforms.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46063688","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 Effects of Flagging Propaganda Sources on News Sharing: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Twitter","authors":"Fan Liang, Qinfeng Zhu, Gabriel Miao Li","doi":"10.1177/19401612221086905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221086905","url":null,"abstract":"While research on flagging misinformation and disinformation has received much attention, we know very little about how the flagging of propaganda sources could affect news sharing on social media. Using a quasi-experimental design, we test the effect of source flagging on people’s actual sharing behaviors. By analyzing tweets (N = 49,126) posted by 30 China's media accounts before and after Twitter's practice of labeling state-affiliated media, we reveal the corrective role that flagging plays in preventing people's sharing of information from propaganda sources. The findings suggest that the corrective effect occurs immediately after these accounts are labeled as state-affiliated media and it leads to a long-term reduction in news sharing, particularly for political content. The results contribute to the understanding of how flagging efforts affect user engagement in real-world conversations and highlight that the effect of corrective measures takes place in a dynamic process.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":"28 1","pages":"909 - 928"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48357074","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":"Motivated Mobilization: The Role of Emotions in the Processing of Poll Messages","authors":"T. A. Neyazi, Ozan Kuru","doi":"10.1177/19401612221086907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221086907","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates how exposure to favorable messages about one's preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral intentions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions’ frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure. Specifically, we examine the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between motivated assessments of polls and political mobilization. To test this model, we offer empirical evidence from an online survey-experiment (N = 540) conducted during the 2019 Indian general election. We find that exposure to favorable poll results increases enthusiasm and decreases anger, while both enthusiasm and anger activate behavioral intention for political participation. While our study supports the existing findings which show that partisanship is an important predictor of mobilization for a party and candidate, we uncover the affective routes through which partisanship operates to shape poll reactions. The results underscore the importance of capturing individual variability in preexisting affiliations and their shaping of poll reactions through affect-driven motivated reactions. We discuss these results with regard to the dynamics of political mobilization during election campaigns, the role of emotions in political cognition at large, and in understanding and mitigating biases in poll perceptions.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46972391","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":"Poll Wars: Perceptions of Poll Credibility and Voting Behaviour","authors":"Stephen Dawson","doi":"10.1177/19401612221087181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221087181","url":null,"abstract":"Pre-election opinion polls are an increasingly prominent aspect of political campaigns, yet they often vary in terms of their results, sources, and where they are published. Citizens are therefore increasingly confronted with the proposition of which polls to give more credence to than others in shaping their voting behaviour. This study investigates the relationship between subjective determinations of poll credibility and voting behaviour in the polarised context of Turkish mayoral elections. The theoretical perspective of motivated reasoning is employed to consider how individuals determine and act upon credible opinion polls in mixed information environments. Using an original two-step experimental approach conducted in 2020, this paper establishes that while the effects of opinion poll credibility on party choice are limited to the strategic considerations of the supporters of smaller parties, opinion polls can have considerable demobilising effects when polling environments are conflicting or deemed not credible. The findings produced in this study are more suggestive of accuracy-seeking than directional motivations, and they have considerable implications for how we think about the relationship between polls, politicians, and voters.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42417227","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}
Charlotte Löb, E. M. Rinke, Carina Weinmann, Hartmut Wessler
{"title":"Unpacking the Determinants of Outrage and Recognition in Public Discourse: Insights Across Socio-Cultural Divides, Political Systems, and Media Types","authors":"Charlotte Löb, E. M. Rinke, Carina Weinmann, Hartmut Wessler","doi":"10.1177/19401612221084206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221084206","url":null,"abstract":"The degree to which civility norms are upheld or violated is an important criterion in evaluating the democratic quality of public debates. We investigate civility across media types, political systems, and levels of socio-cultural division, offering a comparative perspective on how these factors shape levels of civility in public debates around a key question for societies around the world: What is the proper role of religion in public life? Capturing both positive and negative forms of civility (i.e., recognition and outrage) on multiple levels of analysis, we compile and analyze an original large-scale dataset of news items published during August 2015 until July 2016 in six democracies (Australia, Germany, Lebanon, Switzerland, Turkey, and the USA) across three types of media (printed newspapers, news websites, and political blogs). We find that mediated discourse was heavier on outrage in mixed political systems (Germany and Turkey) than in ‘purely’ majoritarian and consensus systems. Public debate in deeply divided countries contained more outrage but also more recognition compared to less divided countries, with newspapers and news websites mitigating outrage discourse compared to political blogs. Blogs also emerged as less nurturing of recognition than newspapers and news websites.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42456369","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":"Corrigendum to Diffusion of Development Journalism Inside Egyptian Newsrooms","authors":"Allam, Rasha","doi":"10.1177/19401612221083550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221083550","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":"28 1","pages":"328 - 328"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44047199","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":"Discursive Toolkits of Anti-Muslim Disinformation on Twitter","authors":"K. Bhatia, P. Arora","doi":"10.1177/19401612221084633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221084633","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we investigate the socio-technical ecology of Twitter, including the technological affordances of the platform and the user-generated discursive strategies used to create and circulate anti-Muslim disinformation online. During the first wave of Covid-19, right-wing followers claimed that Muslims were spreading the virus to perform Jihad. We analyzed a sample of 7000 tweets using Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how the online disinformation accusing Muslims in India was initiated and sustained. We identify three critical discourse strategies used on Twitter to spread and sustain the anti-Muslim (dis)information: (1) creating mediatized hate solidarities, (2) appropriating instruments of legitimacy, and (3) practicing Internet Hindu vigilantism. Each strategy consists of a subset of discursive toolkits, highlighting the central routes of discursive engagement to produce disinformation online. We argue that understanding how the technical affordances of Social Networking Sites are leveraged in quotidian online practices to produce and sustain the phenomenon of online disinformation will prove to be a novel contribution to the field of disinformation studies and Internet research.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48892202","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":"Playing Both Sides: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement","authors":"Samantha Bradshaw, Renée DiResta, Carly Miller","doi":"10.1177/19401612221082052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221082052","url":null,"abstract":"Russian influence operations on social media have received significant attention following the 2016 US presidential elections. Here, scholarship has largely focused on the covert strategies of the Russia-based Internet Research Agency and the overt strategies of Russia's largest international broadcaster RT (Russia Today). But since 2017, a number of new news media providers linked to the Russian state have emerged, and less research has focused on these channels and how they may support contemporary influence operations. We conduct a qualitative content analysis of 2,014 Facebook posts about the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests in the United States over the summer of 2020 to comparatively examine the overt propaganda strategies of six Russian-linked news organizations—RT, Ruptly, Soapbox, In The NOW, Sputnik, and Redfish. We found that RT and Sputnik diverged in their framing of the BLM movement from the newer media properties. RT and Sputnik primarily produced negative coverage of the BLM movement, painting protestors as violent, or discussed the hypocrisy of racial justice in America. In contrast, newer media properties like In The NOW, Soapbox, and Redfish supported the BLM movement with clickbait-style videos highlighting racism in America. Video footage bearing the Ruptly brandmark appears in both traditional and new media properties, to illustrate, in real time, civil unrest across the US. By focusing on overt propaganda from the broad array of Russian-affiliated media, our data allows us to further understand the “full spectrum” and “counter-hegemonic” strategies at play in contemporary information operations.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":"15 23","pages":"791 - 817"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41249751","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":"Ideology Matters: The Influence of Competing Message Framings on Public Attitudes toward Humanitarian Interventions","authors":"Qihao Ji, Juris Pupcenoks","doi":"10.1177/19401612221082063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221082063","url":null,"abstract":"This study assessed the effects of different message framing strategies on average Americans’ attitude towards interventions in humanitarian crises abroad. Two survey experiments were conducted via Amazon MTurk between late 2019 and early 2020, where participants were randomly assigned to read a mock news story about a foreign humanitarian crisis written using one of the three framing techniques. Results of both studies indicated that the framing effect on respondents’ support for intervention interacted with ones’ political ideology and prompted distinctive reactions among different populations. Most intriguingly, the results of Study 2, which employed a non-student sample and a secondary frame, suggested that the specific order of message framings also influences public opinion towards humanitarian intervention. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature on the persuasiveness of message design and framing in the context of military humanitarian interventions (MHI). Accordingly, news organizations and policymakers are encouraged to consider these findings in specific contexts.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41377659","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":"Identity, Social Media and Politics: How Young Emirati Women Make Sense of Female Politicians in the UAE","authors":"Leysan Storie, Sarah Marschlich","doi":"10.1177/19401612221078795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221078795","url":null,"abstract":"Social media offered new opportunities for politicians to engage with the public. However, little research has explored public perceptions of women politicians and their role in women's empowerment, especially in non-Western contexts. This study used a qualitative methodology to explore how young Emirati women made sense of gender and other identities in their discussions of Emirati women politicians on social media. Drawing from intersectionality theory, the study looked beyond gender, exploring other identities that may play a role in Emirati women's perceptions. The results offered insights into the family and ethnic identity as they interacted with gender. The findings also highlighted the challenges of personalizing messages in a patriarchal society. This study contributes to international political communication research and practice by understanding the complexity of women's sense-making of social media and women politicians in a non-Western context.","PeriodicalId":47605,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Press-Politics","volume":"27 1","pages":"789 - 807"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42406595","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}