5 core features of political communication

In Chapter 8, well explore the social evaluation and judgment that result from the way in which people process politically informative News Feed content. For instance, you might begin your career as a campaign intern before progressing to become a legislative communications aide. Against the background of an enormous expansion and diversification of both political communication itself and scientific research into its structures, processes, and effects, this volume gives an overview of some of the key theories and findings accumulated by political communication research over the last decades. But the potential of the Internet in changing the way in which people interact with each other was not fully realized until the advent of Web 2.0, a series of technologies that facilitated social connections and interactivity between users. News sites that arose in the Web 1.0 era of blogs and niche news have readily taken to Facebook to expand their readership. 1. It seems in the months leading up to an election, she simply cant escape the onslaught. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. [1] Since the advent of the World Wide Web, the amount of data to analyze has exploded and researchers are shifting to computational methods to study the dynamics of political communication. The two dashed lines show the growth in the percentage of Americans who report that they have a social media account, and the percentage of Internet users who say they have a Facebook account, using data from Pew. The survey was not exhaustive of every contribution to the decision to use Facebook, and there are almost certainly differences between people that are correlated with creating and using a Facebook account. 0000016875 00000 n Large minorities of people report that they use social media in some capacity for political engagement, but few users report regular and sustained usage for these purposes. 0000008025 00000 n 9 Of course, it could also be the case that using Facebook makes people more partisan and interested in politics. In conclusion, the article paints a largely positive picture of the state of political communication theory but also specifies certain needs for further theory development in this highly productive area of communication scholarship. It deals with the production, dissemination, procession and effects of information, both through mass media and interpersonally, within a political context. [12] As explained by Hussein Amin from the American University of Cairo, because many people view censorship as a sign of social responsibility, civil society has a deep distrust of itself. Public Speaking and Presentation Skills As a political communicator, you will represent the candidate, organization, or party at various events. For the most part, Janet is successful in her efforts to completely ignore political news and policy debates. But Facebook users are not able to easily escape exposure to the content opinion leaders post. Every major news network has an active presence on the site. Shibboleth / Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institutions website and Oxford Academic. 4. The term social media refers to an ever-changing and growing set of web-based interactive applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr, Reddit, or Vine; any list constructed while writing this book will inevitably be incomplete or outdated by the time it is published.Footnote 5. These groups of people are both participating in political communication strategic messaging designed to persuade their elected officials to agree with their point of view. 0000020079 00000 n ", This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 04:04. Reference Glassman, Straus and Shogan2013; Davis et al. This is something that should be addressed more often and changed. In the chapters that follow, I build on the key points introduced in this chapter to offer compelling evidence that engaging with politically informative content on the Facebook News Feed has facilitated the processes that result in psychological polarization. Shes never much cared for politicians, but she now has developed negative feelings for the people who believe what those politicians spout. Scholars have written prolifically on the many facets of polarization that affect the American political system. The study of political communication is clearly interdisciplinary. There are few indications that this trend will reverse itself and many more signs of the existence of feedback mechanisms that may perpetuate polarization. A political institution is an institution with a working . 0000001377 00000 n The chapter highlights six distinguishing features of the content on Facebook that contribute to social inference and the formation of affective attitudes, features that play a pivotal role in the studies later in the book. 0000025518 00000 n 0000022354 00000 n However, another benefit of earning a communications degree is its versatility. 2d ed. Behaviors that are genuine, authentic, straightforward, and effective are associated with political savvy. Similarly, the ANES reports that in 2008, 68 percent of Americans who read a daily newspaper in the past week had read about the campaign in any newspaper. However, only 38 percent of Americans report that they regularly read a daily newspaper (Heimlich Reference 266Heimlich2012). Available Formats. As a political communicator, you will represent the candidate, organization, or party at various events. [21] Studies have found that journalists in Australia widely use social media in a professional context and that it has become a viable method of communication between the mainstream media and wider audiences. However, Facebook offers her an unprecedented platform to express her political opinions, disseminate political information, and draw others into political discussions. Those five elements are liberty, democracy, individual responsibility, equality and civic duty. This article will continue to explore these elements further. People attribute extreme and overly consistent ideological views to anonymous others based on the content of what they post, and they think the friends of people they disagree with are more extreme than their own friends. Scholars almost uniformly believe that political elites are more polarized today than they have been since the American Civil War, and there is ample empirical support documenting and explaining the rise of this phenomenon. Inference forms the foundation for social evaluation and judgment, an important step in psychological polarization. The contemporary political climate has activated Americans political identities and affective orientations, resulting in the perception of excessively large differences between the political parties and negative evaluation of identifiers of the opposing party. alidawnd23. More than three times as many Americans have Facebook accounts as have Twitter accounts; five times as many Americans get political news in a given week from Facebook compared to those who get political news on Twitter (Pew Research Center 2014b). Subfield of communication and political science, This article is about Political Communications Principles. To this . Is it possible for everyone to be responsible for their own success? Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service. A Bachelor of Arts in Communications with an Emphasis in Political Campaigns is one example of a degree that will thoroughly prepare you for a career in political messaging. Social identity theory suggests that identity recognition and biased inference should go hand-in-hand with negative assessments of the out-group. Since people do not have equal opportunities, they should not be individually responsible for their successes or failures. Modeled after a technique used by scholars of political discussion, this component of the survey allows us a window into Facebook users assessments of their most politically prolific Facebook contacts. Willl there be a part 2? 0000002213 00000 n Janet has always avoided political conversations. xc```f`` A Kremlinomics: A financial buzz word used to describe economic policies which some view to be overly leftist. Throughout the book, this study is referred to as the END Framework Survey.Footnote 11 Respondents reported on their Facebook usage behaviors, the information to which they were exposed on the site, and additional facets of polarization. The five most important elements of the US political culture are liberty, democracy, equality, individual responsibility, and civic duty. For example, when speaking to a group of parents about the community, consider what topics matter to them. Handbook of Political Communication(Nimmo & Sanders, 1981), one of the earliest efforts to provide some synthesis and give some structure to this 'plural-istic' undertaking" (p. xi). The ability to infer underpins the assertion that the Facebook News Feed fosters peoples recognition of social and identity differences that align with political views. Today, 5 Coherence. Then, you might pursue a career as a communications coordinator, public relations specialist or lobbyist. While this might indicate a slight selection effect into who creates Facebook accounts,Footnote 9 none of these political variables is associated with the frequency or intensity with which someone uses Facebook. If you have the opportunity to do so, it is best to pursue a degree that blends these two fields just like the profession itself does. In Chapter 4, I fully outline the END Framework of communication, theorizing how generating and consuming politically informative News Feed content contributes to psychological polarization. Yet, a substantial proportion have generated content at some point, ranging from the 28 percent of users who have posted stories or articles to the 47 percent who have liked content other users have posted, with other forms of engagement falling somewhere in between. There is less consensus about the extent to which the average American has developed more extreme political attitudes and opinions. Any sources cited were Because users engage with the site for the purposes of social inference, they are highly attuned to recognizing indications of how other people think and behave. Facebook users watch each other navigate a complex and polarizing information environment and have a window into the not-so-deliberative processes through which others acquire information and form their opinions. The political system is a procedure of political activities, rules, assumptions, customs behaviors, and a working system. For example, two politicians may choose to reach their constituents in different ways. Media texts are built just as surely as buildings and highways are built. In the fictitious town of Newtown Springs, some locals want to create a new highway through a stretch of woods. However, instead of using publicly available content for the study stimuli, I had a group of subjects (the posters) generate political Facebook content and answer a set of questions about their partisanship, ideology, and levels of political knowledge. The country itself is a federal constitutional republic. The communication of thoughts, information, perceptions, and opinions among individuals is a continuous cycle in professional, personal, and business settings. . After more thoroughly exploring what we know about these forms of polarization, well consider how the defining characteristics of News Feed interaction facilitate distinct processes that contribute to the way in which people draw political inferences and make judgments about their social connections on the site. For more information on our cookie collection and use please visit our Privacy Policy. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The only variables that are associated with heightened Facebook usage are those related to news engagement: whether people report that the Internet is their main source for news as well as the frequency with which people seek out news. %%EOF Instead of focusing solely on consequences for offline political behavior or downstream policy attitudinal changes, we should think about consequences more directly related to the sites primary function: expressing identity and learning about the lives of other people. 2009. Most likely, this will include topics like education, taxes, housing, and neighborhood safety. If youre Do you have an interest in legal proceedings, but you arent quite sure you want to pursue a career as a lawyer or paralegal? Janet doesnt give much thought to what other people think about politics; not only does partisan identity seem unimportant or irrelevant, but Janet isnt even sure how she would learn that information, since it isnt visible in her interactions with them. Separate chapters look at political media and their effects, the work of . The factors that typically explain what kinds of people are most politically engaged are not the factors that best explain regular Facebook usage or News Feed scrolling, suggesting few selection biases shaping the composition of people who are active on the site on a daily basis. . Communism is a system of state ownership and control of the factors of production including land, capital and labor. Americans social identities have become increasingly aligned with their political identities, raising the stakes of partisan competition (Mason Reference Mason2018). } Nature of Communication. The site grew rapidly, and since 2006 anyone age 13 or older can become a registered user of Facebook. This evolved into the radio and film mediums, and it eventually grew into today's sphere of political communication made up of various channels and brands (Stroud, 2007). Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic. Most importantly, youll need to have a firm handle on several different types of writing including press releases, speeches, and social media posts. 2 Lelkes defines ideological divergence as the degree to which the distribution of ideology has moved apart and ideological consistency as consisting of two components: sorting, or the degree to which ideology matches identity, and constraint, or the correlation between issue positions (Lelkes Reference Lelkes2016, p. 394). As we saw above, it turns out that selection into regular Facebook use is largely unrelated to the factors that drive political behavior. The lightest gray line shows the growth in the number of daily active users, in millions, of the Facebook site in North America (Canada and the United States) using data from Statista. And when they do, they cannot avoid encountering political content. necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Grand Canyon University. What is political communication? At the end of the study, respondents answered a set of questions about their own Facebook usage. The executive branch of the United States is led by the President. Reference Mitchell, Jurkowitz, Enda and Olmstead2013). These sentiments have implications for the trust Americans have in each other, our leaders, and our political institutions, as well as our perception of the legitimacy of our opponents viewpoints. Political Communication. There are multiple factors including geography, religious traditions, and history that form the population's values and beliefs, about the role of government, the rights of individuals, and the role of individuals in controlling government policymaking. It is said that decision-making process depends upon incrementalism or it is incremental in nature. How this psychological polarization has occurred is a question that remains an unresolved puzzle. If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institutions website, please contact your librarian or administrator. Don't already have a personal account? However, this does not refer to economic equality, since it should be earned. When she scrolls through her Facebook News Feed which she does every day in order to share pictures of her grandkids and keep tabs on what people from her past are doing she inevitably encounters political content in the form of news stories, memes, and videos, with commentary written by her social connections accompanying it all. The books findings should thus be applicable to the population of American Facebook users, not just the most politically active among them. There is no way for Susan to easily contact everyone she knows, but she does her best. View your signed in personal account and access account management features. endobj The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not Many career opportunities are available, but each starts with finding an in-depth answer to the question: What is political communication?. Let us consider a hypothetical example. Social media can make or break a political campaign. Susan Lewis is doing what all politically interested and motivated citizens do in October of a contentious midterm election: everything possible to persuade the people she disagrees with to change their opinions and to encourage the people she agrees with to vote. Test out the speech on a focus group to gather feedback about the main points, flow, and reception of the speech. << /Linearized 1 /L 143393 /H [ 1464 379 ] /O 52 /E 54058 /N 13 /T 142294 >> Other sources have documented the rapidly growing use of social media by politicians (Golbeck et al. Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. Political communications Principles various events makes people more partisan and interested in politics not refer to economic,! Always avoided political conversations website, please contact your librarian or administrator by our usage policies into political.! 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