Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/1111

Collection of articles, reviews, preprints

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Subject: search.filters.subject.320 Politikwissenschaft

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 20
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    “Digital citizenship” revisited: the impact of ICTs on citizens’ political communication beyond the Western state
    (2018) Emmer, Martin; Kunst, Marlene
    The role of ICTs in political participation has been a core topic in political communication research for about two decades. Numerous studies have tested whether the enthusiasm about the mobilizing impact of ICTs holds true. Most have been conducted in Western countries and, therefore, reflect a Western-centric understanding of politics and participation. Although these studies have provided insight into the potential of ICTs for established democracies, political and cultural contexts from developing world regions such as sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have thus far been neglected. However, given the rapid dissemination of ICTs (e.g., mobile phones) and their innovative application in everyday life in developing countries, regions like SSA should be of particular interest for research in this field. This article aims to highlight the shortcomings of Western research and to recommend adjustments in future efforts to investigate effects of ICTs, including developing world regions, in order to develop a more robust empirical grounding for theories of participation.
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    Popularity cues in online media: Theoretical and methodological perspectives in political communication research
    (2018) Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Jost, Pablo; Eilders, Christiane; Maurer, Marcus; Haßler, Jörg
    Popularitätshinweise wie Likes und Shares signalisieren grundsätzlich positive Nutzerreaktionen. Im Kontext politischer Kommunikation sind sie in ihrer aggregierten Form entweder Indikator für Relevanzzuweisungen von oder die Zustimmung zu Online-Beiträgen. Popularitätshinweise können aber auch Faktoren sein, welche die Wahrnehmung, das Verhalten und die Einstellungen des Publikums beeinflussen. Dieser Beitrag thematisiert theoretische und methodologische Aspekte für beide Perspektiven. Im Rückgriff auf Konzepte wie wahrgenommene Relevanz, Einstellungskonsonanz und Persuasion, werden zuerst die Gründe für das Liken und Sharen diskutiert. Danach wird die Wirkung von Popularitätshinweisen hauptsächlich vor dem Hintergrund der Schweigespiraltheorie und heuristischer Informationsverarbeitung erörtert. Die Informationsverarbeitung wird als Schlüsselfaktor identifiziert um zu verstehen, wie das Liken und Sharen politischer Inhalte entsteht und welche politischen Effekte Popularitätshinweise auf Individualebene hervorrufen. Die methodologische Diskussion bezieht sich auf Fragen der Datenerhebung, sowie der Validität und der Durchführbarkeit von Studien zu Popularitätshinweisen.
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    Algorithmic Governance
    (2019) Katzenbach, Christian; Ulbricht, Lena
    Algorithmic governance as a key concept in controversies around the emerging digital society highlights the idea that digital technologies produce social ordering in a specific way. Starting with the origins of the concept, this paper portrays different perspectives and objects of inquiry where algorithmic governance has gained prominence ranging from the public sector to labour management and ordering digital communication. Recurrent controversies across all sectors such as datafication and surveillance, bias, agency and transparency indicate that the concept of algorithmic governance allows to bring objects of inquiry and research fields that had not been related before into a joint conversation. Short case studies on predictive policy and automated content moderation show that algorithmic governance is multiple, contingent and contested. It takes different forms in different contexts and jurisdictions, and it is shaped by interests, power, and resistance.
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    Pathways to environmental activism in four countries: social media, environmental concern, and political efficacy
    (2022) Boulianne, Shelley; Ohme, Jakob
    In 2018-9, millions of youth participated in climate-related marches across the globe. This activism reflects youth’s distinctive form of political participation: cause-oriented, expressive, and networked. However, the pathway between environmental concern and environmental activism is complicated in some contexts and for some citizens. This article uses survey data from four countries (Canada, France, the United Kingdom, the United States) gathered in autumn 2019. We focus on the environmental activism of youth and young adults (aged 18–33 years, n = 1574). We find the role of social media is consistent and strong for all environmental activities in all countries; the role of political efficacy depends on activity and country but has a positive role in environmental activism; and environmental concern is a positive and significant correlate of boycotting and signing petitions but a weak predictor of participating in environmental marches. The relationship between environmental concern and environmental marches is distinctive in the United Kingdom. Overall, we find that concern about a social cause does not automatically translate into increased activism related to that cause. Moreover, online social networks, political efficacy, and political context are critical to understanding this mobilization process.
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    What Affects First- and Second-Level Selective Exposure to Journalistic News? A Social Media Online Experiment
    (2020) Ohme, Jakob; Mothes, Cornelia
    On social media, journalistic news products compete with entertainment-oriented and user-generated contents on two different stages of news use: First, users navigate their attention through a continuous stream of information in their newsfeed and, second, they potentially click on some of these posts to spend time with the actual full-contents. The present study conceptualizes these two types of news use behaviors in social media environments as first- and second-level selective exposure. Based on this new approach, we investigated main drivers of journalistic news exposure on both exposure levels in an online survey experiment before the German federal election in 2017 (N = 210). To achieve high ecological validity, we developed a Newsfeed Exposure Observer (NEO)-Framework to recreate realistic user settings for online experiments studying selective exposure in the digital era, where news posts are complemented by popularity cues like social endorsements or individual recommendations. Findings show that, at the first level of selective exposure, attention to journalistic news posts is particularly affected by political interest. However, the decision to click on posts in the newsfeed and to spend time with the linked contents seems more strongly driven by social factors than by individual predispositions.
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    Rethinking geographies of sovereignty: Towards a conceptual framework of situated sovereignty
    (2023) Lange, Bastian; Pütz, Marco; Herlo, Bianca
    We engage with debates on shifting geographies of sovereignty in the digital age by providing a conceptual framework for “situated sovereignty”. Our contribution draws on a review of the scholarly literature and current sovereignty practices. We aim to move beyond state-centred and territorial understandings of sovereignty. A common discussion is the necessity of reconfiguring notions of sovereignty. However, hardly any studies have discussed the sociospatial configurations of practising sovereignty in the digital present. We conceptualise practices of sovereignty along intersecting strands of scholarly literature that have scarcely been related, drawing from political geography, science and technology studies, and critical digitalisation studies. Reviewing the literature, we identify three fields framing current practices of sovereignty—(i) state and territory, (ii) civic engagement, and (iii) digitalisation—based on which we develop a conceptual framework of situated sovereignty. Our framework addresses the situated role of sovereignty practices from a spatial point of view. We propose pragmatism, legitimacy, and governance as three analytical themes for better understanding current and future shifting geographies of sovereignty and enhancing sovereignty studies.
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    Are Campaigns Getting Uglier, and Who Is to Blame? Negativity, Dramatization and Populism on Facebook in the 2014 and 2019 EP Election Campaigns
    (2023) Klinger, Ulrike; Koc-Michalska, Karolina; Rußmann, Uta
    Relating to theories of dissonant public spheres and affective publics, we study negativity, dramatization, and populist content in political party Facebook posts across 12 countries during the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament Election campaigns. A quantitative content analysis of 14,293 posts from 111 (2014) and 116 (2019) political parties shows that negative emotion, negative campaigning, dramatization, and populist content has increased over this time. We show that political parties sought to evoke more negative emotions and generate more dramatization, engaged more in negative campaigning, and included more populist content in their Facebook posts in the 2019 EP election than in 2014. Further, we show that posts evoking negative emotions and dramatization and involving negative campaigning yield higher user engagement than other posts, while populist content also led to more user reactions in 2014, but not in 2019. Negative, exaggerated, and sensationalized messaging therefore makes sense from a strategic perspective, because the increased frequencies of likes, shares, and comments make parties’ messages travel farther and deeper in social networks, thereby reaching a wider audience. It seems that the rise in affective and dissonant communication has not emerged unintentionally, but is also a result of strategic campaigning.
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    Enlightening Confusion: How Contradictory Findings Help Mitigate Problematic Trends in Digital Democracies
    (2022) Mothes, Cornelia; Ohme, Jakob
    This thematic issue includes ten articles that address previous contradictions in research on two main trends in digital democracies: news avoidance and political polarization. Looking at these contradictions from different angles, all contributions suggest one aspect in particular that could be important for future research to investigate more specifically possible countermeasures to harmful trends: the individualized, self-reflective way in which media users nowadays engage with political content. The increasingly value-based individualization of media use may be a hopeful starting point for reversing harmful trends to some degree by addressing individual media users as a community with a common base of civic values, rather than addressing them in their limited social group identities.
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    Widerstand und die Formierung von Ordnung in der digitalen Konstellation
    (2020) Berg, Sebastian; Thiel, Thorsten
    Wird digitaler Widerstand in der Politischen Theorie zum Thema, so meist mit einem Fokus auf (neue) Formen zivilen Ungehorsams wie Hacktivismus. Der Aufsatz bietet hierzu eine Alternative, indem er das Betrachtungsfeld so ausweitet, dass neben diesen Formen auch Strategien des netzpolitischen Protests und der Schaffung alternativen Infrastrukturen in den Blick genommen werden. Die systematisierende und vergleichende Analyse der Entwicklung von Widerstandsformen in der digitalen Konstellation erlaubt es, die Dynamik des Zusammenwirkens von Ordnung und Widerstand besser zu verstehen. Hieraus erwächst eine Kritik der Formierung von Herrschaft in der Gegenwart, welche die depolitisierende Restrukturierung von Handlungsund Möglichkeitsräumen für gesellschaftliche Akteur*innen im Umgang mit digitaler Technik herausarbeitet, was eine politiktheoretische Ergänzung der Kritik von Überwachungspotentialen und Privatisierungstendenzen erzeugt.
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