Volume 44, Issue 4

This paper advances the research on personalization of political communication by investigating whether this process of focusing on politicians instead of political issues plays a role on Twitter. Results of a content analysis of 5,530 tweets posted in the run-up to the German federal election provide evidence that Twitter communication refers more often to politicians than to issues. However, tweets containing personal characteristics about political leaders play only a marginal role. When distinguishing among different groups of actors on Twitter (journalists, politicians, citizens), we find that citizens focus more on candidates than do journalists or politicians. Investigating the impact of a televised debate on Twitter communication, we observe that this person-centered event puts the focus on individual politicians instead of issues.

This paper investigates whether political polarization of the TV audience is emerging also in a typical democratic corporatist system. The study is motivated by the claim put forward by several US scholars, who argue that in today’s high choice information environments, partisans tend to see mainstream media as ‘hostile’ and therefore seek out and select broadcasters who confirm and deepen their worldview (Arceneaux and Johnson, 2013; Iyengar and Hahn, 2009; Tewksbury and Riles, 2015). This demand, they argue, expands the market for partisan TV and contributes to growing political polarization. We ask if there is evidence of a politically polarized Norwegian TV audience, by exploring the relationship between partisan preferences, perceived political bias and selective exposure to TV news. We find that many Norwegians believe that both the public broadcaster and the leading commercial broadcasters are politically biased. Consistent with the “hostile media hypothesis”, people on the right accuse the broadcasters of favoring the parties on the left, whereas people of the left tend to see the broadcasters as favoring the parties on the right, albeit not to the same degree. By using a survey experiment, our study also demonstrates that given the opportunity, the audience does select news stories consistent with their political beliefs from a politically ‘friendly’ broadcaster. However, they also choose news stories consistent with their political beliefs from a perceived hostile news source over politically inconsistent stories from a friendly source. This suggests that ‘friendly’ content triumphs perception of broadcaster bias. Despite widespread perceptions of partisan favoritism in the Norwegian TV market, we find few traces of a politically polarized audience. The main reason for this is that the public broadcaster still draws a wide audience across the political spectrum, as even critics consider this news source as too important and relevant to be ignored.

Researching the role of media within young people’s socialization requires an integrative approach that understands socialization as a contextual, interlinked process in which children construct their approach to life against the background of ‘developmental tasks’ and of the relevant social contexts. This article presents a praxeological approach that combines subjective and structural components of practice and that has been put into practice by means of a qualitative longitudinal-panel study on children’s socialization. The approach is based on three analytical concepts, options for action, outlines for action, and competences for action, and advances an interlinkage of subjective perception, action-driving orientations, and everyday-life practices against the backdrop of (changing) socio-structural conditions.

Videos presented on social media platforms are frequently watched because people find them entertaining. However, videos on social media platforms are often presented together with user comments containing information about how entertaining previous viewers found them to be. This social information may affect people’s entertainment experiences. The goal of the present study was to explore how user comments affect viewers’ hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences in response to online videos. The results of an online experiment ( N = 203) showed that user comments in which previous viewers of a video indicate that they enjoyed or appreciated the video increase the hedonic entertainment experiences of new viewers. Viewers’ eudaimonic entertainment experiences were unaffected by user comments. These findings show that entertainment experiences do not emerge in response to online videos alone. Instead, they also depend on information about the entertainment experiences of previous viewers.

Previous research has identified the frames and metaphors used in the reporting on the Euro crisis. War and disease turned out to be the two most frequently used metaphorical frames. Since coverage of the current financial crisis may have a tangible effect on public opinion, research into the effects of metaphorical frames on attitudes is needed. By employing two survey experiments, a student sample (N = 259) and a nonstudent sample (N = 507), this article traces the effects of both metaphorical frames. Our results show that individuals take over the metaphorical frame elements in their evaluation of the Euro crisis. Participants in the war conditions significantly more often referred to war when answering the open questions. Alternatively, when the Euro crisis was framed as a disease, participants were more likely to use words and sentences containing disease frame elements.