Reception of governmental social media communication by journalists and the broader public

Abstract

Social media platforms offer the opportunity to study the dynamics of the public exchange of information between government (e.g., policymakers), mass media (e.g., journalists), citizens (e.g., nonexperts), and experts (e.g., scientists and politicians). Research on these interactions has especially focused on crisis situations, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but more research is needed that endorse a longitudinal or comparative perspective. Studies agree that the flow of communication between governmental institutions and other users on social media is unlikely to be a top-down type of communication, but rather converts into a networked model where social media promotes information flows circulating between all actors involved. This panel welcomes papers focusing on how the general public, journalists, and other actors close to politics (e.g., experts, activists, organizations) perceive (local, national, or supranational) political communication on social media. In some cases, political communication on social media evolved in a mutually beneficial way with other audiences, but there are also cases where policies and decisions promoted by political authorities may not be congruent with other audiences’ expectations and views. Therefore, this panel focuses on how political communication is received (e.g., appropriated, contested, and vehiculated) by other online audiences either to gain information or to influence and control the debate. Furthermore, as journalists are increasingly using social media to report political content (e.g., by quoting political authorities and documenting reactions to events or decisions), it is also very likely that citizens are indirectly exposed to social media content (e.g., through traditional media articles). Therefore, this panel encourages papers investigating what individual and contextual factors are associated with public attention to political authorities’ communication on social media. For instance, it is important to assess whether specific content features and goals of communication are likely to generate higher audience engagement than others. Moreover, social media have been associated with data-driven political scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, which resultsed in increased prominence and attention for data-driven campaigning in recent years. Therefore, more research is needed to identify the different practices and consequences of micro-targeting in various countries and for different audiences (e.g., citizens, journalists, activists, politicians). Overall, the panel welcomes papers based on computational approaches (e.g., quantitative content analysis and network analysis), as well as mixed-methods and qualitative approaches that seek to enhance our knowledge of the determinants and causes of the reception of social media political communication. Papers can highlight public and political communication at the macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis.

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