Creating Awareness in Counter Corruption – An Evaluation of the Agenda Setting Potential of Counter Corruption Organizations

Corruption has become a relevant factor in liberal democracies challenged by populist political forces. The corrupt elite is considered the antagonist of the pure people (Mudde 2007). These actors employ tactics leading to false assumptions and accusations like fake news (e.g. Waisbord 2018). In this setting, counter corruption organizations become an even more important player, promoting services to the overall society by providing a well-informed, non-populist perspective and yet detecting misconduct by political actors. A key component of fighting corruption is creating public awareness. The digital sphere provides new, fast and effective tools for counter corruption organizations to get the public’s attention, „name and shame“ political actors as well as set the media and political agenda. However, do they use these tools to their full potential? This contribution builds on the agenda-setting approach (McCombs and Shaw 1972, McCombs, Shaw and Weaver 2014). In a multi-causal world, it is difficult to tell the net effect of a single actor’s afford of fighting corruption. Yet, it is possible to evaluate how sophisticated their affords are. The Agenda-Setting-Index developed by Fitzpatrick (2018) is an additive, weighted index relying on Twitter data which enables an evaluation of an actor’s skill in using Twitter in order to set the media and political agenda. Focusing on organizational accounts bypasses ethical issues concerning user privacy. First tested on civil society organization in the field of humanitarian aid, this application of the index focuses on organizations involved with the fight against corruption in four European liberal democracies with strong populist actors (UK, Italy, France, Germany). This allows a comparison of different organizations within one country as well as across European countries. Research questions are: Do organizations use Twitter skillfully? Do they work together in creating awareness for a topic by using the same hashtags? Do they work together across borders? Fitzpatrick, J. (2018). Digital Civil Society. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public opinion quarterly, 36(2), 176-187. McCombs, M. E., Shaw, D. L., & Weaver, D. H. (2014). New directions in agenda-setting theory and research. Mass communication and society, 17(6), 781-802. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and opposition, 39(4), 541-563. Waisbord, S. (2018). The elective affinity between post-truth communication and populist politics. Communication Research and Practice, 4(1), 17-34.