Are Anti-Politics and Post-Truth the New Face of Political Communication?

The 2016 US Presidential Election was named by various media outlets the worst, the ugliest, and the most depressing election ever. Both camps were blamed for the lack of focus on policy and substance. The lack of both intellectual depth and policy oriented debate, and, ultimately, the dominance of factually inaccurate campaign information, are by no means an exception in modern political campaigns. The British 2016 European Union membership referendum is equally infamous due to deceiving campaign communication and media coverage. These recent campaigns and developments raise fundamental questions about how candidates and politicians communicate with the electorate and the role the news media play (or fail to play) as the ‘fourth power’ in democracy. Crucially, political communication affects citizens’ engagement, participation, and electoral choices. If post-truth politics substitutes the role of well-informed campaign debate the consequences could be profoundly damaging for the very functioning of democracy. Assessing the state of political communication between the public and political elites in the context of electoral and referenda campaigns, when citizens are called to make fundamental choices, is a first step in answering this overarching question. Political communication is intensified during electoral campaigns and a large tradition of studies has proven how consequential it can be. Elections are an ideal environment to study and evaluate agenda setting, political learning and the effects of (mis)information. This Section invites contributions that will analyse processes that are currently unfolding and will shed light on new features that characterise modern campaign environments. Have voters really had ‘enough of experts’? How can misinformation be challenged effectively during electoral campaigns? What are the consequences of highly polarised campaign communication on voter information, engagement, and electoral choices? Are social media degrading the quality of the campaign? Further to this, recent campaigns have also raised questions about the consequences the increased use of racist, xenophobic, and sexist language has on the overall health of advanced democratic processes and institutions. For example, what are the effects of openly sexist and racist representation of women and minorities? What are the broader implications of polarised campaign communications on citizens’ trust in democratic institutions and processes? Finally, this Section asks the question of whether institutional settings vary in the extent to which they incentivise reliance on misconceptions in political communication. While we know that certain institutional systems encourage personalisation of campaigns and communication, we still lack contributions on how the rules of the game influence the quality of campaigning. Are online trolling, abusive language and vicious attacks more likely to happen under certain institutional settings? Are social media contributing to these ‘ugly’ and ‘depressing’ campaigns or, inversely, helping to prevent the worst? This Section invites scholars from a range of fields to contribute to answering these questions by providing evidence from their recent empirical work from both developed and emerging democracies. The Section will also welcome methodological presentations that aim to evaluate the use of different approaches and methods in examining the recent developments in political communication. Tentative Panels: 1. (Mis)information and voter competence (Chair: Dr Laura Sudulich, University of Kent) 2. The rejection of experts: 2016 British EU referendum campaign (Chair: Dr Sebastian Popa, University of Mannheim) 3. The defeat of decency: 2016 US Presidential election campaign (Chair: Dr Zachary D. Greene, Strathclyde University) 4. Is it still okay to be sexist? Gender, campaigns, and media (Chair: Dr Maarja Lühiste, Newcastle University) 5. Minorities in campaign communication: the perfect targets? (Chair: Dr Zoltan Fazekas, University of Oslo) 6. Institutional constraints and campaign quality (Chair: Professor Jeffrey Karp, University of Exeter) 7. The appeal of populism in campaign communication (Chair: Professor Robert Johns, University of Essex)