Political Communication

Communication is an integral aspect of politics. Hence, the importance of communication research for political science cannot be overstated. Political communication deals with, among other things, the way (political) information is communicated to the electorate, how media cover parties and politicians, the way issues in the media affect politics, how political actors communicate with each other, and interpersonal communication on political topics. In recent decades, important societal changes have taken place that strongly affect the field of political communication, including the rise of internet-based communication, the increase of populist rhetoric by political parties, the fragmentation of the media landscape and the rise of ‘post-truth’ politics in which fake news flourishes. This section seeks to bring together scholars in the field of political communication research. We aim to reach out to scholars of political communication in the broadest sense possible, including research on (internal and external) party communication, the influence of media coverage on political behavior or attitudes, election campaigns, social media and politics, and political journalism. In short, we warmly invite panels and papers on the broad topic of political communication, and we welcome studies employing experimental designs, survey studies, content analyses or other relevant methods. Research that explicitly aims to strengthen our understanding of the causality involved in communication effects are encouraged, as well as studies that employ cutting-edge research methods to study political communication in an automated fashion. As the topic of the section is very broad, the Standing Group on Political Communication is quite popular (while only founded in October 2017, it currently has 192 members), and many papers were submitted to the section on Political Communication of the 2018 General Conference (with a specific focus on fake news). As such, we expect that a large group of scholars will be interested in submitting their research within this section again this year.