Category: IJPP

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of The International Journal of Press/Politics

“Protest and the Press”

Guest editors:
Summer Harlow, University of Houston (sharlow@central.uh.edu)
Danielle Kilgo, University of Minnesota (dkilgo@umn.edu)

The changing racial and ethnic composition in many countries around the world has contributed to the rise of racist and xenophobic politics, as well as more active political participation by ethnic and racial minorities. Social protests against state-sanctioned police brutality, racial injustice, xenophobia, and Islamophobia—as well as pro-status quo protests such as those against increased migration, in favor of white supremacy, and even against the wearing of masks during a pandemic—have intensified in every region of the globe since the beginning of the new millennium. Previous research, particularly from Western societies, has shown that social movements need the media to help validate their agendas and mobilize supporters (Gamson & Wolsfeld, 1993). At the same time, mainstream news media routinely stigmatize collective action efforts, highlighting protesters’ deviance and marginalizing their goals, grievances, and demands (McLeod & Hertog, 1999). This delegitimizing pattern of news coverage, referred to in the literature as the “protest paradigm”, has prompted renewed interest from researchers seeking to understand how the paradigm operates around the world, in a digital era, when it comes to modern protests and hashtag activism (Jackson et al., 2020).

Over the past decade in particular, protest activity around racial injustice and conservative backlash has skyrocketed. This includes, among other examples: the massive 2020 protests over the killing of George Floyd in the United States that triggered (the revival and attention to) additional movements in countries around the world including Australia, the United Kingdom, and Kenya; right-wing anti-mask/anti-lockdown protests (e.g., in the United States and Brazil); repression and coverage of protests against citizenship laws targeting Muslims in India; protests against China’s national security laws in Hong Kong; the 2019 anti-government demonstrations in Sudan where hundreds of protesters were killed, and recent anti-immigration protests in Italy sparked by fears of COVID-19.

This special issue of The International Journal of Press/Politics aims to provide new research perspectives on how news media’s coverage of police and protests contributes to the legitimization of some movements and the delegitimization of others, with the goal of fleshing out the hierarchies of social struggle created by the press (Kilgo & Harlow, 2019) and the effects of that hierarchy on the public.

Recent research explores mediating factors that might diminish adherence to the protest paradigm, including the level of formality of a country’s political system (Streeck & Kenworthy, 2005; Shahin et al., 2016); the ideology of the media outlet and of the protesters (Claussen, 2000; Luther & Miller, 2005); and whether the coverage appears in traditional media, online-only publications, or social media (e.g., Harlow & Johnson, 2011; Harlow et al., 2020; see also this edited collection of articles on news coverage of protests published in IJPP). These, too, are likely contributors to the hierarchy of social struggle, helping us better predict when coverage of social movements will be more or less delegitimizing. This special issue seeks articles situating different movements, protests, demonstrations, rallies, and unrest within the hierarchy in order to identify other mediating factors that influence protest coverage and its ability to affect public opinion.

Research that offers a nuanced understanding of the effects of news coverage on public opinion is currently limited (but see Arpan et al., 2008; Kilgo & Mourao, 2019), so with this issue we aim to address that gap and shed new light on the ways in which news coverage might help or hinder social movements’ ability to mobilize supporters and acquire or strengthen their legitimacy. Methodologically, inquiries based on the protest paradigm have mostly been limited to content analyses, thereby overlooking the role of journalists or audiences. Scholarship also mostly neglects the perspective of activists and protesters. Further, most protest paradigm research is limited to the Global North. We therefore seek research overcoming these limitations to develop cumulative knowledge that explains the boundaries of the paradigm in an age of digital news and digitally enabled protest.

In addition, we call for research that moves beyond the paradigm, considering shifts in axiological and epistemological philosophies and pushing away from normative presumptions of news media’s allegiance to traditional journalistic routines, norms, and values. We encourage researchers to identify theoretical approaches that might explain and predict journalism’s role in contributing to broader power structures that suppress—or embolden– dissent.

We seek contributions that broaden the scope of research on protest and the press geographically, methodologically, and theoretically, and we particularly encourage comparative studies to better understand how contextual specificities, including media, criminal justice, and political systems, as well as culture, social and economic inequalities, racism, and ethnocentrism, might play a role in media representations of protest and audience and movement responses to those representations. This special issue aims to host contributions that offer a more holistic, global understanding of news coverage of protests and repression of protests, and the news media’s contribution to the public’s willingness to support protesters and their causes. Additionally, this special issue seeks to showcase fresh possibilities for theory development, methodological innovation, and cross-national comparisons to move past asking whether the protest paradigm remains relevant in this digital age, and instead interrogate new approaches to how, when, and why the relationships between media and protest vary around the world, what other factors may affect news coverage and audience responses, and what the consequences are not just for activists and movements in terms of repression or validation and mobilization, but also for social and policy change more broadly.

With this special issue we aim to bring together scholarly expertise from various disciplines and parts of the world. In particular, we encourage inter-disciplinary work that bridges different subdisciplines within communication as well as integrating approaches from sociology, political science, and criminal justice, among others. We also encourage submissions from scholars in under-represented regions to consider how the practice and discourse of news, police, and protests in non-Western countries varies from, and enables to expand, knowledge deriving from existing research.

We welcome contributions with a broad range of questions and methods. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• The myth of objectivity and the ethics of journalists covering protests and policing of protests from a particular standpoint
• News values and the impact on coverage of relying on police as sources
• The influence of social media platforms on media representations of police and protesters, from the perspective of users and of journalists
• Analysis of the share-worthiness of news coverage of protests, and how narratives can create and discourage online engagement among news audiences
• The mainstream media’s role and influence compared to alternative media sources, including social media influencer discourse and viral media
• Visual analysis of protest images, including violent and peaceful depictions of protesters and police
• Effects of protest representation on public opinion and interpretations of protest
• The relationships between social movement actors, activists, citizen protesters, and local and national news media
• Comparative analysis of protest coverage around the world for transnational protests or protests with similar agendas
• Analysis of the intersection of freedom of speech and journalism, including how journalists understand freedom of speech personally and professionally
• Differences in media representations of right-wing and left-wing protests
• The relationships between misinformation, disinformation, and protest coverage
• Qualitative or critical analyses of protest coverage and imagery.
  
  

Submission information

Manuscript submissions for this special issue are due on 15 September 2021. Please submit your work through the journal’s online submission portal and ensure that the first line of the cover letter states: “Manuscript to be considered for the special issue on Protest and the Press.” Manuscripts should follow the IJPP submission guidelines. Submissions will be subject to a double-blind peer review process and must not have been published, accepted for publication, or under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Please note that, to ensure consistency, submissions will only be considered for peer review after the 15 September 2021 deadline has passed.

Authors interested in submitting their work are encouraged to contact the guest editors, Summer Harlow (sharlow@central.uh.edu) or Danielle Kilgo (dkilgo@umn.edu) with questions.

Expected timeline

• Paper submissions: 15 September 2021
• First decision: 15 January 2022
• Paper revisions due: 15 March 2022
• Final decision: 15 May 2022
• Online publication: July 2022
• Print publication: October 2022

References

Arpan, L. M., Baker, K., Lee, Y., Jung, T., Lorusso, L., & Smith, J. (2006). News coverage of social protests and the effects of photographs and prior attitudes. Mass Communication & Society, 9(1), 1-20.

Claussen DS (2000) “So far, news coverage of Promise Keepers has been more like advertising”: The strange case of Christian men and print mass media. In Claussen D (ed) The Promise Keepers: Essays on Masculinity and Christianity. Jefferson, NC, USA: McFarland.

Gamson, W. A., & Wolfsfeld, G. (1993). Movements and media as interacting systems. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 528(1), 114-125.

Harlow, S. & Johnson, T.J. (2011). Overthrowing the protest paradigm? How The New York Times, Global Voices and Twitter covered the Egyptian Revolution. International Journal of Communication, 5, 1359-1374.

Harlow, S., Kilgo, D. K., Salaverría, R., & García-Perdomo, V. (2020). Is the Whole World Watching? Building a Typology of Protest Coverage on Social Media from Around the World. Journalism Studies, 1-19.

Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Welles, B. F. (2020). # HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. MIT Press.

Kilgo, D. K., & Harlow, S. (2019). Protests, media coverage, and a hierarchy of social struggle. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(4), 508-530.

Kilgo, D., & Mourão, R. R. (2019). Media Effects and Marginalized Ideas: Relationships Among Media Consumption and Support for Black Lives Matter. International Journal of Communication, 13 (2019), 1487-4305.

Luther, C.A. & Miller, M.M. (2005) Framing of the 2003 US-Iraq war demonstrations: An analysis of news and partisan texts. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82: 78–96.   

 McLeod, D. M., & Hertog, J. K. (1999). Social control, social change and the mass media’s role in the regulation of protest groups. Mass media, social control, and social change: A macrosocial perspective, 305-330.

Shahin, S., Zheng, P., Sturm, H.A. & Fadnis, D. (2016). Protesting the paradigm: A comparative study of news coverage of protests in Brazil, China and India. The International Journal of Press/Politics 21: 143–164. Streeck, W., & Kenworthy, L. (2005). Theories and Practices of Neocorporatism. In T. Janoski, R. Alford, A. Hicks, & M. A. Schwartz (Eds.) The Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies, and Globalization (pp. 441–460). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hosting the first virtual edition of the annual conference of The International Journal of Press/Politics has been a great challenge that yielded even greater rewards. Like many other organizations, we strove to adapt to the very difficult circumstances that COVID-19 imposed on everyone’s personal and professional lives. We first changed the conference dates from June to September 2020, in hopes that the situation would improve by then, but when it became clear that this was not going to be the case, we decided to hold #ijpp20 as an online, synchronous conference.

As a result, the sixth edition of the journal’s conference was way more inclusive than in the past. It brought together nearly 600 people, coming from 75 different countries, many of whom may not have been able to travel to the United Kingdom to participate in a physical event. Thanks to generous voluntary contributions from more than 80 participants, we raised nearly £1,000, which meant we could make the conference free for everyone, as well as creating a small surplus that will enable us to offer fee waivers to scholars from disadvantaged backgrounds next year.

In 2019, when we hosted our last face-to-face conference in Loughborough, we had a total of 64 participants. During this year’s virtual conference, there was hardly any moment when we had fewer than 80 people connected live at the same time. The number of participants who logged on for at least a few minutes was 254 on the first day, 208 on the second, 203 on the third, and 174 on the fourth and final day. Moreover, video recordings of the whole conference will soon be available on YouTube, so that we can engage an even broader community and for a longer period of time.

I am very grateful for, and awed by, the interest our conference has attracted from all corners of the world. For a journal whose title starts with the word “International”, and whose mission is to expand our understanding of the relationships between media and politics in a global perspective, the impressive breadth of this community is definitely a step forward, and one that we will try to build on in future editions of the conference.

To start putting some flesh on the bones of this commitment to global inclusion, the conference featured a roundtable on what we can do to increase the international visibility of research on media and politics from the “Global South” (a term that has its own problems, to be sure, as we discussed during the panel). Organized by Ana Langer (University of Glasgow) and chaired by Janet Steele (University of Washington), the roundtable included Tanja Bosch (University of Cape Town), Eugenia Mitchelstein (Universidad de San Andrés), Taberez Neyazi (National University of Singapore), Gayathry Venkiteswaran (University of Nottingham Malaysia), Silvio Waisbord (George Washington University), and myself.

To get the conversation started, I presented some data on the geographic distribution of the research and scholars IJPP has published over the nearly 25 years of its existence. You can download my presentation here. And here is the full video of the roundtable, where panelists and attendees offered many compelling insights on the causes and possible solutions to the structural inequalities that still make our knowledge of media and politics too partial and limited, especially at a time when the institutions and normative assumptions of liberal democracy are weakening even in the “Global North”.

Right before the conference, we also launched an edited collection titled “Media and Politics in the Global South and in Global Perspective”, which includes 29 excellent articles published in the journal over the past few years, free to download until 31 October 2020. Very many thanks to SAGE Publications for supporting this and other initiatives that help make our research more accessible.

I am very grateful to everyone who has contributed to making this virtual conference a success: presenters, chairs, participants, and supporters. I am also grateful to my predecessor as Editor-in-Chief of IJPP, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, for creating this conference and making it a unique space for lively discussions on media and politics in a global world. And I am hopeful that the next time we meet again, in September 2021, we will all be healthy, safe, and sane, and we will have gone through and overcome the many challenges that await us in the next months. Take care everyone!

On 21-22 September 2020, the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University (United Kingdom) will host the sixth conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, focused on academic research on the relation between media and political processes around the world. Professor Young Mie Kim from the University of Wisconsin will deliver a keynote lecture.

A selection of the best full papers presented at the conference will be published in the journal after peer review. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 12 June 2020. Attendees will be notified of acceptance by 19 June 2020. Registrations fees will be due 10 August 2020 and full papers based on accepted abstracts will be due 11 September 2020.

This call for papers replaces the previous one, which closed on 13 March 2020, as the conference has been postponed from the original dates of 29-30 June 2020. Colleagues who have submitted a proposal in the previous call for papers do not need to submit their proposal again if they are interested in attending the conference on 21-22 September 2020. We will contact all these colleagues shortly before the 12 June deadline to ask them to confirm whether they still want their proposals to be considered for the new conference dates.

The conference brings together scholars conducting internationally-oriented or comparative research on the intersection between news media and politics around the world. It aims to provide a forum for academics from a wide range of disciplines, countries, and methodological approaches to advance research in this area.

Examples of relevant topics include the political implications of current changes in media systems, including the increasing role of digital platforms; the importance of digital media for engaging with news and politics; analysis of the factors affecting the quality of political information and public discourse; studies of the role of entertainment and popular culture in how people engage with current affairs; studies of relations between political actors and journalists; analyses of the role of visuals and emotion in the production and processing of public information; and research on political communication during and beyond elections by government, political parties, interest groups, and social movements. The journal and the conference have a particular interest in studies that adopt comparative approaches, represent substantial theoretical or methodological advances, or focus on parts of the world that are under-researched in the international English language academic literature.

Titles and abstracts for papers (maximum 300 words) are invited by 12 June 2020. The abstract should clearly describe the key question, the theoretical and methodological approach, the evidence the argument is based on, as well as its wider implications and the extent to which they are of international relevance.

Please send submissions via the online form available at https://bit.ly/IJPPSept2020.

The registration fee for the conference will be GBP 250, to be paid by 10 August 2020. A limited amount of registration fee waivers will be available for early-career scholars and scholars from countries that appear in Tiers B and C of the classification adopted by the International Communication Association. Applications must be made by 12 June 2020 via the abstract online submission form available at http://bit.ly/IJPP2020.

The conference is organized by Cristian Vaccari (Loughborough University, Editor-in-Chief of IJPP). Please contact Professor Vaccari with questions at c.vaccari@lboro.ac.uk.

More about the journal, the keynote speaker, the University, and the Centre:

The International Journal of Press/Politics

The International Journal of Press/Politics is an interdisciplinary journal for the analysis and discussion of the role of the media and politics in a globalized world. The journal publishes theoretical and empirical research which analyzes the linkages between the news media and political processes and actors around the world, emphasizes international and comparative work, and links research in the fields of political communication and journalism studies, and the disciplines of political science and media and communication. The journal is published by Sage Publications and is ranked 11^th by Scopus (SJR) and 12^th by Journal Citation Reports in Communication.

Professor Young Mie Wim, University of Wisconsin

Young Mie Kim is a Professor of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Political Science. Kim is a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Kim’s research concerns data-driven, algorithm-based, digitally mediated political communication. Kim’s recent research project, Project DATA (Digital Ad Tracking & Analysis), empirically investigates the sponsors, content, and targets of digital political campaigns across multiple platforms with a user-based, real-time, ad tracking tool that reverse engineers the algorithms of political campaigns. Kim and her team’s research, “The Stealth Media? Groups and Targets behind Divisive Issue Campaigns on Facebook,” identified “suspicious groups,” including Russian groups on Facebook. The work received the Kaid-Sanders Best Article of the Year in Political Communication (2018), awarded by the International Communication Association. Kim testified at the Federal Election Commission‘s hearings on the rulemaking of internet communication disclaimers and presented her research at the Congressional briefings on foreign interference in elections. Kim also spoke at the European Parliament on her research on data-driven political advertising and inequality in political involvement.

Loughborough University

Based on a 440-acre, single-site campus at the heart of the UK, Loughborough University is ranked top 10 in every British university league table. Voted University of the Year (The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2019) and awarded Gold in the National Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), Loughborough provides a unique student experience that is ranked first in the UK by the Times Higher Education Student Experience Survey 2018. Loughborough University has excellent transport links to the rest of the UK. It is a short distance away from Loughborough Train station, a 15-minute drive from East Midlands Airport (near Nottingham), an hour drive from Birmingham Airport, and an hour and 15 minutes from London via train.

The Centre for Research in Communication and Culture

Since our establishment in 1991, we have developed into the largest research centre of our kind in the UK, and the 2019 QS World University Ranking placed us in the top 50 for communications and media research. We are a proudly interdisciplinary centre, creatively combining social science and humanities approaches for the rigorous exploration of the production and consumption of different forms of communication and creative texts. Our research draws on and contributes to theories and methods in cultural and media studies, sociology, politics, psychology, history and memory studies, textual, visual and computational analysis, and geography. We are interested in exploring how media and cultural texts are produced, how they construct meanings, how they shape the societies we live in, and how they fit within an ever-growing creative economy.

In January 2019, I will officially start my new job as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics.

When I was appointed Editor-in-Chief of IJPP, I returned to the “big tent” approach that inspired its founding editors, Marvin Kalb and Pippa Norris, and reformed the governance of the journal to ensure it can continue growing and thriving.

I am honored that three outstanding scholars will serve as Associate Editors: C.W. Anderson (University of Leeds), Sandra González-Bailón (University of Pennsylvania), and Sophie Lecheler (University of Vienna).

I also found in Yannis Theocharis (University of Bremen) an excellent successor as Book Reviews Editor and in David Smith (Loughborough University) a dedicated Managing Editor.

I also reappointed two-thirds of the journal’s Editorial Board and invited a new cohort of colleagues to join them. I am grateful for their service and delighted that women and men are now equally represented in the Board.

The new editorial team will serve for the same duration as my first term as Editor-in-Chief (2019-2021). I cannot wait to start working with them.

I was pleased to introduce the new team at the fourth annual IJPP conference in Oxford.

The incoming Int’ Journal of Press/Politics editor @25lettori introducing the new team w/associate editors @Chanders @sgonzalezbailon @solecheler (plus book review editor @Yannis_Theo), a big tent team to reflect the journal’s continued commitment to a big intellectual tent #IJPP pic.twitter.com/3r2mLRhrLW

— Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (@rasmus_kleis) October 12, 2018

 

[Cross-posted and adapted from Rasmus Kleis Nielsen’s website.]

I am delighted to announce the program of the fourth annual conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics. This is going to be a particularly special one for me as I am taking over as Editor-in-Chief of the journal in January 2019. The outgoing Editor-in-Chief, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and I are organizing the conference, to be held at the University of Oxford on 11-12 October 2018. I am particularly pleased that my friend and colleague at Loughborough University Andrew Chadwick will be the conference keynote speaker. I will also have the pleasure to chair the final roundtable with members of the journal’s Editorial Board.

The conference venue is Green Templeton College, 43 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HG). Below is the program.

Thursday October 11th

8.45-9.00 Opening remarks

9.00-10.00 Keynote lecture, Andy Chadwick

10.30-12.00 Panels 1a and 1b

PANEL 1a: SOCIAL MEDIA & ELECTIONS (Chair: Gunn Enli)
Facebook Advertising in the United Kingdom General Election of 2017
Nick Anstead, Richard Stupart, Damian Tambini and Joao Vieira-Magalhaes

Diverging patterns of Facebook interactions on online news: media sources and partisan communities in the lead-up of 2018 Italian General Election
Fabio Giglietto, Augusto Valeriani, Nicola Righetti, and Giada Marino

When does Abuse and Harassment Marginalize Female Political Voices on Social Media?
Yannis Theocharis, Maarja Luhiste, Zoltan Fazekas, Sebastian Adrian Popa, and Pablo Barberá

PANEL 1b: NEWS CONSUMPTION (Chair: Homero Gil de Zúñiga)

More News Avoiders? A Longitudinal Study of News Consumption in Low and High Choice Media Environments 1997-2016
Rune Karlsen, Audun Beyer, and Kari Steen-Johnsen

News consumption on social media in authoritarian regimes: polarization and political apathy
Aleksandra Urman

Gateways to news and selective exposure: Evidence from survey and navigation data
Ana Cardenal, Carlos Aguilar-Paredes, and Mario Pérez-Montoro

13.00-14.30 Panels 2a and 2b

PANEL 2a: CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION (Chair: Ralph Schroeder)

The Moderating Effect of Political Responsibility on Populist Communication Online: The case of the German AfD
Tobias Widmann

“His Tweets Speak for Themselves”: An Analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter Behaviour
Suzanne Elayan, Martin Sykora and Tom Jackson

The rally-intensive campaign: A distinct type of election campaign in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond
Dan Paget

PANEL 2b: JOURNALISM IN DANGEROUS PLACES (Chair: Jane Suiter)

“Beyond the Dark Mountains”: Suspicion and Distrust in the work of journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Tali Aharoni

Strategies for safety autonomy: The role of journalists’ capital enhancing professional autonomy in violent contexts
Julieta Brambila

Local authoritarian enclaves in democracies and democratic hybrids: How much do they explain the harassment and murder of journalists over the last quarter century?
Sallie Hughes and Yulia Vorobyeva

15.00-16.30 Panels 3a and 3b

PANEL 3a: JOURNALISM IN PRACTICE (Chair: Ana Langer)

Democratizing Views in International News: Proportions of Northern and Southern Perspectives in American and Finnish Coverage of the Global South
Kirsi Cheas

The political determinants of journalists’ career
Andrea Ceron, Sergio Splendore,Rosa Berganza, Thomas Hanitzsch, and Neil Thurman

How German and British journalists differ in their political and ethical role conceptions
Imke Henkel, Neil Thurman, Veronika Deffner, and Ivica Obadic

PANEL 3b: CONCEPTS AND THEORIES (Chair: Jay Bumler)

The Authentic Politician: Strategies to Construct Authenticity in Political Campaigns
Gunn Enli

Old and New Echo Chambers
Paolo Mancini and Anna Stanziano

Communicative Power in the Hybrid Media System
Andreas Jungherr, Oliver Posegga, and Jisun An

Friday October 12

9.00-10.30 Panels 4a and 4b

PANEL 4a: NEWS CONTENT (Chair: Neil Thurman)

From Network to Narrative: Understanding the Nature and Trajectory of News Stories
Sarah Oates

Thinking through the political media system: Surprising similarities between polarized media outlets during Election 2016
Chris Wells, Josephine Lukito, and Zhongkai Sun

An anatomy of the complex role of the media on policy ‘U-turns’
Ana Ines Langer

PANEL 4b: MISINFORMATION AND MANIPULATION (Chair: Erik Bucy)

The Populist Campaigns against European Public Service Media: Hot Air or Existential Threat?
Felix Simon, Annika Sehl and Ralph Schroeder

Fake News as a Combative Frame: Results from a qualitative content analysis of the term’s definitions and uses on Twitter
Dominique Doering and Gina Neff

Disinformation and Media Manipulation in the Swedish 2018 Election
Ralph Schroeder, Lisa Kaati, and Johan Fernquist10.45-11.45 Panels 5a and 5b

PANEL 5a: ONLINE NEWS AND MEDIA USE (Chair: Gina Neff)

Are there echo chambers? A 7-nation comparison
Grant Blank & Elizabeth Dubois

The Proliferation of the ‘News Finds Me’ Perception Across Different Societies
Homero Gil de Zúñiga Nadine Strauss Brigitte Huber James Liu

PANEL 5B: COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON ATTITUDES TO NEWS (Chair: Ana Cardenal)

Perceived Media Bias and Political Action: A 17-Country Comparison
Matthew Barnidge, Hernando Rojas, Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, Paul A. Beck

Polarization and Inequality: key drivers of distrust in media old and new?
Jane Suiter and Richard Fletcher

12.00-13.00 IJPP Editorial Board Roundtable (with Paolo Mancini, Sallie Hughes, and Sarah Oates) and closing remarks

13.00-14.00 Lunch

Cross-posted from Rasmus Kleis Nielsen’s website.

October 10-12 2018, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford will host the fourth International Journal of Press/Politics conference, focused on academic research on the relation between media and political processes around the world. (See the program from the 2015 conference, the 2016 conference, and the 2017 conference.)

A selection of the best full papers presented at the conference will be published in the journal after peer review. The deadline for submission of abstracts is June 15 2018. Attendees will be notified of acceptance by June 29 2018.

Professor Andrew Chadwick from Loughborough University will deliver a keynote lecture.

The conference brings together scholars doing internationally-oriented or comparative research on the intersection between news media and politics around the world. It aims to provide a forum for academics from a wide range of different disciplines and countries to discuss the theoretical, methodological, and substantial challenges and opportunities for research in this area. It is open to work from political science, political communication, journalism studies, media and communications research, computational social science, and many other fields.

Examples of relevant topics include the political implications of current changes in the media, the relative importance of new forms of digital media for engaging with news and politics, studies of the role of entertainment and popular culture in how people follow current affairs, studies of relations between political actors and journalists, research on political communication beyond the electoral context (including of government, interest groups, and social movements), all with a particular interest in studies that focus on parts of the world that are under-researched in the international English language academic literature, develop comparative approaches, or represent substantial theoretical or methodological advances.

Titles and abstracts for papers (250 words max) are invited by June 15 2018. The abstract should clearly describe the key question, the theoretical and methodological approach, the evidence the argument is based on, as well as its wider implication of international relevance.

Please send submissions to the email address ijpp@politics.ox.ac.uk with the subject line “IJPP conference submission” including in the email the full title of your paper, the abstract, and your name and professional affiliation. (Please do not send attachments.) Full papers based on accepted abstracts will be due Friday September 14, 2018.

The conference is organized by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (RISJ Director of Research and IJPP Editor-in-Chief) and Cristian Vaccari (Loughborough University, incoming Editor-in-Chief). Please contact Rasmus Kleis Nielsen with questions at rasmus.nielsen@politics.ox.ac.uk.

More about the journal, the Reuters Institute, and the keynote speaker:

The International Journal of Press/Politics

IJPP is an interdisciplinary journal for the analysis and discussion of the role of the press and politics in a globalized world. The journal publishes theoretical and empirical research which analyzes the linkages between the news media and political processes and actors around the world, emphasizes international and comparative work, and links research in the fields of political communication and journalism studies, and the disciplines of political science and media and communication.

Keynote Speaker – Andrew Chadwick

Andrew Chadwick (PhD London School of Economics, FRSA) is Professor of Political Communication at Loughborough University, where he leads the Doctoral Training Centre in Online Civic Culture and is a member of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture. His books include The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (Oxford University Press, 2013; Second Edition, 2017), which won the 2016 International Journal of Press/Politics Book Award for an outstanding book on media and politics published in the previous ten years and the American Political Science Association Information Technology and Politics Section Best Book Award, 2014; as well as The Handbook of Internet Politics, co-edited with Philip N. Howard (Routledge 2009), and Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies (Oxford University Press, 2006), which won the American Sociological Association Best Book Award (Communication and Information Technologies Section). Professor Chadwick is also the editor of the Oxford University Press book series Oxford Studies in Digital Politics and was a founding Associate Editor of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics and continues as a Senior Editorial Board member for the journal. He also serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Press/Politics and Social Media and Society.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism marks the University of Oxford’s commitment to the comparative study of journalism around the world. Anchored in the recognition of the key role of independent media in open societies and the power of information in the modern world, the institute aims to serve as the leading forum for a productive engagement between scholars from a wide range of disciplines and practitioners of journalism. It brings the depth and rigor of academic scholarship of the highest standards to major issues of relevance to the world of news media. It is global in its perspective and in the content of its activities.