Lecture 7 - Social media and political campaigns Flashcards
Life cycle voting (Tentamenvraag)
Political participation follows an age-related cycle. Owing to various structural, social, moral and economic factors, a smaller percentage of young people vote compared to older people
- Life cycle effect in policital behavior: relationships between age and political behavior is curvilinear: people are most active in middle life and least active in the earliest and latest stages of the life cycle.
Social media and news avoidance
- commercialization changed content and form: young people are less exposed to political information and more to entertainment. Result: lack of political interest and lower levels of political knowlegde among young people
What do generations think of a democracy?
There is a decline in people who think it is essential to live in a democracy.
Younger generations –> lower support for democracy
Broadcasting –> narrowcasting
Fragmentation of audiences, combined with more partisan / ideological product differentation
Demassification of mass communication
- Shared knowledge base is lower.
- Hyper personalisation
- Narrow casting; being targeted, being profiled. –> very selective exposure. The news chooses you.
- Part of the public can ‘tune out’ completely from politically relevant news.
Selective exposure definition
Audiences are increasinlgly likely to receive information that is customized to their personal tastes, interest, and political viewpoints to the possible exclusion of other information.
Hyperpersonalisation
Seen as something that is done by algorithms made by gatekeepers. The selection of the news is done by algorithms. Because there is so much information, people feel overwhelmed. This could lead to news fatigue
News fatigue (Tentamenvraag)
News fatigue refers to the feeling of being overwhelmed or exhausted by the constant stream of news and information that is available through various media channels.
News avoidance (Tentamenvraag?)
News avoidance refers to a deliberate decision to avoid consuming news altogether. This can be due to a variety of reasons, such as feeling overwhelmed by the news, finding the news too negative or sensationalistic, or simply not having the time or interest to follow current events. Some people may also choose to avoid news because they feel that it is biased or unreliable.
Hard news (Tentamenvraag)
Hard news is about themes and frames things in a context. Structural, long term developments, impersonal. (causes of unemployment, policies to reduce etc.)
Style: text, unemotional
Soft news (Tentamenvraag)
Interviews, incidents, experiencing unemployment, individual, not politically relevant, social interest angle.
Style: emotional, dramatizing, exaggerating, visual
Low information voters
Voters have become more polarized by education – less-educated voters go in the direction of populists. Their vote is based on emotions –> out-group derogation. They lack a ‘need for cognition’ (NFC).
Need for cognition
- People with low need for cognition find little reward in collecting and evaluating new information to solve problems and consider competing issue positions. They are likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts for cues.
- People with a high need for cognition have a
positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues.
NFC and knowledge
- NFC and political knowledge are strongly related. Voters who tend not to think much tend to prefer Trump over Clinton.
- Cultural concerns are connected to economic concerns.
Article Norris, Garnett & Gromping 2020
- Conspiracy belief and populism drive belief in unfair elections. Effect exacerbated by extremism and political knowledge, attention to politics and general trust and democratic satisfaction.
