Jennifer Stromer-Galley’s Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age (Oxford University Press, 2014)

In this issue of the Political Communication Report we document in written form the lively author-meets-critics roundtable on Jennifer Stromer-Galley’s (2014) Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age, held at the 2015 APSA Political Communication Preconference in San Francisco on September 2, 2015. The smyposium includes the contributions from all critics as wells as the response by Jennifer Stromer-Galley. Kathleen Searles, the organizer of preconference briefly introduces the roundtable.

Introduction to the Symposium

Kathleen Searles, Louisiana State University

Critics’ Commentary

Yannis Theocharis, University of Mannheim

Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David Karpf, George Washington University

Heather Evans, Sam Houston University

Author’s Response

Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Syracuse University

Letter from the Editor

Hello and welcome to The Political Communication Report, the newsletter for the Political Communication Divisions of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the International Communication Association (ICA)!

In this spring issue of PCR, please find:

(a) Feature: Political Communication in Transitional and Non-Democratic Contexts: Challenges, Issues, and Directions for Research

The study of societies that are experiencing significant sociopolitical upheaval and/or are characterized by social conditions that do not meet common minimum requirements of democratic governance has gained significant traction in political communciation research. Seven contributions by some of the most prolific researchers in this area highlight important contemporary advances and debates, and discuss the major challenges, issues, and future directions for political communication research in and on non-democratic and transitional contexts.

Direct  links to contributions:

(b) Feature: Previewing the 2015 PolComm ICA Pre- and Postconferences

This year’s ICA meeting is just around the corner! It will feature an outstanding collection of political communication research including three preconferences and one postconference co-sponsored by our division. Preconferences provide opportunities to devote a half-day program of presentations to questions worked on at the frontiers of our field. In our feature the organizers of all pre- and postconferences outline the importance of their themes for political communication researchers and preview their programs for Puerto Rico.

(c) Announcements with particular relevance to the field and our divisions.

If you have not already done so, please also join our divisions on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels to receive the most up-to-date information on job postings, calls for papers, etc.!

Thanks to all who contributed to this newsletter! Please feel encouraged to send any feedback and suggestions you might have on this issue or possible improvements to PCR.

I hope you’ll enjoy this issue of PCR!

Eike Mark Rinke
Research Associate, University of Mannheim

Political Communication in Transitional and Non-Democratic Contexts: Challenges, Issues, and Directions for Research

This issue of the Political Communication Report highlights the growing occupation of researchers in our field with expanding the horizons of political communication beyond the study of established democracies, to the study of societies that are experiencing significant sociopolitical change and/or are characterized by social conditions that do not meet common minimum requirements of democratic governance. The study of such contexts in the past has often been relegated to a marginal role in our field, sometimes to the point of undue global generalizations from observations made exclusively in Western democratic contexts. Thankfully, however, with the growing recognition of such oversight, coupled with new technological possibilities of data collection, this state of affairs is quickly changing and a lot of activity in our field has recently been directed towards the study of political communication in transitional and non-democratic societies.

In this feature you will find no less than seven contributions from a stellar cast of political communication researchers at the forefront of these efforts. They introduce their most recent work and put a spotlight on some of the most promising developments in the study of political communciation under non-democratic and transitional political conditions:

1. Nils B. Weidmann gives an overview of state-of-the-art research on the interplay of information and communication technologies, political communication, and social and political conflict.

2. Matt Baum and Yuri Zhukov describe how and why differences between democracies and non-democracies emerge in the reporting of news about stability-relevant political events — and how reporting biases may shape collective perceptions of political unrest differently in different parts of the world.

3. Florian Toepfl makes the case for a “discourse approach” to the comparative study of media and politics in (semi-)authoritarian contexts like Russia that reintroduces ideology and meaning as key concepts in the analysis of political communication in semi-authoritarian societies.

4. Baogang He focuses on lessons political communciation research can learn from the specific context of China. He argues that political communication researchers need to abandon simplistic views of political communication under authoritarian conditions and instead develop a more nuanced understanding of how authoritarianism may interact with very deliberative forms of public communication.

5. Daniela Stockmann emphasizes an institutional approach to understanding the ambivalent processes by which authoritarian regimes in China and beyond attempt to control “free” commercial and new media and the major challenges that arise for doing comparative research in and on authoritarian political contexts.

6. Molly Roberts summarizes for us some of her fascinating recent work and shows how new types of data and data analysis allow insights into the inner workings of censorship in authoritarian regimes not previously within the reach of political communication researchers.

7. Katrin Voltmer, finally, highlights the fundamentally ambivalent nature of media democratization in today’s media landscapes, and challenges us to adequately account for such ambivalence in our work on social contexts in political transition.