The Deliberative Quality of Referendum Coverage in Direct Democracy

Marcinkowski, Frank; Donk, André

doi:10.1080/13183222.2012.11009098

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…For our research project, we conducted a qualitative content analysis. Our aim was to look at actors and networks, at topics and arguments, and at the quality of the discussion in the counter-public sphere of a conservative, right-wing populist movement and to ask for deliberation (Habermas, 2005; Kitch, 1999, 2003; Marcinkowski, 2007; Marcinkowski and Donk, 2012; Viehöver, 2003; Wessler, 2008).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social media can still be regarded as a research gap in the field of memory studies. Our qualitative content analysis centers on the active debate on Facebook about the renaming of Hindenburg Square and reconstructs the discourse, its actors and their networks, their arguments, the framing of this issue, and the quality of the communication in social media, that is, the amount of deliberation (Marcinkowski and Donk, 2012; Wessler, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collective memory and social media: Fostering a new historical consciousness in the digital age?

Birkner

Donk

2018

Memory Studies

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The impact of social media has grown significantly during the past decade in several fields of our society. This article advocates the research subfield of social media memory studies based on empirical data from a case study on the role of social media in a local conflict about re-naming a public square in an average German town. The square had been named after Paul von Hindenburg, who played a crucial role in the implementation of Adolf Hitler as German Reichskanzler and was therefore regarded as an inadequate public patron. Conservatives fought against the new name, also on Facebook. Our findings indicate that the platform played a decisive role as counter-public sphere against hegemonic mainstream media and politics in fostering a new historical consciousness. The case might be seen as a precedent of right-wing movements and their use of social media in the Brexit campaign or the US elections.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective memory and social media: Fostering a new historical consciousness in the digital age?

Birkner

Donk

2018

Memory Studies

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“…Political communication scholars have traditionally studied referendum campaigns by focusing either on campaign actors, news media, or the audience. In the biggest research strand, scholars have focused on the patterns of news coverage, essentially evaluating the quality of media coverage across a broad set of indicators (Marcinkowski & Donk, 2012;Marquis et al, 2011) or focusing on one or few indicators, such as balance (e.g., Cushion & Lewis, 2017), the existence of issue frames instead of game frames (Dekavalla, 2018), dialogue (e.g., Hänggli, 2020), or topic diversity (e.g., Udris et al, 2016). While content analyses with core indicators of media quality have increasingly become complex and nuanced, they do not provide detailed insights on the quality of argumentation (one exception is Renwick & Lamb, 2013), a feature which is considered necessary for issue-focused referendum campaigns and threatened by politicians' "strategic lying" (Gaber & Fisher, 2021).…”

Section: The Development Of Research On Referendum Campaignsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Referendum Campaigns in the Digital Age: Towards (More) Comparative Analyses in Hybrid Media Systems

Udris

Eisenegger²

2023

MaC

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Referendum campaigns, which happen in many countries on the national or sub-national level, are highly important and special periods of political communication. Unlike elections, however, referendum campaigns are understudied phenomena. This thematic issue addresses patterns of referendum campaigns, which increasingly take place in digital and hybrid media environments, where political actors conduct campaigns through various channels, news media react to and shape debates on social media, and citizens receive a large share of political information from traditional and digital media. In this editorial, we provide a short overview of how research on referendum campaigns has evolved and how it has started to shift its attention away from news coverage and toward the role of campaign actors and the citizens who use (or engage with) search engines and social media platforms. The articles in this thematic issue reflect this shift but also show that news media remain important actors in referendum campaigns. Finally, we outline further research steps, which should include even more holistic analyses of the hybridity of referendum campaigns and hopefully more comparisons across cases.

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“…The newspapers that form the basis of our analysis are the two newspapers of record with broad coverage in the German-speaking part of Switzerland: the Neue Zürcher 30 Biber et al (2016); see especially Rinscheid and Udris (2021). 31 Marcinkowski and Donk (2012). 32 McCombs and Shaw (1972).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…53 After these 7 referendum decisions within only 3 years, the Swiss people were granted some 12 years until they were asked to vote on energy matters again in 2015, SFOE (2019), p. 29. 54 Marcinkowski and Donk (2012). 55 The following sectors are considered in our analysis: energy supply (power and heat generation), transport (public and private), buildings and appliances.…”

Section: Development Of Energy Policy Discourse In Switzerland 1997-2011mentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Discourses on (Sectoral) Energy Policy in Switzerland

Schaffer

Levis

2021

Swiss Energy Governance

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Energy transitions are based upon policy choices of sovereign nation states. Hence, politics plays a role in determining which policies governments implement and which sectors are targeted. Our chapter looks at the evolution of public discourse on energy policy as one important factor reflecting policy discussion and contestation within the political arena. Our descriptive and explorative analysis of the early public discourse in Swiss energy policy between 1997 and 2011 contributes to three main issues. First, it makes a case for the disaggregation of energy policy and its public perception to add to our understanding of energy transition pathways. We argue that looking at sectoral discourses as well as sectoral policy outputs allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the idiosyncrasies of Swiss energy policy regarding temporal as well as sectoral variation. Second, an increased politicization of energy policy may affect future policy choice, and thus any account on energy transition policy needs to scrutinize potential feedback effects from policies that manifest via policy discourse. Third, and on a more methodological stance, we argue that our approach to use news media as a representation of the public discourse via structural topic models can help to explore and explain the evolving national policy priorities regarding energy transition.

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The Deliberative Quality of Referendum Coverage in Direct Democracy

Cited by 10 publications

References 20 publications

Collective memory and social media: Fostering a new historical consciousness in the digital age?

Collective memory and social media: Fostering a new historical consciousness in the digital age?

Referendum Campaigns in the Digital Age: Towards (More) Comparative Analyses in Hybrid Media Systems

Public Discourses on (Sectoral) Energy Policy in Switzerland

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