Journalism

The final day at ECREA 2024 begins for me with a panel on conspiracy theories, and a paper by the great Annett Heft. Her focus is on the diffusion dynamics of conspiracy theories across platforms. She begins by noting the substantial growth in conspiracy theory diffusion, and the severe consequences these ideas can have. Cross-platform activity (involving social media, social messaging, multimedia platforms, alternative news media, and mainstream media) can further heighten this impact.

This project focusses on the two far-right conspiracy theories of the New World Order, with a strong anti-Semitic component, and the Great Replacement / White Genocide …

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session are Sabina Mihelj and Václav Štětka, presenting a new framework for the understanding of current trends towards illiberalism. This focus on illiberalism follows the dismissal of the concept of populism as ill-defined; illiberalism is instead marking a grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism, and communication is a central element in its rise – indeed, there is a need to better investigate the illiberal public sphere.

There are three constitutive features here: the paradoxical emergence of and dependence of illiberalism on liberal democratic institutions and values, and their championing of liberal values such …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Martin Marinos, whose interest is in populism and the far right in Bulgaria. He begins by challenging the notion of illiberalism, suggesting that the opposition between liberalism and illiberalism is not absolute, and that many countries instead display a kind of ‘ill liberalism’ instead. Historically, too, liberalism has sometimes led to the emergence of far-right regimes, so the border between liberalism and fascism is somewhat porous. Especially on economic matters, there are certainly sometimes parallels between liberalism and far-right authoritarianism in their support for an unrestrained capitalism.

Notably, for instance, the …

We continue this second day of the ECREA 2024 conference with the second conference keynote, by Jelena Kleut. Her focus is on uncertainties in transitional media systems. She begins by noting the various present-day communicative disorders – disinformation, political dysfunction, hate speech and abuse, etc. – but also warns us not to lose track of the positive potentials of contemporary communication technologies amongst all the doom and gloom. A balanced assessment of the current situation remains critical.

This points to a considerable level of uncertainty, too – and this can be generative (of research, and of overall progress for society) …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Dennis Andersson, whose interest is in the effect of ideological news use in Sweden. The observation that people hold diametrically opposed beliefs about where society is heading is not new, and predates online and social media use; education and other socioeconomic factors, as well as news media use, are often seen as factors in influencing citizens’ belief structures. Increasingly, sociocultural dimensions – such as attitudes on environmental, gender equality, and migration policies – are also recognised as important dimensions here, however.

These may be reflected in ideological news media consumption patterns …

The second day at ECREA 2024 starts with yet another panel on polarisation, with begins with a paper by Diógenes Lycarião. His interest is in testing the hypothesis that digitalisation and platformisation are fragmenting the public sphere. This is critical since much of the scholarly discussion on this public sphere fragmentation hypothesis to date builds on unverified assumptions. This has two elements: the idea that the expansion of the mediasphere fragments the public sphere, and the suggestion that this then causes phenomena such as ‘echo chambers’ or polarisation.

First, then, is an expansion in media choice actually fragmenting the public …

The next ECREA 2024 session is also on polarisation, and I’m chairing as well as blogging it. We start with Petra de Place Bak, whose interest is in the cognitive preferences that make specific types of online content more salient and shareable. One aspect of this might be sentiment- and emotion-based biases.

Petra’s focus is on social media communication, which has to address the twin challenges of information abundance and attention scarcity; this is affected both by platform algorithms and users’ own cognitive preferences. Negative content biases can play a role especially in the latter, as can biases (both positive …

The post-lunch session on this first day of ECREA 2024 conference is on polarisation, and starts with Hendrik Meyer, whose interest is in the case of disruptive climate protests. Such protests, in Germany for instance by the Letzte Generation protest group, tend to attract controversial media coverage, and it may be such coverage rather than the protests themselves that drive polarisation dynamics.

Untangling the various factors influencing such dynamics is difficult, and this project examined both news media coverage and social media debates to determine patterns of both issue and group polarisation, in both the content of communication and the …

The next speaker in this rapid ECREA 2024 session is Christian Schwieter, whose focus is on the German news coverage of Telegram as a new and challenging social media platform. Telegram has become a hugely contested object in popular discourse; it has marketed itself as a strongly pro-democracy and pro-free speech platform, but is also accused of allowing hate speech and child abuse materials on its channels – notably Telegram founder Pavel Durov was recently arrested in France for this reason.

Telegram has also become a refuge for the deplatforming, and a space for alternative, conspiracist, and far-right groups. The …