Kajsa Falasca

Priming effects during the financial crisis: accessibility and applicability mechanisms behind government approval

This study investigates priming effects during the global financial crisis that erupted in September 2008. Using two longitudinal data sources on public opinion dynamics in Sweden between 2007 and 2010, we find no evidence of a basic priming hypothesis. Drawing upon the distinction between accessibility and applicability mechanisms, however, additional analysis indicates that priming of economic considerations was moderated by citizens’ attributions of responsibility for current economic developments. These results support the notion of priming as a two-step process, whereby heavy news coverage of the financial crisis increases the accessibility of economic considerations among the audience, but whether these considerations are used in government approval assessments depends on their perceived applicability as well.

Political news journalism : Mediatization across three news reporting contexts

Election coverage has a tendency to frame politics as a strategic game, to increase the role of journalists as interpreters of issues and events and to include a conflict frame, and thus indicating increased mediatization. However, political news research outside of the election indicates that news media are less independent from political actors. Drawing on literature on mediatization, media interventionism, political news journalism, news framing and source use, the purpose of this article is to empirically investigate whether election coverage is representative of other political journalism in terms of degree of mediatization. The study is based on a systematic comparison of three content analyses using the same coding schedule and procedure from coverage of the Financial Crisis 2008, the Election Campaign 2010 and routine political news coverage 2012 in Sweden. The main conclusion from this study is that mediatization of media coverage is substantially influenced by the specific context of the news.

The Mix of Media Use Matters: Investigating the Effects of Individual News Repertoires on Offline and Online Political Participation

In contemporary high-choice media environments, people increasingly mix and combine their use of various news media into personal news repertoires. Despite this, there is still limited research on how people compose their individual news repertoires and the effects of these news repertoires. To address this and further our understanding of how media use influences political participation, this study investigates (a) how people combine the use of offline and online media into personal news repertoires and (b) the effects of different news repertoires on both offline and online political participation. Based on a two-wave panel study covering the 2014 Swedish national election, this study identifies five news repertoires, labeled minimalists, public news consumers, local news consumers, social media news consumers, and popular online news consumers. Among other things, the results show that social media news consumers are more likely to participate in politics both offline and online.

The construction of an elusive concept: Framing the controversial role and practice of lobbying in Swedish media

This study seeks to explore the relation between the elusive scholarly concept and the media framing of the role and practice of lobbying. The longitudinal study analyses a time period of 10 years in Sweden when lobbying has taken on an increasingly influential role in the political system. The results, based on a content analysis of news articles and opinion editorials in five national newspapers and trade media, illustrate that the perception of lobbying is without nuance and a common negative frame is present and continues to be reproduced. Furthermore, a clear contradiction is evident in the relation between the scholarly debate and the mediated debate of the practice. The article discusses what this setting and inconsistency implies for current society and democracy, and the citizen trust in political representatives and institutions.

Social media election campaigning: who is working for whom? A conceptual exploration of digital political labour

ABSTRACT This paper posits the notion of digital political labour (DPL) as a rewarding concept for the analysis of political communication and social media. Numerous studies conclude that the engagement, dialogic and social affordances of social media have not yet been realised. But despite the lack of direct interaction, active audiences are, by their own actions in social media, taking part in DPL since audiences do not only receive political messages but contribute significantly with their own user-generated content. The empirical data in this study are from the official Facebook pages of Swedish political parties during the 2014 national election campaign. The results show that most of the communications work is actually performed by the audiences, and not by the parties themselves. This study highlight two important dimensions of DPL where users constitute targets and carriers of advertising as well as audiences whose free labour generates political campaign content.