Mauro Barisione

So, What Difference Do Leaders Make? Candidates’ Images and the “Conditionality” of Leader Effects on Voting

Abstract Do leaders make a difference? Are national political candidates and their public images influential in shaping voter choice and in determining election outcomes? Scholarly literature on “leader effects” tends to be discordant when assessing the impact of leader images on voting. This suggests that we should reframe the question in “conditional” terms, i.e. under what conditions do leaders make a difference? Indeed, we need to consider not only “how much”, but also “who” can make a difference along with “where”, “when”, “to whom”, and “how”. Having examined the findings of existing international research, this review article proposes an “epistemological tool kit” with which to examine the forms and limits of knowledge on the influence of leaders’ images on voting. In so doing, it considers the following “conditions of possibility” for leader effects: (1) structural constraints: the institutional, political, territorial and media contexts in which an election takes place; (2) political opportunities: the opinion climate, the economic situation, the presence of a systemic crisis, and the campaign environment; (3) individual moderators: the availability of leader‐oriented segments of voters; (4) image variables: the fundamental features of the candidates/leaders. Finally, the article examines the possible forms (types of effects and mediating processes) and impact (micro/macro assessment) of leader effects on voting.

The ‘new’ discourse of the Front National under Marine Le Pen: A slight change with a big impact:

In recent years, the Front National, under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, has experienced a political revival. In elections, membership numbers and public opinion polls, the party has made impressive gains. We argue in this article that these gains stem, at least in part, from a strategic repositioning of the party based on a more populist discourse and communication style. Through a content analysis of posts (press releases) on the party’s Facebook page from 2013 to 2015, we first highlight that, besides giving the Front National a more presentable image, Marine Le Pen has changed the Front National on two fronts: (1) she has rendered the party’s discourse more populist and (2) she has managed to reframe the party’s leitmotif of immigration. Second, through quantitative analysis of ‘Likes’ for each post, we find that this new discourse resonates well with Front National sympathizers.

A Digital Movement of Opinion? Contesting Austerity Through Social Media

Social media opinions, although expressed by generally more active citizenry, are emerging as an increasingly legitimate and influential form of public opinion. As social media allow to overcome the problem of hidden preferences and can favour political mobilisation, these online opinions can also be linked with collective action. Accordingly, the present chapter examines the role of such digital voices as potential manifestations of ‘digital movements of opinion’. First, we employ a semi-automated content analysis technique to detect Eurosceptic attitudes on austerity in three European countries (France, Britain, and Italy). Second, we test the relationship between online scepticism and the propensity to broadcast online forms of anti-EU protests, rallies, and demonstrations. Our analysis highlights that anti-austerity protest seems to boost the online debate on austerity.

‘Are you a union member?’ Determinants and trends of subjective union membership in Italian society (1972–2013)

This article analyses so-called ‘subjective union membership’ among employees and non-employees in Italy between 1972 and 2013. Unlike trends drawn from administrative data (‘objective membership’), subjective membership, based on the declaration of the respondent, takes into account respondents’ awareness of being affiliated to a union, their sense of belonging and the social desirability of stating their membership status. Instrumental and ideational rationales inform our cross-sectional and longitudinal hypotheses. Using an ITANES pooled dataset based on 11,073 observations over 40 years (1972–2013), two major findings emerge. First, only a minority of politically engaged left-wing individuals have maintained the same probability of declaring themselves union members since the early 1970s. Secondly, subjective membership has sharply decreased over time not only among employees, but also – in clear contrast to administrative data – among non-employees. Subjective measures are thus particularly useful in improving our understanding of union membership.

Understanding a digital movement of opinion: the case of #RefugeesWelcome

ABSTRACT Recent work on digital political engagement has extensively shown that social media platforms enhance political participation and collective action. However, the idea that citizen voice through social media can give rise, under given conditions, to a specific digital force combining properties of social movements and public opinion has received less attention. We fill this gap by analysing the digital discussion around the Twitter hashtag #RefugeesWelcome as a case of ‘digital movement of opinion’ (DMO). When the refugee crisis erupted in 2015, an extraordinary wave of empathy characterized the publics’ reactions in key European hosting countries, especially as a result of viral images portraying refugee children as the main victims. Using a triangulation of network, content and metadata analysis, we find that this DMO was driven primarily by social media elites whose tweets were then echoed by masses of isolated users. We then test the post-DMO status of the hashtag-sphere after a potentially antithetical shock such as the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, which polarized the network public. Overall, we argue that the concept of DMO provides a heuristically useful tool for future research on new forms of digital citizen participation.

Too Much an Out-Group? How Nonverbal Cues About Gender and Ethnicity Affect Candidate Support

Previous work on nonverbal cues has demonstrated the influence of candidates’ facial displays on voter preferences. However, the idea that visual cues affect political judgment by signaling the relative social solidarity (in-group vs. out-group status) between candidates and voters has received little attention. We fill this gap by experimentally manipulating facial cues associated with the physical features of gender and ethnicity (Afrocentric vs. Eurocentric-looking) and assessing their effects on candidate support in the context of the Italian 2013 general election. The experimental design is based on a CAWI post-election online survey conducted on a representative sample of Italian voters. We find that group differences between candidates and voters matter, but only among right of center voters, who respond more negatively to party candidates expressing “combined” (party x gender x ethnicity) dissimilarity. Gender- and ethnicity-based differences are, on the contrary, “assimilated” and accepted when the target candidate is from the voters party.

Do We Need to Rethink EU Politics in the Social Media Era? An Introduction to the Volume

As the European Union has expanded its power, it is also subject to more contestation and politicisation, and thereby struggling for more legitimacy. The mass media are traditionally key channels for opinion formation and processes of democratic legitimacy. We should now also look at social media platforms as a communication space in which politically relevant discourses are constructed and find potential legitimation. We thus analyse how social media, by favouring processes of citizen dis-intermediation, enhance active citizen empowerment and exertion of counter-power in the EU politics’ digital public spheres. At the same time, we argue that social media can contribute to affirm the idea of public Europeanism, or the notion of being part of a loose but common European demos.