Julie Sevenans
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 4371050 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Julie Sevenans |
| NOMBRES | Julie |
| APELLIDO | Sevenans |
| FIRMA | SEVENANS J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Antwerp |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2416-3878 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 24 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 282 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 24 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2015 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
In sync or out of tune? Investigating intraparty opinion homogeneity between national leaderships and local representatives
How Do Politicians’ Own Opinions Affect Their Information Intake? A Survey Experiment among Belgian and Canadian Elected Representatives
A large and growing body of literature indicates that citizens are subject to selective exposure: they are more likely to consult information that aligns with their own opinions than information that contradicts their opinions. However, research in political psychology lacks evidence regarding selective exposure among elected politicians. This study fills this gap. A survey experiment about three policy issues (immigration, regulation of the econ…
How Politicians (mis)Perceive Policy Salience
Are poor people poorly heard
A growing body of literature shows that the preferences of poorer groups in society are less well represented than the preferences of the rich. This paper scrutinises one possible explanation of inequality in representation: that politicians hold biased perceptions of what citizens want. We conducted surveys with citizens and politicians in four countries: Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and Germany. Citizens provided their preferences regarding con…
Do Political Leaders Understand Public Opinion Better than Backbenchers
How elected representatives think about public opinion affects the degree to which policies are congruent with the public’s policy preferences. This is especially true for politicians occupying leadership positions, their perceptions matter even more. Extant work concluded that politicians in general do not exhibit a high perceptual accuracy, but direct evidence of the relative accuracy of leaders’ perceptions of public opinion is missing. Drawin…
Inaccurate Politicians
Knowledge of what voters prefer is central to several theories of democratic representation and accountability. Despite this, we know little in a comparative sense of how well politicians know citizens’ policy preferences. We present results from a study of 866 politicians in four countries. Politicians were asked to estimate the percentage of public support for various policy proposals. Comparing more than 10,000 estimations with actual levels o…
Projection in Politicians' Perceptions of Public Opinion
Research has shown that politicians' perceptions of public opinion are subject to social projection. When estimating the opinions of voters on a broad range of issues, politicians tend to assume that their own preferences are shared by voters. This article revisits this finding and adds to the literature in three ways. First, it makes a conceptual contribution by bringing together different approaches to the analysis of projection and its consequ…
How Politicians Downplay Lower‐Educated Citizens' Opinions
An important challenge facing political decision making today is inequality in representation. Political scientists have shown that the preferences of certain groups—especially those who have higher incomes or are better educated—systematically preponderate in political decision making. Trying to elucidate the mechanisms behind these findings, this research note explores one specific possible driver of representational inequality: that politician…
Electoral incentives make politicians respond to voter preferences
Background Research shows that there is variation in how responsive individual politicians are to voter preferences. One explanation, it is commonly argued, lies in politicians' varying electoral motivations. Methods We test this assumption in a survey‐embedded experiment in which Belgian Members of parliament were asked what position they would take on a policy proposal after a random half of them had been shown real survey data indicating that …
Inequality in the public priority perceptions of elected representatives
Democratic representation presumes that politicians know what the public wants. Ideally, politicians have accurate perceptions not only of which policies citizens prefer (positions), but also of which issues citizens prefer to be dealt with first (priorities). How accurate are elites’ perceptions of the public’s priorities? And, if elite estimations are incorrect, is there inequality in these perceptions? Using data from two surveys – one measuri…
It’s a Matter of Timing. How the Timing of Politicians’ Information Subsidies Affects What Becomes News
From all information subsidies that politicians send out on a given day, only a few make it into the news media. The literature on news selection tries to understand which factors enhance the chance that a message gets covered. This paper contributes to that literature by studying one specific factor: the timing of the dissemination of the message. Between July 2017 and July 2018 we gathered all press releases, press conferences, and tweets of mo…
How Public Opinion Information Changes Politicians’ Opinions and Behavior
(A falta de) Poder de definição de agenda do parlamento sobre a agenda de decisões executivas
One of the functions of parliamentary questions in modern legislatures is to pressure executives to pay attention to specific issues. But can these questions effectively influence executive decisions? There is surprisingly little empirical research in this area. Adopting an agenda-setting perspective, this article examines the extent to which issue attention in oral parliamentary questions influences the issues addressed in the weekly meetings of…
Parliament’s (lack of) agenda-setting power over the executive decision agenda
One of the functions of parliamentary questions in modern legislatures is to pressure executives to pay attention to specific issues. But can these questions effectively influence executive decisions? There is surprisingly little empirical research in this area. Adopting an agenda-setting perspective, this article examines the extent to which issue attention in oral parliamentary questions influences the issues addressed in the weekly meetings of…
Issue reframing by parties
Issue reframing occurs when parties, while addressing an issue, shift the frame toward other policy domains. The literature has found that party issue framing affects how voters think about issues, yet scholars remain largely in the dark as to when and how parties frame issues. The study at hand theorizes and investigates when and how parties reframe issues in their external communication. Drawing on novel Belgian data about parties’ official sta…
Selective Deafness of Political Parties
How do political parties react to different signals from society indicating the saliency of a particular social problem? Are all parties equally responsive to all signals or do certain signals prove more effective in engaging some parties than others? We address these questions from an agenda-setting perspective. In particular, we investigate how media attention, protest activity and real-world signals shape parties’ attention for immigration in …
What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites
One concept, many interpretations
While political agenda-setting scholars agree that the news media matter when it comes to agenda setting, surprisingly, there is no consensus on the exact role these media play in the agenda-setting process. In particular, causal interpretations of the media’s role are diverse. This contribution focuses on this ambiguity in the agenda-setting field. First, it outlines the main reasons for the disagreement, both on a theoretical and on an empirica…
How mass media attract political elites’ attention
Political agenda‐setting research has shown that policy makers are responsive vis‐à‐vis media priorities. However, the mechanisms behind this effect have remained understudied so far. In particular, agenda‐setting scholars have difficulties determining to what extent politicians react to media coverage purely because of the information it contains (information effect), and to what extent the effect is driven not by what the media say but by the f…
Intermedia Agenda Setting in the Social Media Age
Intermedia agenda setting is a widely used theory to explain how content transfers between news media. The recent digitalization wave, however, challenges some of its basic presuppositions. We discuss three assumptions that cannot be applied to online and social media unconditionally: one, that media agendas should be measured on an issue level; two, that fixed time lags suffice to understand overlap in media content; and three, that media can be…
The Media’s Informational Function in Political Agenda-Setting Processes
The political agenda-setting literature has extensively demonstrated that issues receiving more media attention rank higher on the political agenda as well. Scholars now try to get grip on the mechanisms underlying these findings. This paper focuses on the media’s informational function as a driver of political agenda-setting processes. It studies the extent to which politicians, when reacting to media information, really learn about the informat…
Are newspapers’ news stories becoming more alike? Media content diversity in Belgium, 1983–2013
In recent years, communication scholars have expressed concerns about the diversity of news media content. While we live in an era of ‘news abundance’ – the number of outlets and channels has increased enormously – the available news is argued to have become more of the same, but has it? As empirical evidence is lacking, this article verifies whether newspapers in Flanders (Belgium), over time, have indeed become less diverse in terms of the news…
How Political Elites Process Information From the News
Political agenda-setting studies have shown that political agendas are influenced by the media agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament's (MP) individual, cognitive attention for speci…
Political elites’ media responsiveness and their individual political goals
This paper addresses the micro level variation in media responsiveness by political elites. It hypothesizes that individual political goals, in addition to party position, affect the extent to which MPs’ parliamentary initiatives are inspired by media cues. Regression analysis on data from a survey with Belgian national parliamentarians confirms this assumption. Opposition MPs react more to the media than coalition MPs. Within parties, MPs who ar…
Inaccurate Politicians
Knowledge of what voters prefer is central to several theories of democratic representation and accountability. Despite this, we know little in a comparative sense of how well politicians know citizens’ policy preferences. We present results from a study of 866 politicians in four countries. Politicians were asked to estimate the percentage of public support for various policy proposals. Comparing more than 10,000 estimations with actual levels o…
Intermedia Agenda Setting in the Social Media Age
Intermedia agenda setting is a widely used theory to explain how content transfers between news media. The recent digitalization wave, however, challenges some of its basic presuppositions. We discuss three assumptions that cannot be applied to online and social media unconditionally: one, that media agendas should be measured on an issue level; two, that fixed time lags suffice to understand overlap in media content; and three, that media can be…
How Public Opinion Information Changes Politicians’ Opinions and Behavior
Projection in Politicians' Perceptions of Public Opinion
Research has shown that politicians' perceptions of public opinion are subject to social projection. When estimating the opinions of voters on a broad range of issues, politicians tend to assume that their own preferences are shared by voters. This article revisits this finding and adds to the literature in three ways. First, it makes a conceptual contribution by bringing together different approaches to the analysis of projection and its consequ…
Are newspapers’ news stories becoming more alike? Media content diversity in Belgium, 1983–2013
In recent years, communication scholars have expressed concerns about the diversity of news media content. While we live in an era of ‘news abundance’ – the number of outlets and channels has increased enormously – the available news is argued to have become more of the same, but has it? As empirical evidence is lacking, this article verifies whether newspapers in Flanders (Belgium), over time, have indeed become less diverse in terms of the news…
How Political Elites Process Information From the News
Political agenda-setting studies have shown that political agendas are influenced by the media agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament's (MP) individual, cognitive attention for speci…
What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites
Inequality in the public priority perceptions of elected representatives
Democratic representation presumes that politicians know what the public wants. Ideally, politicians have accurate perceptions not only of which policies citizens prefer (positions), but also of which issues citizens prefer to be dealt with first (priorities). How accurate are elites’ perceptions of the public’s priorities? And, if elite estimations are incorrect, is there inequality in these perceptions? Using data from two surveys – one measuri…
How mass media attract political elites’ attention
Political agenda‐setting research has shown that policy makers are responsive vis‐à‐vis media priorities. However, the mechanisms behind this effect have remained understudied so far. In particular, agenda‐setting scholars have difficulties determining to what extent politicians react to media coverage purely because of the information it contains (information effect), and to what extent the effect is driven not by what the media say but by the f…
Issue reframing by parties
Issue reframing occurs when parties, while addressing an issue, shift the frame toward other policy domains. The literature has found that party issue framing affects how voters think about issues, yet scholars remain largely in the dark as to when and how parties frame issues. The study at hand theorizes and investigates when and how parties reframe issues in their external communication. Drawing on novel Belgian data about parties’ official sta…
One concept, many interpretations
While political agenda-setting scholars agree that the news media matter when it comes to agenda setting, surprisingly, there is no consensus on the exact role these media play in the agenda-setting process. In particular, causal interpretations of the media’s role are diverse. This contribution focuses on this ambiguity in the agenda-setting field. First, it outlines the main reasons for the disagreement, both on a theoretical and on an empirica…
Political elites’ media responsiveness and their individual political goals
This paper addresses the micro level variation in media responsiveness by political elites. It hypothesizes that individual political goals, in addition to party position, affect the extent to which MPs’ parliamentary initiatives are inspired by media cues. Regression analysis on data from a survey with Belgian national parliamentarians confirms this assumption. Opposition MPs react more to the media than coalition MPs. Within parties, MPs who ar…
Electoral incentives make politicians respond to voter preferences
Background Research shows that there is variation in how responsive individual politicians are to voter preferences. One explanation, it is commonly argued, lies in politicians' varying electoral motivations. Methods We test this assumption in a survey‐embedded experiment in which Belgian Members of parliament were asked what position they would take on a policy proposal after a random half of them had been shown real survey data indicating that …
Selective Deafness of Political Parties
How do political parties react to different signals from society indicating the saliency of a particular social problem? Are all parties equally responsive to all signals or do certain signals prove more effective in engaging some parties than others? We address these questions from an agenda-setting perspective. In particular, we investigate how media attention, protest activity and real-world signals shape parties’ attention for immigration in …
How Politicians Downplay Lower‐Educated Citizens' Opinions
An important challenge facing political decision making today is inequality in representation. Political scientists have shown that the preferences of certain groups—especially those who have higher incomes or are better educated—systematically preponderate in political decision making. Trying to elucidate the mechanisms behind these findings, this research note explores one specific possible driver of representational inequality: that politician…
Are poor people poorly heard
A growing body of literature shows that the preferences of poorer groups in society are less well represented than the preferences of the rich. This paper scrutinises one possible explanation of inequality in representation: that politicians hold biased perceptions of what citizens want. We conducted surveys with citizens and politicians in four countries: Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and Germany. Citizens provided their preferences regarding con…
It’s a Matter of Timing. How the Timing of Politicians’ Information Subsidies Affects What Becomes News
From all information subsidies that politicians send out on a given day, only a few make it into the news media. The literature on news selection tries to understand which factors enhance the chance that a message gets covered. This paper contributes to that literature by studying one specific factor: the timing of the dissemination of the message. Between July 2017 and July 2018 we gathered all press releases, press conferences, and tweets of mo…
The Media’s Informational Function in Political Agenda-Setting Processes
The political agenda-setting literature has extensively demonstrated that issues receiving more media attention rank higher on the political agenda as well. Scholars now try to get grip on the mechanisms underlying these findings. This paper focuses on the media’s informational function as a driver of political agenda-setting processes. It studies the extent to which politicians, when reacting to media information, really learn about the informat…
Political elites’ media responsiveness and their individual political goals
This paper addresses the micro level variation in media responsiveness by political elites. It hypothesizes that individual political goals, in addition to party position, affect the extent to which MPs’ parliamentary initiatives are inspired by media cues. Regression analysis on data from a survey with Belgian national parliamentarians confirms this assumption. Opposition MPs react more to the media than coalition MPs. Within parties, MPs who ar…
How Political Elites Process Information From the News
Political agenda-setting studies have shown that political agendas are influenced by the media agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament's (MP) individual, cognitive attention for speci…
Intermedia Agenda Setting in the Social Media Age
Intermedia agenda setting is a widely used theory to explain how content transfers between news media. The recent digitalization wave, however, challenges some of its basic presuppositions. We discuss three assumptions that cannot be applied to online and social media unconditionally: one, that media agendas should be measured on an issue level; two, that fixed time lags suffice to understand overlap in media content; and three, that media can be…
The Media’s Informational Function in Political Agenda-Setting Processes
The political agenda-setting literature has extensively demonstrated that issues receiving more media attention rank higher on the political agenda as well. Scholars now try to get grip on the mechanisms underlying these findings. This paper focuses on the media’s informational function as a driver of political agenda-setting processes. It studies the extent to which politicians, when reacting to media information, really learn about the informat…
Are newspapers’ news stories becoming more alike? Media content diversity in Belgium, 1983–2013
In recent years, communication scholars have expressed concerns about the diversity of news media content. While we live in an era of ‘news abundance’ – the number of outlets and channels has increased enormously – the available news is argued to have become more of the same, but has it? As empirical evidence is lacking, this article verifies whether newspapers in Flanders (Belgium), over time, have indeed become less diverse in terms of the news…
What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites
One concept, many interpretations
While political agenda-setting scholars agree that the news media matter when it comes to agenda setting, surprisingly, there is no consensus on the exact role these media play in the agenda-setting process. In particular, causal interpretations of the media’s role are diverse. This contribution focuses on this ambiguity in the agenda-setting field. First, it outlines the main reasons for the disagreement, both on a theoretical and on an empirica…
How mass media attract political elites’ attention
Political agenda‐setting research has shown that policy makers are responsive vis‐à‐vis media priorities. However, the mechanisms behind this effect have remained understudied so far. In particular, agenda‐setting scholars have difficulties determining to what extent politicians react to media coverage purely because of the information it contains (information effect), and to what extent the effect is driven not by what the media say but by the f…
Issue reframing by parties
Issue reframing occurs when parties, while addressing an issue, shift the frame toward other policy domains. The literature has found that party issue framing affects how voters think about issues, yet scholars remain largely in the dark as to when and how parties frame issues. The study at hand theorizes and investigates when and how parties reframe issues in their external communication. Drawing on novel Belgian data about parties’ official sta…
Selective Deafness of Political Parties
How do political parties react to different signals from society indicating the saliency of a particular social problem? Are all parties equally responsive to all signals or do certain signals prove more effective in engaging some parties than others? We address these questions from an agenda-setting perspective. In particular, we investigate how media attention, protest activity and real-world signals shape parties’ attention for immigration in …
(A falta de) Poder de definição de agenda do parlamento sobre a agenda de decisões executivas
One of the functions of parliamentary questions in modern legislatures is to pressure executives to pay attention to specific issues. But can these questions effectively influence executive decisions? There is surprisingly little empirical research in this area. Adopting an agenda-setting perspective, this article examines the extent to which issue attention in oral parliamentary questions influences the issues addressed in the weekly meetings of…
Parliament’s (lack of) agenda-setting power over the executive decision agenda
One of the functions of parliamentary questions in modern legislatures is to pressure executives to pay attention to specific issues. But can these questions effectively influence executive decisions? There is surprisingly little empirical research in this area. Adopting an agenda-setting perspective, this article examines the extent to which issue attention in oral parliamentary questions influences the issues addressed in the weekly meetings of…
It’s a Matter of Timing. How the Timing of Politicians’ Information Subsidies Affects What Becomes News
From all information subsidies that politicians send out on a given day, only a few make it into the news media. The literature on news selection tries to understand which factors enhance the chance that a message gets covered. This paper contributes to that literature by studying one specific factor: the timing of the dissemination of the message. Between July 2017 and July 2018 we gathered all press releases, press conferences, and tweets of mo…
How Public Opinion Information Changes Politicians’ Opinions and Behavior
Electoral incentives make politicians respond to voter preferences
Background Research shows that there is variation in how responsive individual politicians are to voter preferences. One explanation, it is commonly argued, lies in politicians' varying electoral motivations. Methods We test this assumption in a survey‐embedded experiment in which Belgian Members of parliament were asked what position they would take on a policy proposal after a random half of them had been shown real survey data indicating that …
Inequality in the public priority perceptions of elected representatives
Democratic representation presumes that politicians know what the public wants. Ideally, politicians have accurate perceptions not only of which policies citizens prefer (positions), but also of which issues citizens prefer to be dealt with first (priorities). How accurate are elites’ perceptions of the public’s priorities? And, if elite estimations are incorrect, is there inequality in these perceptions? Using data from two surveys – one measuri…
Inaccurate Politicians
Knowledge of what voters prefer is central to several theories of democratic representation and accountability. Despite this, we know little in a comparative sense of how well politicians know citizens’ policy preferences. We present results from a study of 866 politicians in four countries. Politicians were asked to estimate the percentage of public support for various policy proposals. Comparing more than 10,000 estimations with actual levels o…
Projection in Politicians' Perceptions of Public Opinion
Research has shown that politicians' perceptions of public opinion are subject to social projection. When estimating the opinions of voters on a broad range of issues, politicians tend to assume that their own preferences are shared by voters. This article revisits this finding and adds to the literature in three ways. First, it makes a conceptual contribution by bringing together different approaches to the analysis of projection and its consequ…
How Politicians Downplay Lower‐Educated Citizens' Opinions
An important challenge facing political decision making today is inequality in representation. Political scientists have shown that the preferences of certain groups—especially those who have higher incomes or are better educated—systematically preponderate in political decision making. Trying to elucidate the mechanisms behind these findings, this research note explores one specific possible driver of representational inequality: that politician…
How Politicians (mis)Perceive Policy Salience
Are poor people poorly heard
A growing body of literature shows that the preferences of poorer groups in society are less well represented than the preferences of the rich. This paper scrutinises one possible explanation of inequality in representation: that politicians hold biased perceptions of what citizens want. We conducted surveys with citizens and politicians in four countries: Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and Germany. Citizens provided their preferences regarding con…
Do Political Leaders Understand Public Opinion Better than Backbenchers
How elected representatives think about public opinion affects the degree to which policies are congruent with the public’s policy preferences. This is especially true for politicians occupying leadership positions, their perceptions matter even more. Extant work concluded that politicians in general do not exhibit a high perceptual accuracy, but direct evidence of the relative accuracy of leaders’ perceptions of public opinion is missing. Drawin…
In sync or out of tune? Investigating intraparty opinion homogeneity between national leaderships and local representatives
How Do Politicians’ Own Opinions Affect Their Information Intake? A Survey Experiment among Belgian and Canadian Elected Representatives
A large and growing body of literature indicates that citizens are subject to selective exposure: they are more likely to consult information that aligns with their own opinions than information that contradicts their opinions. However, research in political psychology lacks evidence regarding selective exposure among elected politicians. This study fills this gap. A survey experiment about three policy issues (immigration, regulation of the econ…
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