Olga Eisele
Biographic Data
| ID | 2055040 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Olga Eisele |
| GIVEN NAMES | Olga |
| FAMILY NAME | Eisele |
| SIGNATURE | EISELE O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vienna |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6604-3498 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!” An Automated Analysis of Polarities of Mediated Truth Contestation in Austrian and Czech News Media
This paper analyzes the discursive dynamics of mediated truth contestation by examining how assertions of truthfulness and references to falsehood are constructed in Austrian and Czech news coverage of migration. Employing automated content analysis on an extensive dataset of 162,943 news articles (2013–2019), we apply latent semantic scaling to assess differences between tabloid and broadsheet newspapers and between mainstream and alternative ne…
Pics or it didn’t happen! EU institutions’ visual communication and user engagement on Facebook and Instagram
Social media often follow a visual logic found to increase engagement, as images are more likely to attract attention, presenting information on a holistic-associative basis. For a political entity like the EU, social media are a promising route to overcome the remoteness to its citizens, identified as one of the crucial challenges to its public legitimacy. Against this broader background, our study analyses the influence of 10 years of EU visual…
A question of truth: Accusations of untruthfulness by populist and non-populist politicians on Facebook during the Covid-19 crisis
Online environments can foster opportunities for political engagement but can also hinder democratic deliberation by promoting hostile and polarizing communication. A prominent concern revolves around the attacks on political actors’ truthfulness in public discourse. Such discourse is expressed through anti-elite and antagonistic attacks on perceived (un)truthfulness employed by some politicians toward political opponents in public debates, and i…
Justifying European border policies: A quantitative content analysis of German government communication 2013-2023
Under the Schengen Agreement, member states agreed to abolish internal border controls to ensure free movement. While the reintroduction of internal border controls is foreseen only in exceptional circumstances, states increasingly invoke their right to unilaterally reintroduce border controls. This is at odds with a core principle of the EU: free movement. In this paper, we examine different strategies that public officials use to justify the in…
Trump and circumstance: Introducing the post-truth claim as an instrument for investigating truth contestation in public discourse
The idea of post-factual politics has become increasingly relevant for describing current political and societal developments. Though research on the topic has been blooming, we lack a common framework and systematic tool to map and analyze post-truth communication. Therefore, our paper advances the adaptation of claims-making for the analysis of how actors relativize the truth and use discourses of untruthfulness to attack their opponents, const…
The political contention of LGBTQ+ communities in the digital age - state of the art, limitations, and opportunities for comparative research
This paper develops an analytical framework for comparative research on political contention in the digital age and, building upon it, provides a literature review of social media research related to LGBTQ+ political contention.So far, we lack systematic insights into the literature on digitallymediated LGBTQ+ political contention and its potential for comparative research.Applying scoping literature review, we focus on the key comparative dimens…
Capturing a News Frame – Comparing Machine-Learning Approaches to Frame Analysis with Different Degrees of Supervision
The empirical identification of frames drawing on automated text analysis has been discussed intensely with regard to the validity of measurements. Adding to an evolving discussion on automated fra Capturing a News Frame – Comparing Machine-Learning Approaches to Frame Analysis with Different Degrees of Supervision identification, we systematically contrast different machine-learning approaches with a manually coded gold standard to shed light on…
Fuming Mad and Jumping with Joy: Emotional Responses to Uncivil and Post-Truth Communication by Populist and Non-Populist Politicians on Facebook During the Covid-19 Crisis
Social networking sites offer politicians an opportunity to mobilize followers through carefully crafted messages appealing to their emotions.We examine the effects of uncivil and post-truth communication of populist and non-populist party leaders on the emotional emoji reactions of social media users during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.Conveying a disrespectful tone toward the participants and topics of the debate, lying accusations, and incivil…
A Thin Line: Governmental Border Communication in Times of European Crises
In response to the recent crises in Europe, many governments have tightened their border controls despite considerable criticism from the EU Commission and civil society. While borders are at the core of recent crises, we lack systematic evidence of how governments publicly inform about border politics and justify measures. Therefore, we ask: How do EU governments communicate about borders? We analyze a comprehensive sample of press releases of t…
A window of opportunity? The relevance of the rotating European Union presidency in the public eye
The rotating EU presidency's relevance for EU politics has decreased since the introduction of a permanent council president. However, news salience and framing of the own government acting as the EU presidency can amplify publicity for EU affairs. We, therefore, evaluate the visibility and framing of the EU presidency in 12 Austrian newspapers for 2009–2019. We conduct an automated text analysis of 22 presidencies over 11 years, testing several …
An Emotional Rally: Exploring Commenters’ Responses to Online News Coverage of the Covid-19 Crisis in Austria
The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unparalleled global crisis impacting both public and private life. In the situation of uncertainty, emotions run high and might compromise the public acceptance of and compliance with countermeasures tackling the crisis. Mass media play an integral part in communicating crisis measures and provide an institutionalised channel to diffuse relevant information to a broad audience. This is especially true for digital…
Exploring Engagement With EU News on Facebook: The Influence of Content Characteristics
The EU is diagnosed with a participation deficit, rooted in a lack of public communication. While news media are the primary source of information about EU politics, social media have become an important channel for political information. Importantly, social media platforms offer unique opportunities for citizens to engage with information about the EU. Such engagement is under-researched despite users’ responses offering valuable information abo…
Entrenching positions? The dynamics of Brexit negotiations mirrored in British, Irish, and EU executives’ speeches
Brexit constitutes an unprecedented crisis for the European Union and its member states. Three affected parties – the United Kingdom, the EU and Ireland – worked hard to protect their interests, making the negotiations difficult, especially regarding the Irish land border. While the key interests of the negotiating partners are clear, it is less known how and to what extent these interests were communicated by the political representatives of the…
How do executives communicate about crises? A framework for comparative analysis
A plethora of accumulating crises, and the public frustration with how they were tackled, have provided fertile ground for growing public scepticism towards the European Union (EU). The way in which political leaders manage these crises may well decide the future of the EU. Research has addressed these developments comprehensively. However, it has not, to date, provided an adequate analytical lens to confront the crisis theme explicitly and there…
The politicising spark? Exploring the impact of #MeToo on the gender equality discourse in Australian print media
MeToo has raised public awareness on issues of sexual harassment and misconduct at an unprecedented scale, nurturing hopes for sustainable change also in terms of gender equality. We use the concept of politicization to assess the potential for change which #MeToo might have induced in the broader print media discourse on gender equality issues. We analyse Australia as an arguably difficult case due to its conservative political and media system,…
Building the Bridge: Topic Modeling for Comparative Research
In communication research, topic modeling is primarily used for discovering systematic patterns in monolingual text corpora. To advance the usage, we provide an overview of recently presented strategies to extract topics from multilingual text collections for the purpose of comparative research. Moreover, we discuss, demonstrate, and facilitate the usability of the “Polylingual Topic Model” (PLTM) for such analyses. The appeal of this model is th…
Applied solidarity in times of crisis: Exploring the contexts of civil society activities in Greece and Germany
The European ‘crisis decade’ triggered discussions about solidarity and it ́s limits; at the policy level, the debates were mostly about determining the deservingness of solidarity of each vulnerable group, and at the street level, actors involved saw the demand for concrete service provision grow while their resources stayed the same or retrenched. This paper is interested in the limits of solidarity precisely at the street level; hence we inves…
Less Fragmented Than We Thought? Toward Clarification of a Subdisciplinary Linkage in Communication Science, 2010–2019
With the explosive growth in research topics, communication science is said to be more fragmented and hyper-specialized than ever before, producing an increasing number of small, niche research topics that lack intellectual coherence as a whole. While such issues have been a central concern for the field, there has been a relative lack of systematic effort to map the topical interconnections among different communication science subfields, answer…
Falling on Deaf Ears? Exploring the Effects of Newspaper Coverage of the European Parliament on Public Support for it
The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected institution at the European Union (EU) level, and its empowerment was long regarded to quasi-automatically lead to greater legitimacy of EU politics. The strength of the EP has grown continuously. However, this has not translated into greater appreciation of a crisis-ridden EU which seems more fundamentally questioned than ever before. Starting from the assumption that mass media serve as …
In Validations We Trust? The Impact of Imperfect Human Annotations as a Gold Standard on the Quality of Validation of Automated Content Analysis
Political communication has become one of the central arenas of innovation in the application of automated analysis approaches to ever-growing quantities of digitized texts. However, although researchers routinely and conveniently resort to certain forms of human coding to validate the results derived from automated procedures, in practice the actual "quality assurance" of such a "gold standard" often goes unchecked. Contemporary practices of val…
Contesting European Solidarity During the “Refugee Crisis”: A Comparative Investigation of Media Claims in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy
The migration crisis of 2015 and 2016 was a litmus test for EU solidarity, when increasing numbers of newly arriving refugees fueled its public contestation. Our overall assumption is that the “refugee crisis” contributed to a solidarity gap between inclusive liberal-cosmopolitan and exclusive communitarian attitudes in the EU. We investigate this assumption by contrasting positions regarding solidarity with refugees among state and societal acto…
Welfare Attitudes and Expressions of (Trans)national Solidarity
The article explores the extent to which Europeans' welfare attitudes explain (trans)national solidarity behavior. We set our analyses against the backdrop of the broader debate of welfare state consequences: Does a strong welfare state that is considered to take care of those in need diminish or strengthen citizens' motivations to become engaged in helping others? We distinguish individuals' solidarity behavior toward others within the welfare s…
Sharing Is Caring? Exploring the Relationship Between Preferences for Online Participation and Support for Solidarity Between EU Member States
The article explores the influence of online participation on individual-level support for burden-sharing measures among EU member states. The analysis is set against the backdrop of the discussion about solidarity in times of EU crises and follows an innovative approach by operationalizing social inclusion in the European Union via online participation. It is argued that the specific nature of the European Union favors the use of online channels…
What Happens in Parliament Stays in Parliament? Newspaper Coverage of National Parliaments in EU Affairs
The role of national parliaments in EU matters has become an important subject in the debate over the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. Yet despite a remarkable increase in parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, the added value in terms of democratic legitimacy will remain limited if citizens are not aware of their activities. Given that citizens mainly experience politics through the media, the aim of the paper is therefore to explo…
Complementing, competing, or co-operating? Exploring newspapers’ portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments in EU affairs
The paper explores newspapers' portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments (NPs) in European Union (EU) affairs. To understand underlying perceptions of journalists, it takes public parliamentary activities and looks at their influence on parliaments' news visibility in Finland, Germany and the UK in routine periods in 2011 and 2012. This is done against the background that parliaments, regarded as ultimate legitimisers of stat…
In Validations We Trust? The Impact of Imperfect Human Annotations as a Gold Standard on the Quality of Validation of Automated Content Analysis
Political communication has become one of the central arenas of innovation in the application of automated analysis approaches to ever-growing quantities of digitized texts. However, although researchers routinely and conveniently resort to certain forms of human coding to validate the results derived from automated procedures, in practice the actual "quality assurance" of such a "gold standard" often goes unchecked. Contemporary practices of val…
From constraining to catalysing dissensus? The impact of political contestation on parliamentary communication in EU affairs
How do executives communicate about crises? A framework for comparative analysis
A plethora of accumulating crises, and the public frustration with how they were tackled, have provided fertile ground for growing public scepticism towards the European Union (EU). The way in which political leaders manage these crises may well decide the future of the EU. Research has addressed these developments comprehensively. However, it has not, to date, provided an adequate analytical lens to confront the crisis theme explicitly and there…
What Happens in Parliament Stays in Parliament? Newspaper Coverage of National Parliaments in EU Affairs
The role of national parliaments in EU matters has become an important subject in the debate over the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. Yet despite a remarkable increase in parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, the added value in terms of democratic legitimacy will remain limited if citizens are not aware of their activities. Given that citizens mainly experience politics through the media, the aim of the paper is therefore to explo…
Contesting European Solidarity During the “Refugee Crisis”: A Comparative Investigation of Media Claims in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy
The migration crisis of 2015 and 2016 was a litmus test for EU solidarity, when increasing numbers of newly arriving refugees fueled its public contestation. Our overall assumption is that the “refugee crisis” contributed to a solidarity gap between inclusive liberal-cosmopolitan and exclusive communitarian attitudes in the EU. We investigate this assumption by contrasting positions regarding solidarity with refugees among state and societal acto…
Building the Bridge: Topic Modeling for Comparative Research
In communication research, topic modeling is primarily used for discovering systematic patterns in monolingual text corpora. To advance the usage, we provide an overview of recently presented strategies to extract topics from multilingual text collections for the purpose of comparative research. Moreover, we discuss, demonstrate, and facilitate the usability of the “Polylingual Topic Model” (PLTM) for such analyses. The appeal of this model is th…
Complementing, competing, or co-operating? Exploring newspapers’ portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments in EU affairs
The paper explores newspapers' portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments (NPs) in European Union (EU) affairs. To understand underlying perceptions of journalists, it takes public parliamentary activities and looks at their influence on parliaments' news visibility in Finland, Germany and the UK in routine periods in 2011 and 2012. This is done against the background that parliaments, regarded as ultimate legitimisers of stat…
A Thin Line: Governmental Border Communication in Times of European Crises
In response to the recent crises in Europe, many governments have tightened their border controls despite considerable criticism from the EU Commission and civil society. While borders are at the core of recent crises, we lack systematic evidence of how governments publicly inform about border politics and justify measures. Therefore, we ask: How do EU governments communicate about borders? We analyze a comprehensive sample of press releases of t…
Capturing a News Frame – Comparing Machine-Learning Approaches to Frame Analysis with Different Degrees of Supervision
The empirical identification of frames drawing on automated text analysis has been discussed intensely with regard to the validity of measurements. Adding to an evolving discussion on automated fra Capturing a News Frame – Comparing Machine-Learning Approaches to Frame Analysis with Different Degrees of Supervision identification, we systematically contrast different machine-learning approaches with a manually coded gold standard to shed light on…
A window of opportunity? The relevance of the rotating European Union presidency in the public eye
The rotating EU presidency's relevance for EU politics has decreased since the introduction of a permanent council president. However, news salience and framing of the own government acting as the EU presidency can amplify publicity for EU affairs. We, therefore, evaluate the visibility and framing of the EU presidency in 12 Austrian newspapers for 2009–2019. We conduct an automated text analysis of 22 presidencies over 11 years, testing several …
Exploring Engagement With EU News on Facebook: The Influence of Content Characteristics
The EU is diagnosed with a participation deficit, rooted in a lack of public communication. While news media are the primary source of information about EU politics, social media have become an important channel for political information. Importantly, social media platforms offer unique opportunities for citizens to engage with information about the EU. Such engagement is under-researched despite users’ responses offering valuable information abo…
Entrenching positions? The dynamics of Brexit negotiations mirrored in British, Irish, and EU executives’ speeches
Brexit constitutes an unprecedented crisis for the European Union and its member states. Three affected parties – the United Kingdom, the EU and Ireland – worked hard to protect their interests, making the negotiations difficult, especially regarding the Irish land border. While the key interests of the negotiating partners are clear, it is less known how and to what extent these interests were communicated by the political representatives of the…
The politicising spark? Exploring the impact of #MeToo on the gender equality discourse in Australian print media
MeToo has raised public awareness on issues of sexual harassment and misconduct at an unprecedented scale, nurturing hopes for sustainable change also in terms of gender equality. We use the concept of politicization to assess the potential for change which #MeToo might have induced in the broader print media discourse on gender equality issues. We analyse Australia as an arguably difficult case due to its conservative political and media system,…
Applied solidarity in times of crisis: Exploring the contexts of civil society activities in Greece and Germany
The European ‘crisis decade’ triggered discussions about solidarity and it ́s limits; at the policy level, the debates were mostly about determining the deservingness of solidarity of each vulnerable group, and at the street level, actors involved saw the demand for concrete service provision grow while their resources stayed the same or retrenched. This paper is interested in the limits of solidarity precisely at the street level; hence we inves…
Falling on Deaf Ears? Exploring the Effects of Newspaper Coverage of the European Parliament on Public Support for it
The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected institution at the European Union (EU) level, and its empowerment was long regarded to quasi-automatically lead to greater legitimacy of EU politics. The strength of the EP has grown continuously. However, this has not translated into greater appreciation of a crisis-ridden EU which seems more fundamentally questioned than ever before. Starting from the assumption that mass media serve as …
Sharing Is Caring? Exploring the Relationship Between Preferences for Online Participation and Support for Solidarity Between EU Member States
The article explores the influence of online participation on individual-level support for burden-sharing measures among EU member states. The analysis is set against the backdrop of the discussion about solidarity in times of EU crises and follows an innovative approach by operationalizing social inclusion in the European Union via online participation. It is argued that the specific nature of the European Union favors the use of online channels…
From constraining to catalysing dissensus? The impact of political contestation on parliamentary communication in EU affairs
Complementing, competing, or co-operating? Exploring newspapers’ portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments in EU affairs
The paper explores newspapers' portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments (NPs) in European Union (EU) affairs. To understand underlying perceptions of journalists, it takes public parliamentary activities and looks at their influence on parliaments' news visibility in Finland, Germany and the UK in routine periods in 2011 and 2012. This is done against the background that parliaments, regarded as ultimate legitimisers of stat…
What Happens in Parliament Stays in Parliament? Newspaper Coverage of National Parliaments in EU Affairs
The role of national parliaments in EU matters has become an important subject in the debate over the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. Yet despite a remarkable increase in parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, the added value in terms of democratic legitimacy will remain limited if citizens are not aware of their activities. Given that citizens mainly experience politics through the media, the aim of the paper is therefore to explo…
Contesting European Solidarity During the “Refugee Crisis”: A Comparative Investigation of Media Claims in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy
The migration crisis of 2015 and 2016 was a litmus test for EU solidarity, when increasing numbers of newly arriving refugees fueled its public contestation. Our overall assumption is that the “refugee crisis” contributed to a solidarity gap between inclusive liberal-cosmopolitan and exclusive communitarian attitudes in the EU. We investigate this assumption by contrasting positions regarding solidarity with refugees among state and societal acto…
Welfare Attitudes and Expressions of (Trans)national Solidarity
The article explores the extent to which Europeans' welfare attitudes explain (trans)national solidarity behavior. We set our analyses against the backdrop of the broader debate of welfare state consequences: Does a strong welfare state that is considered to take care of those in need diminish or strengthen citizens' motivations to become engaged in helping others? We distinguish individuals' solidarity behavior toward others within the welfare s…
Sharing Is Caring? Exploring the Relationship Between Preferences for Online Participation and Support for Solidarity Between EU Member States
The article explores the influence of online participation on individual-level support for burden-sharing measures among EU member states. The analysis is set against the backdrop of the discussion about solidarity in times of EU crises and follows an innovative approach by operationalizing social inclusion in the European Union via online participation. It is argued that the specific nature of the European Union favors the use of online channels…
Less Fragmented Than We Thought? Toward Clarification of a Subdisciplinary Linkage in Communication Science, 2010–2019
With the explosive growth in research topics, communication science is said to be more fragmented and hyper-specialized than ever before, producing an increasing number of small, niche research topics that lack intellectual coherence as a whole. While such issues have been a central concern for the field, there has been a relative lack of systematic effort to map the topical interconnections among different communication science subfields, answer…
Falling on Deaf Ears? Exploring the Effects of Newspaper Coverage of the European Parliament on Public Support for it
The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected institution at the European Union (EU) level, and its empowerment was long regarded to quasi-automatically lead to greater legitimacy of EU politics. The strength of the EP has grown continuously. However, this has not translated into greater appreciation of a crisis-ridden EU which seems more fundamentally questioned than ever before. Starting from the assumption that mass media serve as …
In Validations We Trust? The Impact of Imperfect Human Annotations as a Gold Standard on the Quality of Validation of Automated Content Analysis
Political communication has become one of the central arenas of innovation in the application of automated analysis approaches to ever-growing quantities of digitized texts. However, although researchers routinely and conveniently resort to certain forms of human coding to validate the results derived from automated procedures, in practice the actual "quality assurance" of such a "gold standard" often goes unchecked. Contemporary practices of val…
Building the Bridge: Topic Modeling for Comparative Research
In communication research, topic modeling is primarily used for discovering systematic patterns in monolingual text corpora. To advance the usage, we provide an overview of recently presented strategies to extract topics from multilingual text collections for the purpose of comparative research. Moreover, we discuss, demonstrate, and facilitate the usability of the “Polylingual Topic Model” (PLTM) for such analyses. The appeal of this model is th…
Applied solidarity in times of crisis: Exploring the contexts of civil society activities in Greece and Germany
The European ‘crisis decade’ triggered discussions about solidarity and it ́s limits; at the policy level, the debates were mostly about determining the deservingness of solidarity of each vulnerable group, and at the street level, actors involved saw the demand for concrete service provision grow while their resources stayed the same or retrenched. This paper is interested in the limits of solidarity precisely at the street level; hence we inves…
An Emotional Rally: Exploring Commenters’ Responses to Online News Coverage of the Covid-19 Crisis in Austria
The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unparalleled global crisis impacting both public and private life. In the situation of uncertainty, emotions run high and might compromise the public acceptance of and compliance with countermeasures tackling the crisis. Mass media play an integral part in communicating crisis measures and provide an institutionalised channel to diffuse relevant information to a broad audience. This is especially true for digital…
Exploring Engagement With EU News on Facebook: The Influence of Content Characteristics
The EU is diagnosed with a participation deficit, rooted in a lack of public communication. While news media are the primary source of information about EU politics, social media have become an important channel for political information. Importantly, social media platforms offer unique opportunities for citizens to engage with information about the EU. Such engagement is under-researched despite users’ responses offering valuable information abo…
Entrenching positions? The dynamics of Brexit negotiations mirrored in British, Irish, and EU executives’ speeches
Brexit constitutes an unprecedented crisis for the European Union and its member states. Three affected parties – the United Kingdom, the EU and Ireland – worked hard to protect their interests, making the negotiations difficult, especially regarding the Irish land border. While the key interests of the negotiating partners are clear, it is less known how and to what extent these interests were communicated by the political representatives of the…
How do executives communicate about crises? A framework for comparative analysis
A plethora of accumulating crises, and the public frustration with how they were tackled, have provided fertile ground for growing public scepticism towards the European Union (EU). The way in which political leaders manage these crises may well decide the future of the EU. Research has addressed these developments comprehensively. However, it has not, to date, provided an adequate analytical lens to confront the crisis theme explicitly and there…
The politicising spark? Exploring the impact of #MeToo on the gender equality discourse in Australian print media
MeToo has raised public awareness on issues of sexual harassment and misconduct at an unprecedented scale, nurturing hopes for sustainable change also in terms of gender equality. We use the concept of politicization to assess the potential for change which #MeToo might have induced in the broader print media discourse on gender equality issues. We analyse Australia as an arguably difficult case due to its conservative political and media system,…
Trump and circumstance: Introducing the post-truth claim as an instrument for investigating truth contestation in public discourse
The idea of post-factual politics has become increasingly relevant for describing current political and societal developments. Though research on the topic has been blooming, we lack a common framework and systematic tool to map and analyze post-truth communication. Therefore, our paper advances the adaptation of claims-making for the analysis of how actors relativize the truth and use discourses of untruthfulness to attack their opponents, const…
The political contention of LGBTQ+ communities in the digital age - state of the art, limitations, and opportunities for comparative research
This paper develops an analytical framework for comparative research on political contention in the digital age and, building upon it, provides a literature review of social media research related to LGBTQ+ political contention.So far, we lack systematic insights into the literature on digitallymediated LGBTQ+ political contention and its potential for comparative research.Applying scoping literature review, we focus on the key comparative dimens…
Capturing a News Frame – Comparing Machine-Learning Approaches to Frame Analysis with Different Degrees of Supervision
The empirical identification of frames drawing on automated text analysis has been discussed intensely with regard to the validity of measurements. Adding to an evolving discussion on automated fra Capturing a News Frame – Comparing Machine-Learning Approaches to Frame Analysis with Different Degrees of Supervision identification, we systematically contrast different machine-learning approaches with a manually coded gold standard to shed light on…
Fuming Mad and Jumping with Joy: Emotional Responses to Uncivil and Post-Truth Communication by Populist and Non-Populist Politicians on Facebook During the Covid-19 Crisis
Social networking sites offer politicians an opportunity to mobilize followers through carefully crafted messages appealing to their emotions.We examine the effects of uncivil and post-truth communication of populist and non-populist party leaders on the emotional emoji reactions of social media users during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.Conveying a disrespectful tone toward the participants and topics of the debate, lying accusations, and incivil…
A Thin Line: Governmental Border Communication in Times of European Crises
In response to the recent crises in Europe, many governments have tightened their border controls despite considerable criticism from the EU Commission and civil society. While borders are at the core of recent crises, we lack systematic evidence of how governments publicly inform about border politics and justify measures. Therefore, we ask: How do EU governments communicate about borders? We analyze a comprehensive sample of press releases of t…
A window of opportunity? The relevance of the rotating European Union presidency in the public eye
The rotating EU presidency's relevance for EU politics has decreased since the introduction of a permanent council president. However, news salience and framing of the own government acting as the EU presidency can amplify publicity for EU affairs. We, therefore, evaluate the visibility and framing of the EU presidency in 12 Austrian newspapers for 2009–2019. We conduct an automated text analysis of 22 presidencies over 11 years, testing several …
A question of truth: Accusations of untruthfulness by populist and non-populist politicians on Facebook during the Covid-19 crisis
Online environments can foster opportunities for political engagement but can also hinder democratic deliberation by promoting hostile and polarizing communication. A prominent concern revolves around the attacks on political actors’ truthfulness in public discourse. Such discourse is expressed through anti-elite and antagonistic attacks on perceived (un)truthfulness employed by some politicians toward political opponents in public debates, and i…
Justifying European border policies: A quantitative content analysis of German government communication 2013-2023
Under the Schengen Agreement, member states agreed to abolish internal border controls to ensure free movement. While the reintroduction of internal border controls is foreseen only in exceptional circumstances, states increasingly invoke their right to unilaterally reintroduce border controls. This is at odds with a core principle of the EU: free movement. In this paper, we examine different strategies that public officials use to justify the in…
“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!” An Automated Analysis of Polarities of Mediated Truth Contestation in Austrian and Czech News Media
This paper analyzes the discursive dynamics of mediated truth contestation by examining how assertions of truthfulness and references to falsehood are constructed in Austrian and Czech news coverage of migration. Employing automated content analysis on an extensive dataset of 162,943 news articles (2013–2019), we apply latent semantic scaling to assess differences between tabloid and broadsheet newspapers and between mainstream and alternative ne…
Politics (21 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (13 works) · European union (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Public Administration (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (9 works)