Mariken A C G Van Der Velden
Biographic Data
| ID | 4123039 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mariken A C G Van Der Velden |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mariken A C G |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Der Velden |
| SIGNATURE | VAN DER VELDEN M A C G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0227-9183 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Making Sense of Complex Cinema
Mainstream complex films like Pulp Fiction and Memento have captivated audiences while challenging classical norms through narrational complexity. David Bordwell's seminal work mapped these formal strategies, emphasizing they are not qualitatively different from classical ones. However, there is growing recognition that these films offer a unique experience, where coherence is built through effortful and variable processes. Building on this, we i…
Beware of the watchdog
This study examines the politics–media–politics (PMP) dynamics surrounding the Dutch childcare benefits scandal. Drawing on a large-scale longitudinal dataset covering nearly two decades (2004–2021) and an in-depth mixed-methods analysis of three critical periods, we explore how interactions between media and politics shaped the public discourse of this issue. Our findings show that a sustained and substantive public debate emerges only when poli…
Between Innovation and Standardization
Computational communication science is transitioning from an emerging to an established field within communication research, creating a need for proper guidelines and methodological standards. This forum gathers experienced computational communication science scholars to debate the merits and drawbacks of standardization and discuss the tension between innovation, rigor, and inclusion. The assembled perspectives review current standards for data …
Whose truth is it anyway? An experiment on annotation bias in times of factual opinion polarization
Information shapes citizens’ political decision-making. This process is amply studied by social scientists, for whom human annotation is a crucial instrument in their toolkit. Due to the democratization of data and the advances in NLP more data can be analyzed or classified, making these benchmarks more important than ever: An algorithm trained on biased data will reproduce and often exacerbate bias. Currently, disagreement and bias are often con…
Unveiling Climate Adaptation
Climate change adaptation occurs within a complex interplay of science, media, politics, policy, and the public. Using comparative longitudinal data (2012–2021) from online newspaper articles, parliamentary debates, policy documents, and social media, we analyze agenda-setting dynamics in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Vector autoregression models, incorporating scientific output as an exogenous variable, reveal traditional agenda-settin…
Populism and Polarization
The vast presence of populism in contemporary political discourse has introduced a narrative steeped in nostalgia, evoking images of a revered national past and delineating a stark division between the ‘authentic us’ and the ‘alien them’. While these messages resonate with a substantial portion of citizens, they concurrently foster identity-driven animosity and derogation. In a pre-registered experiment in the Netherlands (with data collected bet…
The people as ‘Volk’ or ‘Bürger’? The implications of ethnic and civic conceptions of the people for the measurement of populist attitudes
Populists believe in the sovereignty of the people. Yet, the people can be construed in ethnic terms or in civic terms. Using a novel wording experiment in Germany (N = 7,034), we examine whether ethnic or civic conceptions of ‘the people’ affect respondents' adherence to key populist attitude items. ‘Volk’ in German has an ethno‐nationalist connotation and has been used throughout history to signify ‘ethnic Germans’. The concept ‘Bürger’, or cit…
Fueling Toxicity? Studying Deceitful Opinion Leaders and Behavioral Changes of Their Followers
The spread of deceiving content on social media platforms is a growing concern amongst scholars, policymakers, and the public at large. We examine the extent to which influential users (i.e., “deceitful opinion leaders”) on Twitter engage in the spread of different types of deceiving content, thereby overcoming the compartmentalized state of the field. We introduce a theoretical concept and approach that puts these deceitful opinion leaders at th…
Epistemic Overconfidence in Algorithmic News Selection
The process of news consumption has undergone great changes over the past decade: Information is now available in an ever-increasing amount from a plethora of sources. Recent work suggests that most people would favor algorithmic solutions over human editors. This stands in contrast to public and scholarly debate about the pitfalls of algorithmic news selection—i.e., the so-called “filter bubbles.” This study therefore investigates reasons and mo…
The Validity of Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment is central to many studies of communication science, from negativity and polarization in political communication to analyzing product reviews and social media comments in other sub-fields. This study provides an exhaustive comparison of sentiment analysis methods, using a validation set of Dutch economic headlines to compare the performance of manual annotation, crowd coding, numerous dictionaries and machine learning using both traditi…
Three Gaps in Computational Text Analysis Methods for Social Sciences
We identify three gaps that limit the utility and obstruct the progress of computational text analysis methods (CTAM) for social science research. First, we contend that CTAM development has prioritized technological over validity concerns, giving limited attention to the operationalization of social scientific measurements. Second, we identify a mismatch between CTAMs’ focus on extracting specific contents and document-level patterns, and social…
A new dataset of Dutch and Danish party congress speeches
We present a new dataset of speeches given by Danish and Dutch politicians at party congresses between 1946 and 2017. The dataset is a unique collection of materials from different party archives and digital repositories. It offers a unique opportunity to analyse the issues discussed in these speeches, the positions taken and the rhetoric used by party elites over time and between countries. We describe the data and illustrate them with one appli…
Selecting in or Selecting Out? Gender Gaps and Political Methodology in Europe
Studies investigating gender gaps in the doctoral training of political science students have focused so far overwhelmingly on the US context. Although important research within this context has made strides in identifying the persistent challenges to women’s incorporation in political methodology, much remains unknown about whether women and men have different experiences in methods training during their PhD programs. We contribute to this debat…
The Use and Usefulness of p‐Values in Political Science
P-values are the most frequently employed metric to assess the significance of statistical findings in the social sciences. Since the earliest years of their usage the meaning and usefulness of p-values were topics of heated discussion (Berkson 1942; Fisher 1935). Lately the reproduction/replication crisis resuscitated this debate (Benjamin et al. 2018; Gelman 2018; Lakens et al. 2018; McShane et al. 2019; Nuzzo 2014; Trafimow and Marks 2015). Me…
Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014
Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We …
The Validity of Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment is central to many studies of communication science, from negativity and polarization in political communication to analyzing product reviews and social media comments in other sub-fields. This study provides an exhaustive comparison of sentiment analysis methods, using a validation set of Dutch economic headlines to compare the performance of manual annotation, crowd coding, numerous dictionaries and machine learning using both traditi…
Three Gaps in Computational Text Analysis Methods for Social Sciences
We identify three gaps that limit the utility and obstruct the progress of computational text analysis methods (CTAM) for social science research. First, we contend that CTAM development has prioritized technological over validity concerns, giving limited attention to the operationalization of social scientific measurements. Second, we identify a mismatch between CTAMs’ focus on extracting specific contents and document-level patterns, and social…
The people as ‘Volk’ or ‘Bürger’? The implications of ethnic and civic conceptions of the people for the measurement of populist attitudes
Populists believe in the sovereignty of the people. Yet, the people can be construed in ethnic terms or in civic terms. Using a novel wording experiment in Germany (N = 7,034), we examine whether ethnic or civic conceptions of ‘the people’ affect respondents' adherence to key populist attitude items. ‘Volk’ in German has an ethno‐nationalist connotation and has been used throughout history to signify ‘ethnic Germans’. The concept ‘Bürger’, or cit…
Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014
Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We …
Fueling Toxicity? Studying Deceitful Opinion Leaders and Behavioral Changes of Their Followers
The spread of deceiving content on social media platforms is a growing concern amongst scholars, policymakers, and the public at large. We examine the extent to which influential users (i.e., “deceitful opinion leaders”) on Twitter engage in the spread of different types of deceiving content, thereby overcoming the compartmentalized state of the field. We introduce a theoretical concept and approach that puts these deceitful opinion leaders at th…
Whose truth is it anyway? An experiment on annotation bias in times of factual opinion polarization
Information shapes citizens’ political decision-making. This process is amply studied by social scientists, for whom human annotation is a crucial instrument in their toolkit. Due to the democratization of data and the advances in NLP more data can be analyzed or classified, making these benchmarks more important than ever: An algorithm trained on biased data will reproduce and often exacerbate bias. Currently, disagreement and bias are often con…
The Use and Usefulness of p‐Values in Political Science
P-values are the most frequently employed metric to assess the significance of statistical findings in the social sciences. Since the earliest years of their usage the meaning and usefulness of p-values were topics of heated discussion (Berkson 1942; Fisher 1935). Lately the reproduction/replication crisis resuscitated this debate (Benjamin et al. 2018; Gelman 2018; Lakens et al. 2018; McShane et al. 2019; Nuzzo 2014; Trafimow and Marks 2015). Me…
Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014
Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We …
A new dataset of Dutch and Danish party congress speeches
We present a new dataset of speeches given by Danish and Dutch politicians at party congresses between 1946 and 2017. The dataset is a unique collection of materials from different party archives and digital repositories. It offers a unique opportunity to analyse the issues discussed in these speeches, the positions taken and the rhetoric used by party elites over time and between countries. We describe the data and illustrate them with one appli…
Selecting in or Selecting Out? Gender Gaps and Political Methodology in Europe
Studies investigating gender gaps in the doctoral training of political science students have focused so far overwhelmingly on the US context. Although important research within this context has made strides in identifying the persistent challenges to women’s incorporation in political methodology, much remains unknown about whether women and men have different experiences in methods training during their PhD programs. We contribute to this debat…
The Use and Usefulness of p‐Values in Political Science
P-values are the most frequently employed metric to assess the significance of statistical findings in the social sciences. Since the earliest years of their usage the meaning and usefulness of p-values were topics of heated discussion (Berkson 1942; Fisher 1935). Lately the reproduction/replication crisis resuscitated this debate (Benjamin et al. 2018; Gelman 2018; Lakens et al. 2018; McShane et al. 2019; Nuzzo 2014; Trafimow and Marks 2015). Me…
Epistemic Overconfidence in Algorithmic News Selection
The process of news consumption has undergone great changes over the past decade: Information is now available in an ever-increasing amount from a plethora of sources. Recent work suggests that most people would favor algorithmic solutions over human editors. This stands in contrast to public and scholarly debate about the pitfalls of algorithmic news selection—i.e., the so-called “filter bubbles.” This study therefore investigates reasons and mo…
The Validity of Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment is central to many studies of communication science, from negativity and polarization in political communication to analyzing product reviews and social media comments in other sub-fields. This study provides an exhaustive comparison of sentiment analysis methods, using a validation set of Dutch economic headlines to compare the performance of manual annotation, crowd coding, numerous dictionaries and machine learning using both traditi…
Three Gaps in Computational Text Analysis Methods for Social Sciences
We identify three gaps that limit the utility and obstruct the progress of computational text analysis methods (CTAM) for social science research. First, we contend that CTAM development has prioritized technological over validity concerns, giving limited attention to the operationalization of social scientific measurements. Second, we identify a mismatch between CTAMs’ focus on extracting specific contents and document-level patterns, and social…
Fueling Toxicity? Studying Deceitful Opinion Leaders and Behavioral Changes of Their Followers
The spread of deceiving content on social media platforms is a growing concern amongst scholars, policymakers, and the public at large. We examine the extent to which influential users (i.e., “deceitful opinion leaders”) on Twitter engage in the spread of different types of deceiving content, thereby overcoming the compartmentalized state of the field. We introduce a theoretical concept and approach that puts these deceitful opinion leaders at th…
The people as ‘Volk’ or ‘Bürger’? The implications of ethnic and civic conceptions of the people for the measurement of populist attitudes
Populists believe in the sovereignty of the people. Yet, the people can be construed in ethnic terms or in civic terms. Using a novel wording experiment in Germany (N = 7,034), we examine whether ethnic or civic conceptions of ‘the people’ affect respondents' adherence to key populist attitude items. ‘Volk’ in German has an ethno‐nationalist connotation and has been used throughout history to signify ‘ethnic Germans’. The concept ‘Bürger’, or cit…
Beware of the watchdog
This study examines the politics–media–politics (PMP) dynamics surrounding the Dutch childcare benefits scandal. Drawing on a large-scale longitudinal dataset covering nearly two decades (2004–2021) and an in-depth mixed-methods analysis of three critical periods, we explore how interactions between media and politics shaped the public discourse of this issue. Our findings show that a sustained and substantive public debate emerges only when poli…
Between Innovation and Standardization
Computational communication science is transitioning from an emerging to an established field within communication research, creating a need for proper guidelines and methodological standards. This forum gathers experienced computational communication science scholars to debate the merits and drawbacks of standardization and discuss the tension between innovation, rigor, and inclusion. The assembled perspectives review current standards for data …
Whose truth is it anyway? An experiment on annotation bias in times of factual opinion polarization
Information shapes citizens’ political decision-making. This process is amply studied by social scientists, for whom human annotation is a crucial instrument in their toolkit. Due to the democratization of data and the advances in NLP more data can be analyzed or classified, making these benchmarks more important than ever: An algorithm trained on biased data will reproduce and often exacerbate bias. Currently, disagreement and bias are often con…
Unveiling Climate Adaptation
Climate change adaptation occurs within a complex interplay of science, media, politics, policy, and the public. Using comparative longitudinal data (2012–2021) from online newspaper articles, parliamentary debates, policy documents, and social media, we analyze agenda-setting dynamics in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Vector autoregression models, incorporating scientific output as an exogenous variable, reveal traditional agenda-settin…
Populism and Polarization
The vast presence of populism in contemporary political discourse has introduced a narrative steeped in nostalgia, evoking images of a revered national past and delineating a stark division between the ‘authentic us’ and the ‘alien them’. While these messages resonate with a substantial portion of citizens, they concurrently foster identity-driven animosity and derogation. In a pre-registered experiment in the Netherlands (with data collected bet…
Making Sense of Complex Cinema
Mainstream complex films like Pulp Fiction and Memento have captivated audiences while challenging classical norms through narrational complexity. David Bordwell's seminal work mapped these formal strategies, emphasizing they are not qualitatively different from classical ones. However, there is growing recognition that these films offer a unique experience, where coherence is built through effortful and variable processes. Building on this, we i…
Political science (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Computational and Text Analysis Methods (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Social media (4 works) · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection (3 works) · Law (3 works)