Rune Karlsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4154667 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rune Karlsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rune |
| FAMILY NAME | Karlsen |
| SIGNATURE | KARLSEN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4509-1896 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 407 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Does alternative news media inform or misinform voters during election campaigns?
A growing body of literature has studied the audiences and effects of alternative media use. We contribute by examining how such usage shapes political knowledge during election campaigns. Given their partisan orientation, lack of professional verification, and often provocative style, alternative media are found to produce and circulate misinformation, even as their users are often politically engaged, active news consumers. We ask whether alter…
Balancing Acts
Despite an upsurge in social media studies, little is known about how cabinet ministers balance their multiple professional roles—as ministry heads, cabinet members, and party politicians—on social media platforms. In this article, we first develop an analytical framework, grounded in the principal–agent theory and earlier research on political communication, that differentiates between cabinet ministers’ different communicative roles as well as …
The Third-Person Effect in Election Campaigns
Radical or aligned? Assessing issue congruence between youth wing elites, parliamentary candidates and voters in Norway
Party youth wings are generally said to be more ideologically extreme than their mother parties. Youth wing elites, however, can have career reasons to align with mother party elites and voters. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on party youth wings and an established literature on issue congruence, few studies have compared the opinions of youth wing elites with those of their mother party elites and the electorate. We ask,…
Social Media and Trust in News
People increasingly turn to social media to get their daily news updates. Still, we are only beginning to understand how this development affects people’s perceptions of consumed news stories. The article reports on an experiment designed to investigate the effect the distribution of a news story in social media (Facebook) has on news message credibility. A control group was exposed to a news story on an original news website, and treatment group…
Polarisering og opinionsdynamikker i den digitale offentligheten
Uninformed or Misinformed in the Digital News Environment? How Social Media News Use Affects Two Dimensions of Political Knowledge
This article examines how the use of social media for news affects citizens' knowledge about politics and current affairs. We employ a two-dimensional perspective on political knowledge and investigate how factual political knowledge, confidence in that knowledge, and misinformation, understood as the mismatch between factual political knowledge and confidence in knowledge, are related to social media news consumption. While earlier studies have …
Elites on Equality
Access to resources, wealth, and power positions varies systematically with membership in social categories. This article asks what role the elites themselves - as holders of power and regulators of access to influential positions - can play in maintaining, but also changing, the demographic composition of elites. Drawing on a unique survey among the entire Norwegian elite, we investigate what holders of elite positions believe are the main cause…
Election Campaigns, News Consumption Gaps, and Social Media
We investigate how inequalities in political media use develop throughout election campaigns, and in particular whether social media use helps counterbalance traditional news consumption gaps. Using a four-wave individual-level panel survey of the Norwegian 2017 national election campaign, we run a series of latent growth models to investigate whether differences in news consumption based on gender, age, education, and political interest increase…
Norske ungdomspolitikere
Between spin doctor and information provider
Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatization and personalization, this article develops two ideal types: the government information provider and government spin doctor. These ideals are constituted by six dimensions: recruitment criteria, values, loyalties, reputational concerns, interactions, and tasks. A study of nonpartisan communica…
Populists in Government
How is government affected by including populists in a governing coalition? We investigate if populist political parties behave ‘normally’ when they attain power, or if they govern differently from mainstream political parties. Empirically, we use survey data from 282 ministerial advisers from three cabinets in Norway. Our conclusion is that populists govern normally on some governance dimensions and exceptionally on others. Populists in office h…
Kampen om dagsorden
Valgkamper blir gjerne omtalt som en «kamp om dagsorden» (Valen, 1999). Hvilke saker som opptar velgerne, og hvorvidt politikere kan å overbevise velgere om at de har de beste politiske løsningene, er tett forbundet med valgresultatet. I et demokratisk perspektiv er det også avgjørende at partiene evner å presentere politiske løsninger på saksfelt som velgerne opplever som viktige for deres ve og vel (Dahl, 2000). Mens valgene i etterkrigsårene h…
Public Office as a Stepping-Stone? Investigating the Careers of Ministerial Advisors
Ministerial advisors have become an essential aspect of executive branches worldwide, thus making the ministerial advisor office a potential route for young politicians aspiring to an expanding political class. The article studies which professions ministerial advisors migrate to following their ministerial careers, how ministerial advisors’ post-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be e…
Increased Media Choice and Political Knowledge Gaps
We investigate the often-stated, but disputed claim in the political science and political communication literature that increasing media choice widens inequalities in political knowledge. The assumption is that in a high-choice media environment, the politically interested will consume more news while the uninterested will avoid such content, leading, in turn, to widening differences in political knowledge. Although previous studies show that hi…
Do High-Choice Media Environments Facilitate News Avoidance? A Longitudinal Study 1997–2016
The well-known “high-choice news avoidance thesis” and the alternative “network structure perspective” stipulate somewhat conflicting expectations about news consumption in today’s digital media systems. Based on annual survey data from Norway, the article examines news avoidance from 1997–2016, a period when digitalization processes transformed the media environment. Results show that news avoidance increased only marginally. The decrease in use…
Influencing Elite Opinion on Gender Equality through Framing
This article contributes to both the scholarly debates on the controversies over gender quotas and the body of knowledge on framing effects through an investigation of whether national elites, individuals in top positions across 10 sectors of Norwegian society, are susceptible to positive framing of corporate board gender quotas (CBQs). Elites are thought to be more resistant to framing, and their predispositions are found to be stronger and more…
What Makes People Worry about the Welfare State? A Three-Country Experiment
Welfare states are exposed to a host of cost-inducing ‘reform pressures’. An experiment implemented in Germany, Norway and Sweden tests how variousreform pressure framesaffect perceptions about the future financial sustainability of the welfare state. Such perceptions have been shown to moderate electoral punishment for welfare reform, but little is known about their origins. Hypotheses are formulated in dialogue with newer research on welfare st…
Framing and feedback
We address changes in support for quota policies, with an emphasis on corporate board quotas, among Norwegian elites. Applying theories of policy feedback and framing, we investigate whether changes in attitudes towards quotas correspond to changes in beliefs about the causes behind male dominance. The analysis rests on two comprehensive surveys from 2000 and 2015 of the entire national elite population within ten sectors of society. We found sub…
Mounting media pressure
Decision-making in public bureaucracies should be guided by rules and formal procedures, securing predictability, impartiality and fair decisions. Studies show that public bureaucracies are highly mediatised – but knowledge about media impact on political outcomes is scarce. In this article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Understanding reputational concerns within government agencies
Scholars have argued that government agencies face a complex web of reputational concerns regarding how they are perceived by multiple audiences who prioritise different dimensions of their work. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue that civil servants are concerned about the reputation of the agency for which they work, but also about other actors in the political–administrative system. Focusing on hierarchy, socialisation, and independen…
Anger, Fear, and Echo Chambers
Emotions, such as anger and fear, have been shown to influence people's political behavior. However, few studies link emotions specifically to how people debate political issues and seek political information online. In this article, we examine how anger and fear are related to politics-oriented digital behavior, attempting to bridge the gap between the thus far disconnected literature on political psychology and the digital media. Based on surve…
Pressure without Pain
How do political leaders politicise welfare state 'reform pressures', e.g. unemployment, ageing or globalisation, in election campaigns? Competing expectations range from no politicization at all to a clear and unbiased coupling between pressures and intended policy responses. Eighteen speeches held by prime ministerial candidates at election-year party congresses in Germany, Norway and Sweden (2000-2010) reveal an unfinished and biased problem-s…
Symposium
Candidate campaigning in parliamentary systems
The individualization of politics is usually studied in relation to party leaders. Using new data from the Norwegian Candidate Survey 2009 and in-depth interviews with 29 top candidates, in this article we study whether candidates in the Norwegian 2009 parliamentary election ran party-centred or individualized campaigns. We distinguish between the organizational aspects and the communicative focus of the candidates’ campaigns. Moreover, we argue …
Styles of Social Media Campaigning and Influence in a Hybrid Political Communication System
Social media have the potential to influence power relations in political parties as they allow individual candidates to campaign more independently of the central party. In this paper, we scrutinize the relationship between individualization and digital social media in a study that combines the 2013 Norwegian Candidate Survey with candidates’ Twitter data. We ask, first, to what extent are social media used as an individualistic campaign tool? S…
Political appointees in executive government
Political appointees in executive government have received increased scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have covered non‐Westminster systems, and apart from classifications that systemize variation in assignments, theorizing about appointees has been limited. Using large‐N survey data, the article finds three distinct roles among political appointees in Norway: ‘stand in’, ‘media adviser’ and ‘political coordinator’. The ar…
Anger, Fear, and Echo Chambers
Emotions, such as anger and fear, have been shown to influence people's political behavior. However, few studies link emotions specifically to how people debate political issues and seek political information online. In this article, we examine how anger and fear are related to politics-oriented digital behavior, attempting to bridge the gap between the thus far disconnected literature on political psychology and the digital media. Based on surve…
What Makes People Worry about the Welfare State? A Three-Country Experiment
Welfare states are exposed to a host of cost-inducing ‘reform pressures’. An experiment implemented in Germany, Norway and Sweden tests how variousreform pressure framesaffect perceptions about the future financial sustainability of the welfare state. Such perceptions have been shown to moderate electoral punishment for welfare reform, but little is known about their origins. Hypotheses are formulated in dialogue with newer research on welfare st…
Echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics in online debates
In this article, we take issue with the claim by Sunstein and others that online discussion takes place in echo chambers, and suggest that the dynamics of online debates could be more aptly described by the logic of ‘trench warfare’, in which opinions are reinforced through contradiction as well as confirmation. We use a unique online survey and an experimental approach to investigate and test echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics in online de…
Party bureaucrats, independent professionals, or politicians? A study of party employees
The number of party employees is increasing, but to what extent and in what sense are party employees integrated into their parties? Based on the literature on party change, the article identifies three important dimensions ‒ ties, tasks, and career plans ‒ and constructs a typology of four ideal types of party employees – technical assistants, party bureaucrats, independent professionals, and unelected politicians. Data on Norwegian party employ…
A Turn to the Right
The parliamentary elections on Monday, 9 September 2013, resulted in the election defeat of the ‘red–green’ coalition of Labour, the Centre Party, and Socialist Left. After nearly eight years in go
Political values count but issue ownership decides? How stable and dynamic factors influence party set and vote choice in multiparty systems
This article addresses the relationship between latent predispositions and political campaign communication. We propose that political values are decisive in a voter’s calculation of which parties she may consider voting for, constituting his or her party set. Furthermore, we argue that the theory of issue ownership contributes to explaining the choice of party within the party set. In addition to investigating salient single issue ownership, we …
Fear of the Political Consultant
In the digital age it is claimed that political parties do not have the capacity to deliver the advanced technical services that modern campaigning demands, and that much of the campaign work is better handled by political consultants. Based on the ‘hybridization’ view of campaign change, the article explores to what extent ICTs increase the need for campaign professionals, and what type of professional the technology creates a demand for. A typo…
Public Office as a Stepping-Stone? Investigating the Careers of Ministerial Advisors
Ministerial advisors have become an essential aspect of executive branches worldwide, thus making the ministerial advisor office a potential route for young politicians aspiring to an expanding political class. The article studies which professions ministerial advisors migrate to following their ministerial careers, how ministerial advisors’ post-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be e…
Serving the Media Ministers
The personalization of politics has received much attention in both the political science and political communication literature, but the focus has almost entirely been on party leaders and prime ministers. This study investigates the personalization of ministerial communication in Norway, a type of decentralized personalization. It combines a survey of communication workers; in-depth interviews with politicians, communication workers, political …
Online and Undecided
Populists in Government
How is government affected by including populists in a governing coalition? We investigate if populist political parties behave ‘normally’ when they attain power, or if they govern differently from mainstream political parties. Empirically, we use survey data from 282 ministerial advisers from three cabinets in Norway. Our conclusion is that populists govern normally on some governance dimensions and exceptionally on others. Populists in office h…
Increased Media Choice and Political Knowledge Gaps
We investigate the often-stated, but disputed claim in the political science and political communication literature that increasing media choice widens inequalities in political knowledge. The assumption is that in a high-choice media environment, the politically interested will consume more news while the uninterested will avoid such content, leading, in turn, to widening differences in political knowledge. Although previous studies show that hi…
Followers are opinion leaders
One of the defining characteristics of the increasingly essential social networking sites is the network structure of the new medium. Opinion leaders are essential for the flow of communication in networks and consequently should be crucial for the flow of communication on social networking sites. Hence, to assess the political role and impact of social networking sites in electoral politics, we must find out more about the followers of parties a…
Obama's Online Success and European Party Organizations
The article addresses the influence of U.S. online campaign practices on West-European party organizations. The empirical case is the Norwegian Labor Party: To what extent did Labor adopt the online practices of the Obama campaign, and in what sense was the online strategy adapted to fit existing campaign and organizational structures? Based on the diffusion of technology and a hybridization perspective on campaign change, it is suggested that th…
Influencing Elite Opinion on Gender Equality through Framing
This article contributes to both the scholarly debates on the controversies over gender quotas and the body of knowledge on framing effects through an investigation of whether national elites, individuals in top positions across 10 sectors of Norwegian society, are susceptible to positive framing of corporate board gender quotas (CBQs). Elites are thought to be more resistant to framing, and their predispositions are found to be stronger and more…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
The spy who loved me? Cross‐partisans in the core executive
Political appointees from different parties from that of their minister—cross‐partisan appointees (CPAs)—are increasingly found in the core executive. Ministerial advisory scholarship has overlooked CPAs, while the coalition governance literature sees them as ‘spies’ and ‘coalition watchdogs’. This article argues theoretically and demonstrates empirically that this conceptualization is overly limited. The empirical basis is a large‐N survey of po…
Uninformed or Misinformed in the Digital News Environment? How Social Media News Use Affects Two Dimensions of Political Knowledge
This article examines how the use of social media for news affects citizens' knowledge about politics and current affairs. We employ a two-dimensional perspective on political knowledge and investigate how factual political knowledge, confidence in that knowledge, and misinformation, understood as the mismatch between factual political knowledge and confidence in knowledge, are related to social media news consumption. While earlier studies have …
Understanding reputational concerns within government agencies
Scholars have argued that government agencies face a complex web of reputational concerns regarding how they are perceived by multiple audiences who prioritise different dimensions of their work. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue that civil servants are concerned about the reputation of the agency for which they work, but also about other actors in the political–administrative system. Focusing on hierarchy, socialisation, and independen…
Valgkamp i flerpartisystem; aktualisering av saker og kamp om eierskap
Does new media technology drive election campaign change
In the last decade or so the influence of the new information and communication technologies has received increasing attention in studies on election campaigning. However, little has been done to link the influence of ICTs on campaigning with the ext
Between spin doctor and information provider
Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatization and personalization, this article develops two ideal types: the government information provider and government spin doctor. These ideals are constituted by six dimensions: recruitment criteria, values, loyalties, reputational concerns, interactions, and tasks. A study of nonpartisan communica…
Valgkamp i flerpartisystem; aktualisering av saker og kamp om eierskap
Online and Undecided
Fear of the Political Consultant
In the digital age it is claimed that political parties do not have the capacity to deliver the advanced technical services that modern campaigning demands, and that much of the campaign work is better handled by political consultants. Based on the ‘hybridization’ view of campaign change, the article explores to what extent ICTs increase the need for campaign professionals, and what type of professional the technology creates a demand for. A typo…
Does new media technology drive election campaign change
In the last decade or so the influence of the new information and communication technologies has received increasing attention in studies on election campaigning. However, little has been done to link the influence of ICTs on campaigning with the ext
Still Broadcasting the Campaign
This article addresses the fragmentation of political communication in the context of Norwegian election campaigns. The fragmentation thesis refers to two distinguishable, interrelated tendencies: New technology providing incentives to tailor campaign communication to specific voter categories, and the audience fragment due to increasing number of media outlets. The consequence is asserted to be fragmented voter agendas. The findings undermine th…
Obama's Online Success and European Party Organizations
The article addresses the influence of U.S. online campaign practices on West-European party organizations. The empirical case is the Norwegian Labor Party: To what extent did Labor adopt the online practices of the Obama campaign, and in what sense was the online strategy adapted to fit existing campaign and organizational structures? Based on the diffusion of technology and a hybridization perspective on campaign change, it is suggested that th…
Et usedvanlig sterkt medium? – En eksperimentstudie av politiske TV- og radioreklamer
ET USEDVANLIG STERKT MEDIUM? EN EKSPERIMENTSTUDIE AV POLITISKE TV- OG RADIOREKLAMER Tidligere forskning har i liten grad funnet støtte for at TV er et usedvanlig sterkt medium. I litteraturen finner vi likevel et skille mellom dem som tillegger selve mediet stor betydning for hvordan et budskap mottas, og andre som hevder at budskapet er viktigst. I denne artikkelen retter vi oppmerksomheten mot mediekanalenes betydning for effekter på publikum o…
A Turn to the Right
The parliamentary elections on Monday, 9 September 2013, resulted in the election defeat of the ‘red–green’ coalition of Labour, the Centre Party, and Socialist Left. After nearly eight years in go
Followers are opinion leaders
One of the defining characteristics of the increasingly essential social networking sites is the network structure of the new medium. Opinion leaders are essential for the flow of communication in networks and consequently should be crucial for the flow of communication on social networking sites. Hence, to assess the political role and impact of social networking sites in electoral politics, we must find out more about the followers of parties a…
Candidate campaigning in parliamentary systems
The individualization of politics is usually studied in relation to party leaders. Using new data from the Norwegian Candidate Survey 2009 and in-depth interviews with 29 top candidates, in this article we study whether candidates in the Norwegian 2009 parliamentary election ran party-centred or individualized campaigns. We distinguish between the organizational aspects and the communicative focus of the candidates’ campaigns. Moreover, we argue …
Styles of Social Media Campaigning and Influence in a Hybrid Political Communication System
Social media have the potential to influence power relations in political parties as they allow individual candidates to campaign more independently of the central party. In this paper, we scrutinize the relationship between individualization and digital social media in a study that combines the 2013 Norwegian Candidate Survey with candidates’ Twitter data. We ask, first, to what extent are social media used as an individualistic campaign tool? S…
Et tidsskrift for bredden i norsk samfunnsforskning - A journal covering all Norwegian social research
Political appointees in executive government
Political appointees in executive government have received increased scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have covered non‐Westminster systems, and apart from classifications that systemize variation in assignments, theorizing about appointees has been limited. Using large‐N survey data, the article finds three distinct roles among political appointees in Norway: ‘stand in’, ‘media adviser’ and ‘political coordinator’. The ar…
Political values count but issue ownership decides? How stable and dynamic factors influence party set and vote choice in multiparty systems
This article addresses the relationship between latent predispositions and political campaign communication. We propose that political values are decisive in a voter’s calculation of which parties she may consider voting for, constituting his or her party set. Furthermore, we argue that the theory of issue ownership contributes to explaining the choice of party within the party set. In addition to investigating salient single issue ownership, we …
Echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics in online debates
In this article, we take issue with the claim by Sunstein and others that online discussion takes place in echo chambers, and suggest that the dynamics of online debates could be more aptly described by the logic of ‘trench warfare’, in which opinions are reinforced through contradiction as well as confirmation. We use a unique online survey and an experimental approach to investigate and test echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics in online de…
En bauta i norsk samfunnsforskning – fremdeles
Serving the Media Ministers
The personalization of politics has received much attention in both the political science and political communication literature, but the focus has almost entirely been on party leaders and prime ministers. This study investigates the personalization of ministerial communication in Norway, a type of decentralized personalization. It combines a survey of communication workers; in-depth interviews with politicians, communication workers, political …
Party bureaucrats, independent professionals, or politicians? A study of party employees
The number of party employees is increasing, but to what extent and in what sense are party employees integrated into their parties? Based on the literature on party change, the article identifies three important dimensions ‒ ties, tasks, and career plans ‒ and constructs a typology of four ideal types of party employees – technical assistants, party bureaucrats, independent professionals, and unelected politicians. Data on Norwegian party employ…
Symposium
The spy who loved me? Cross‐partisans in the core executive
Political appointees from different parties from that of their minister—cross‐partisan appointees (CPAs)—are increasingly found in the core executive. Ministerial advisory scholarship has overlooked CPAs, while the coalition governance literature sees them as ‘spies’ and ‘coalition watchdogs’. This article argues theoretically and demonstrates empirically that this conceptualization is overly limited. The empirical basis is a large‐N survey of po…
All about the Party? Constituency Representation—and Service—in Norway
The article investigates the relationship between Norwegian MPs and their home constituency. The approach is based on the concept of constituency representation, which combines representational focus and constituency service. The data used in the empirical analysis comprise both surveys and in-depth interviews with MPs. It shows that MPs have multiple representative foci. The party is most important, but (party) voters in the constituency are als…
Framing and feedback
We address changes in support for quota policies, with an emphasis on corporate board quotas, among Norwegian elites. Applying theories of policy feedback and framing, we investigate whether changes in attitudes towards quotas correspond to changes in beliefs about the causes behind male dominance. The analysis rests on two comprehensive surveys from 2000 and 2015 of the entire national elite population within ten sectors of society. We found sub…
Mounting media pressure
Decision-making in public bureaucracies should be guided by rules and formal procedures, securing predictability, impartiality and fair decisions. Studies show that public bureaucracies are highly mediatised – but knowledge about media impact on political outcomes is scarce. In this article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Understanding reputational concerns within government agencies
Scholars have argued that government agencies face a complex web of reputational concerns regarding how they are perceived by multiple audiences who prioritise different dimensions of their work. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue that civil servants are concerned about the reputation of the agency for which they work, but also about other actors in the political–administrative system. Focusing on hierarchy, socialisation, and independen…
Political science (41 works) · Politics (30 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Social Media and Politics (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · Public relations (19 works) · Norwegian (17 works) · Business (13 works)