TY - JOUR
T1 - Informing the Public
T2 - How Party Communication Builds Opportunity Structures
AU - Popa, Sebastian Adrian
AU - Fazekas, Zoltán
AU - Braun, Daniela
AU - Leidecker-Sandmann, Melanie-Marita
N1 - Published online: 8. October 2019
PY - 2020/5
Y1 - 2020/5
N2 - We argue that the attention parties devote to a topic contributes to expanding the opportunity structure to acquire information that party supporters have. We evaluate this proposition in a comparative manner by focusing on an elite-driven new topic, namely the Spitzenkandidaten system in European Parliament elections. We link candidate recognition survey data from 28 countries with over 175 party electoral programs, press releases, and Twitter communication before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our results show that especially what parties emphasize or decide to talk about on Twitter contributes to what their supporters will know. As proposed, this is an indirect effect through a general contribution to the information environment in election campaigns. However, party communication portfolios should not discount traditional tools given that these can also contribute to the opportunity structures available to party supporters.
AB - We argue that the attention parties devote to a topic contributes to expanding the opportunity structure to acquire information that party supporters have. We evaluate this proposition in a comparative manner by focusing on an elite-driven new topic, namely the Spitzenkandidaten system in European Parliament elections. We link candidate recognition survey data from 28 countries with over 175 party electoral programs, press releases, and Twitter communication before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our results show that especially what parties emphasize or decide to talk about on Twitter contributes to what their supporters will know. As proposed, this is an indirect effect through a general contribution to the information environment in election campaigns. However, party communication portfolios should not discount traditional tools given that these can also contribute to the opportunity structures available to party supporters.
KW - Political knowledge
KW - Party communication
KW - Spitzenkandidaten
KW - European Parliament elections
KW - Political knowledge
KW - Party communication
KW - Spitzenkandidaten
KW - European Parliament elections
UR - https://sfx-45cbs.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/45cbs?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/sfxit.com:azlist&sfx.ignore_date_threshold=1&rft.object_id=954925275491&rft.object_portfolio_id=&svc.holdings=yes&svc.fulltext=yes
U2 - 10.1080/10584609.2019.1666942
DO - 10.1080/10584609.2019.1666942
M3 - Journal article
VL - 37
SP - 329
EP - 349
JO - Political Communication
JF - Political Communication
SN - 1058-4609
IS - 3
ER -