Holli Semetko

Emory University | EU · Department of Political Science

This study is an ex-post analysis of household health expenditure for rural India in the presence of climate shock. Primary data from Odisha state, located on the east coast of India, are collected for empirical analysis. We have also used information from focus group discussions at the village level and the primary data. Further, an adaptive respo...

This concluding essay begins with a discussion of how the evolution of communication technologies has shaped perceptions of professionalism in political campaigning in India and elsewhere. Highlights from the empirical case studies in this volume are discussed, setting the thematic case studies on political campaigning in the comparative cross-nati...

This volume focuses on the dynamic, distinctive and diverse aspects of political campaigning in India’s varied information ecosystems during the 2019 Lok Sabha election. This introductory essay reviews important research in the field of political communication and campaigning, and distinctive forms of campaigning in historically important Indian el...

Drawing on social identity theory and research on digital media and polarization, this study uses a quasi-experimental design with a random sample (n = 3304) to provide causal evidence on perceptions of who is to blame for the initial spread of COVID-19 in India. According blame to three different social and political entities—Tablighi Jamaat (a Mu...

This chapter explains content analysis, which is a social science research method that involves the systematic analysis of text, media, communication, or information. The source, the message, the receiver, the medium, and the influence of the message are all topics that have been studied using content analysis and in combination with other methods....

Peace communication in media flows fosters civil discourse, emphasizes shared culture, values, collective well-being, and works for reduction in violence and conflict. This study addresses a gap in the literature on citizen-initiated peace communication in the context of interstate relations, conflict and public diplomacy, with a focus on the under...

A plea to improve Citizenship and Immigration Services

This entry examines the impact of technology and social change on the effects of media content on the opportunities for political manipulation in different national, regional, and regime contexts. It discusses content effects by highlighting the key concepts in the field: need for orientation, agenda-setting, priming, and framing. It then considers...

This entry provides an overview of how political science approaches the study of communication. Starting with the premise that for most people politics is a mediated experience, political science asks: mediated how, by whom, and with what consequences for individuals and for political systems?

What role do issues, leaders, and media play in the short run dynamics of a national election campaign on influencing support for new vs. established political parties? Drawing on a two-wave panel in Delhi in the 2014 national election, described by many observers as "India's first Internet election," we discuss influences on vote preferences durin...

What role do issues, leaders, and media play in the short run dynamics of a national election campaign on influencing support for new vs. established political parties? Drawing on a two-wave panel in Delhi in the 2014 national election, described by many observers as "India's first Internet election," we discuss influences on vote preferences durin...

Early research in western contexts finds evidence of online participation leading to political engagement. We test this hypothesis in a nonwestern campaign context. We discuss India’s complex “hybrid media system,” political parties, leaders, and issues in the 2014 national election that saw more use of digital information channels by all parties,...

Media–politics relations or interactions have long been the subject of considerable discussion and debate among scholars and practitioners. Theoretical perspectives on media–politics interactions from the mid-20th century to the early 21st century are critically assessed before turning to a discussion of the present. A new era of media–politics int...

Government communication is a curiously neglected area of discursive analysis. No considered examination of the subject exists which provides either an account of the contemporary governmental landscape or an explanation of the common and divergent themes on both a domestic and international basis. This volume aims to fill that gap, providing a con...

Political communications literature has long been concerned with the question of whether media exposure results in symptoms of “malaise”—disaffection and withdrawal from politics—or, alternatively, whether it can mobilize people for political activity. Thus far, the results of research into this question have been inconclusive and at times contradi...

The SAGE Handbook of Political Communication is an authoritative and comprehensive survey of political communication drawing together a team of the world’s leading scholars to provide a state-of-the-art review that sets the agenda for future study. © Holli A. Semetko and Margaret Scammell Introduction and Editorial Arrangement 2012.

News framing can exert a strong influence on public opinion. Following a media content analysis, this article investigates the effects of news framing on support for membership of Turkey in the European Union. A first experimental study (n = 304) showed a significant difference in the level of support for Turkish membership between respondents who...

Wahl ist nicht gleich Wahl, und Wahlkampf ist nicht gleich Wahlkampf. Insbesondere Wahlen und Wahlkämpfe zur nationalen Wahlen zeigen deutliche unterschiede zu jenen auf regionaler Ebene (vgl. Heath 1999; Freire 2004). Letztere werden als zweitrangig und untergeordnet beschrieben, was sich sowohl auf Wahlkampagnen als auch auf das Wählerverhalten a...

In contrast to the United States, Germany has a strong public service broadcasting system that reaches all parts of the country and is mandated to deliver news from around the world each day. We discuss the key characteristics of the German public service broadcasting system and compare the quantity of foreign affairs news in evening news programs...

To what extent are established democracies and new democracies moving closer together in terms of the impact of media messages in electoral campagins? Drawing on our content analysis of main evening television news on flagship programs over two months during the Polish National Election Study’s two-wave panel study (N=1,200) spanning parliamentary...

In 2004 the European Union was enlarged with ten new member states, eight of them previously communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. This enlargement was without precedent in the history of the Union and its predecessors. It is still to be seen how well the institutions as well as the citizens of the Union are able to cope with the conseque...

Some of the key findings are reported from a cross-national comparative content analysis of the flagship main evening TV news programs in five countries, as well as of the flagship Arab-language TV news on the Al-Jazeera network, during March and April 2003, the “official” 3-4-week period of the war in Iraq, to investigate the similarities and diff...

Since the first elections to the European Parliament (EP) in 1979, the institution has grown to become the world’s largest parliamentary debating chamber. In 2009, the EP has representatives from 27 member states in the European Union (EU). Klaus Schönbach was part of the pioneering team of researchers studying the role of the media and communicati...

Support for European integration is a function no longer only of `hard' economic and utilitarian predictors but also of `soft' predictors such as feelings of identity and attitudes towards immigrants. Focusing on the issue of the potential membership of Turkey in the European Union (EU), this study demonstrates that the importance of `soft' predict...

Within the next few pages, we outline how the U.S. President might employ novel arrangements of human and technology elements to produce improved government efforts involving the collective insights of all government works to: (1) better serve the public, (2) protect our country, and (3) generate innovative solutions that both address present day p...

Election campaigns are among the most important events in the lives of democracies and societies in transition. Campaigns often constitute the high points in public debate about political issues (→ Political Discourse). Election campaign communication takes different forms in different national and regional contexts. It is shaped by both party and...

Support for European integration is a function no longer only of 'hard' economic and utilitarian predictors but also of 'soft' predictors such as feelings of identity and attitudes towards immigrants. Focusing on the issue of the potential member- ship of Turkey in the European Union (EU), this study demon- strates that the importance of 'soft' pre...

Research conducted in the United States and Canada shows that female candidates for political office are covered differently in the news than their male counterparts: Female candidates receive less coverage, their electoral prospects are more negatively assessed, and the focus of reporting is often on “soft” issues compared with coverage of male ca...

This article discusses research on public opinion, political communication, and political attitudes. It looks at political communication research methods in the contexts of convergence and new media. A brief discussion of the key concepts of framing, agenda-setting, and priming, and the state of comparative political communication research is cover...

This study investigates media priming effects in the context of a Summit meeting of European Union (EU) leaders. It differs in four ways from most previous non-experimental priming studies: (1) it provides survey data accompanied by a content analysis of the news, (2) it compares priming effects on evaluations of a number of political leaders, who...

Television news broadcasts are the most popular source of news and information about political information during British general election campaigns. BBC and ITV devoted approximately 60 percent of their flagship evening news programs during the 2005 general election campaign to political news. We investigate the influences of television news on pe...

Die Bundestagswahl 2005 war unter einer Reihe von Gesichtpunkten etwas Besonderes. Nicht nur stellte die Herbeiführung einer Wahl unter diesen Umständen ein Novum dar, auch das unerwartet schlechte Abschneiden der CDU/CSU am Wahltag sowie nicht zuletzt die erste Kandidatur einer Frau für das Amt der Bundeskanzlerin erregten Aufmerksamkeit (Schmitt/...

European elections provide unique opportunities for studying the complex interactions between elites and citizens in the interrelated spheres of domestic and European politics, partially because these elections link domestic and European politics. While their nature as second-order national elections makes European elections an integral part of the...

This article analyses the news coverage of the 2004 European parliamentary elections in all 25 member states of the European Union (EU). It provides a unique pan-European overview of the campaign coverage based on an analysis of three national newspapers and two television newscasts in the two weeks leading up to the elections. On average, the elec...

This book reviews the research on campaigns and elections and investigates the effects of campaigning in referendums, drawing on panel survey data, media content data, focus groups, and interviews with journalists and campaign managers. The authors argue that the media coverage not only influences public perceptions of the campaign, the referendum...

© 2005 – IOS Press and the authors. We outline the competitive television news market in the enlarged European Union (EU) and demonstrate the continued importance of traditional media, in particular television, in the context of proliferation in choice of news sources, including on-line news services. Drawing upon a content analysis of the most wid...

European parliamentary elections are the defining event for political participation in the European Union (EU). Little, however, is known about how recent European parliamentary election campaigns are covered in television news, the most important source of information for most Europeans. We analyzed the main evening television news in 14 EU countr...

This study investigates how the information environment in the Danish 2000 euro referendum campaign served to crystallize opinion on the issue within the context of a number of other hypothesized influences on the vote, based on previous studies of referendum voting. Our data include a nationally representative two-wave panel survey and a content a...

This two-wave panel study was designed to investigate the effects of the media coverage leading up to and including an important European Union event (a summit meeting of EU leaders) on citizens’ attitudes towards the EU and European integration. A random sample of 817 citizens in the Netherlands was surveyed one month before the Amsterdam Summit i...

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Previous research tells us little about the ways in which the European Union is portrayed on main evening television news. We therefore content analyzed 11,722 stories broadcast in main evening television news in five EU countries over an 11-month period in 2000. There was an invisible importance to EU news: although the share of the news devoted t...

Research examining media effects on political attitudes has put forth broadly conflicting explanations: media use diminishes knowledge and involvement and contributes to political cynicism and declining turnout; media use contributes to learning, political involvement, trust, efficacy, and mobilization. We address these explanations with detailed m...

This article looks at how political reporting has changed over time in the Bild, Germany's most widely read newspaper. The authors content analyzed the political coverage during the seven weeks prior to the federal elections in 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002. They found increasing emphasis on the campaign in the news from one election to the next, whic...

Our research investigates the opportunities provided by the Internet for political parties to communicate to the electorate, and the extent to which party websites are used versus other information sources on the Web. We find that parties in Parliament, major parties and newly created parties are more prominent online than others, and, based on sta...

Previous studies have focused on either media coverage of polls or on their effects. This study investigated the visibility and quality of news reporting of opinion polls and the public evaluations of polls in the context of the 2000 Danish referendum on the introduction of the euro. A content analysis of the news coverage showed that more than one...

This study investigates the effects of exposure to strategic news coverage on political cynicism and campaign evaluations using a nationally representative two-wave panel study and a content analysis of the national news media coverage of the 2000 Danish referendum campaign on the introduction of the euro. The study shows (a) voters were generally...

This study investigates the effects of live and non-live reporting on recall and appreciation of political television news. A sample of 161 randomly selected adults participated in an experiment testing the effects of format difference (a live cross-talk between reporters vs a canned field report). Using an authentic experimental news bulletin prod...

In June 1999, European Parliamentary elections were held for the fifth time in 20 years. One would have thought that after two decades of voting experience at the European level, voter acceptance for the institution would take hold in the countries that had participated in the European construction since its very inception. We now know that this di...

This study of the main evening television news programs in four European countries focuses on the framing of news surrounding a major European event, the January 1, 1999, introduction of the common European currency, the euro. We investigated the visibility of political and economic news in general and of the launch of the euro in particular. We fo...

„Noch nie“ — immer wieder benutzten die Kommentatoren des Bundestagswahlkampfs 1998 diesen Ausdruck, um deutlich zu machen, welch dramatischen Wandel sie zu beobachten glaubten: noch nie soviel „Inszenierung“, noch nie so viel „Personalisierung“, noch nie „so wenig Inhalt“ (z.B. Schnibben 1998; Weischenberg 1998; Herz 1998). Solche Klagen über deut...

A comprehensive framework for analysis of the impact of European integration on political communication needs to take account of developments in four areas: media and political systems, media and political organisations, media content and potential effects, and media audiences and audience characteristics. In this study, the focus is, first, on cha...

This book presents a systematic overview and assessment of the impacts of politics on the media, and of the media on politics, in authoritarian, transitional and democratic regimes in Russia, Spain, Hungary, Chile, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. Its analysis of the interactions between macro- and micro...

We investigated the prevalence of 5 news frames identified in earlier studies on framing and framing effects: attribution of responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences, and morality. We content analyzed 2,601 newspaper stories and 1,522 television news stories in the period surrounding the Amsterdam meetings of European heads o...

We investigated the prevalence of 5 news frames identified in earlier studies on framing and framing effects: attribution of responsibility conflict, human interest, economic consequences, and morality. We content analyzed 2,601 newspaper stories and 1,522 television news stories in the period surrounding the Amsterdam meetings of European heads of...

Immer noch ist die Legende weit verbreitet, dass Journalisten in Wahlkämpfen ihre Lieblinge unterstützen. Das seien im Zweifelsfall immer die Politiker der Linken. Zumindest für die aktuellen Formen der Medienberichterstattung jedoch galt und gilt in Deutschland offenbar ein „Sichtbarkeitsbonus“ der Regierung. Dabei kommt es auf deren Couleur nicht...

This study investigated whether and how journalistic news frames affect readers' thoughts about and recall of two issues. A sample of 187 participants was randomly assigned to one of four experimental framing conditions, which included (a) conflict, (b) human interest, (c) attribution of responsibility, and (d) economic consequences, as well as a c...

This study established the longitudinal relationships between attentiveness to political news and an individual's sense of internal political efficacy. Respondents were surveyed at one-year intervals in 1992, 1993, and 1994, resulting in N=1,268 in West Germany and N= 1,001 in East Germany. Structural equation modeling (EQS) was used to investigate...