Category Archives: conferences

“O Canada” yet again

The yearly ICA lottery is once again finished, and this time around I am pleased to announce that I will be involved in the following presentations:

Larsson, Anders Olof (2023). Death of a Platform? A longitudinal and comparative study of political party Twitter use in Scandinavia. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Tønnesen, HedvigBene, MártonHaßler, Jörg; Larsson, Anders Olof; Magin, MelanieSkogerbø, Eli and Wurst, Anna-Katharina (2023). Between anger and love: Comparing citizen engagement with party posts during election campaigns across three countries. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Kaun, Anne; Larsson, Anders Olof and Masso, Anu (2023). Automating Public Administration: Citizens’ Experiences with Automated Decision-Making Across Three Welfare Regimes. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Strand, Cecilia; Larsson, Anders Olof and Svensson, Jakob (2023). Understanding Twitter-logics at the margins – an analysis of the Ugandan LGBT+ community’s performative activism. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Svensson, Jakob; Larsson, Anders Olof and Strand, Cecilia (2023). Who relates to whom and according to which rationale? Stratification and meaning negotiation in the Ugandan LGBT+ organization ecology on Twitter. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

… And before the main conference even starts I have the pleasure of co-organizing the Comparative Digital Political Communication: Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time preconference. It looks like it will be a pretty busy week in Toronto.


ICA 2023 Preconference: “Comparative Digital Political Communication: Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time”

On May 24th, preceding the 73rd annual ICA conference, yours truly in collaboration with Shelley Boulianne and Mireille Lalancette will arrange the ICA-affiliated “Comparative Digital Political Communication: Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time” preconference. Information on the what, the how and the when follows below:

Comparative Digital Political Communication:
Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time
ICA Preconference for the Political Communication Division
Wednesday, 24 May, 2023

For over a decade and in several countries and contexts, digital communication technologies such as social media have grown increasingly important in political processes like elections, public consultations, and advocacy work done by civil society actors. In addition, these technologies are important for facilitating and documenting everyday interaction among citizens across the globe as well as between political actors/groups and their supporters. Indeed, our current “fourth age” (Bennett & Pfetsch, 2018; Magin et al., 2016) or “fourth era” (Klinger & Koc-Michalska, 2022; Roemmele & Gibson, 2020) of political communication is often defined by the characteristics of various digital tools and approaches. Research on these themes have flourished, giving rise to a series of different theoretical viewpoints, methodological perspectives, and empirical starting points.

While the diversity of digital political communication research is largely beneficial, recent work has pointed out a lack of comparative approaches in dealing with issues like online political campaigning and the political participation of citizens (Boulianne, 2020; Esser & Pfetsch, 2020; Jacobs et al., 2020; Kreiss et al., 2017), mirroring tendencies discernable in the broader field of media and communication studies (Liu et al., 2020; Matassi & Boczkowski, 2021).

This preconference seeks contributions that feature one or more comparative aspects as distinctive characteristics of their respective study designs. We ask for contributions relating to comparative aspects including, but not limited to:

  • Country comparison: As political and media systems differ across countries and contexts, so can we expect differences with regards to digital political communication across countries and contexts (Vaccari & Valeriani, 2021). Submissions drawing on this variety of comparison could, for instance, employ most-similar or most-different designs (Seawright & Gerring, 2008) in order to tease out differences and similarities across borders.
  • Platform comparison: Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have different affordances or architectures (Bossetta, 2018) and feature different user groups making it necessary to adapt communication efforts to fit with each specific platform. We invite contributions to engage with the different ways that platforms are used for political communication purposes.
  • Time period comparison: As both political practices and digital communication technologies are constantly evolving and changing (Boulianne, 2020), longitudinal insights are necessary to further our knowledge (Larsson, 2021). We invite submissions that deal with overtime developments, for instance during one or several election years in one or more specific contexts.

Select abstracts from the preconference will be invited to submit full papers to a special issue of Social Science Computer Review.

Submission process

Please submit abstracts (250 words) using this form

The abstract submissions are due January 25. In the preconference abstract submission form, please be prepared to answer questions about which of the three comparison approaches are used (country, platform, time), the identity of all co-authors on your paper, and demographic questions about the corresponding/presenting author to help the organizers ensure diversity in presentations (junior vs. senior scholars, gender, country, racial and ethnic identity, etc.). 

Preconference decisions will be made by the end of February and we will require registration for the preconference by March 31 to draft the program and confirm catering (two coffee breaks, lunch). 

Venue and practical details

The preconference will be held at Toronto Metropolitan (formerly, Ryerson University). The preconference is located less than 1.6 km/1 mile away from Sheraton Centre Toronto (ICA conference hotel). Public transportation is available; otherwise, the venue is less than a 20 minute walk from the hotel. At this time, we do not plan to have an online component, but we reserve the right to alter plans if necessary.  

Questions? Please send all questions to 2023icapolcommpreconf@gmail.com.

There is no registration fee for this preconference due to the generous support of the following sponsors and organizers, presented in alphabetical order:

Centre for the study of Democratic Citizenship
Groupe de recherche en communication politique at Université Laval
Fonds d’aide à la recherche (FAR) Grant, L’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.

Organizers

Anders Olof Larsson, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway.
Shelley Boulianne, ESPOL – Université Catholique de Lille, France
Mireille Lalancette, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières (Québec), Canada. 

References

Bennett, W. L., & Pfetsch, B. (2018). Rethinking Political Communication in a Time of Disrupted Public Spheres. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 243-253. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqx017

Bossetta, M. (2018). The digital architectures of social media: Comparing political campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. election. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95(2), 471–496. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699018763307

Boulianne, S. (2020). Twenty years of digital media effects on civic and political participation. Communication Research, 47(7), 947-966. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650218808186

Esser, F., & Pfetsch, B. (2020). Political Communication. In D. Caramani (Ed.), Comparative Politics. Fifth edition (pp. 336-358). Oxford University Press.

Jacobs, K., Sandberg, L., & Spierings, N. (2020). Twitter and Facebook: Populists’ double-barreled gun? New Media & Society, 22(4), 611-633.https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819893991

Klinger, U., & Koc-Michalska, K. (2022). Populism as a communication phenomenon: A cross-sectional and longitudinal comparison of political campaigning on Facebook. Mots(128). https://doi.org/10.4000/mots.29685

Kreiss, D., Lawrence, R. G., & McGregor, S. C. (2017). In Their Own Words: Political Practitioner Accounts of Candidates, Audiences, Affordances, Genres, and Timing in Strategic Social Media Use. Political Communication, 35(1), 8-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1334727

Larsson, A. O. (2021). ‘Win a sweater with the PM’S face on it’ – A longitudinal study of Norwegian party Facebook engagement strategies. Information, Communication & Society, 1-20.

Liu, J., Liu, X., & Jensen, K. B. (2020). Comparative Media Studies in the Digital Age: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead — Introduction [comparative research, digital media, Internet, context, mobility, context-aware comparative communication studies]. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5754–5760. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/14548

Magin, M., Podschuweit, N., Haßler, J., & Russmann, U. (2016). Campaigning in the fourth age of political communication. A multi-method study on the use of Facebook by German and Austrian parties in the 2013 national election campaigns. Information, Communication & Society, 20(11), 1698-1719. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2016.1254269

Matassi, M., & Boczkowski, P. (2021). An Agenda for Comparative Social Media Studies: The Value of Understanding Practices From Cross-National, Cross-Media, and Cross-Platform Perspectives [social media, comparative studies, theory building, cross-national, cross-media, cross-platform, history, language]. International Journal of Communication, 15.

Roemmele, A., & Gibson, R. (2020). Scientific and subversive: The two faces of the fourth era of political campaigning. New Media & Society, 22(4), 595-610. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819893979

Seawright, J., & Gerring, J. (2008). Case selection techniques in case study research: A menu of qualitative and quantitative options. Political Research Quarterly, 61(2), 294-308.
Vaccari, C., & Valeriani, A. (2021). Outside the bubble: Social media and political participation in western democracies. Oxford University Press.

Presenting in Lisbon

Picture from @lu_cecco on Twitter

Today I had the opportunity to present some of my ongoing work regarding what kind of political party content gets shared on Facebook at the Political Participation Networks on Facebook colloquium, hosted by ICNOVA (NOVA Institute of Communication) in Lisbon. I managed to re-use a title for a presentation based on a previous project – “Anger is an energy”. For various reasons (Reviewer 2), I could not use that particular title for that previous project once it was published – I hope to be able to do so once this current project finds a home in a journal somewhere. Fingers crossed.

Swedish right-wingers online during the initial phases of the corona virus

Yours truly presenting online

At the end of may, in the middle of the virus craziness, I had the opportunity to take part of an online seminar on anti-democratic and extremist responses to Covid19 – mobilisations in and around Sweden organised by the research platform Rethinking Democracy at the Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University in collaboration with the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm. In my contribution, I tried to sketch out some of the tendencies that could be discerned in relation the Facebook engagement enjoyed by right-wingers in the political sphere and in the media sector. In short, right-wingers appear to be utilising virus-related news in order to “re-frame” their typical key issues, such as immigration. The entire seminar can be viewed here.

“O Canada”

I am back in Oslo after a few days in Ottawa where I presented some of my ongoing work (with lead author Shelley Boulianne) on social media use during the 2019 Canadian elections. The tweet embedded above shows during the Q & A portion of our presentation. This collaboration has so far resulted in a report which can be accessed here. Indeed, as this research deals with the Canadian context, the report is also available en français.

“Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo”

I’m wrapping up my stay at QUT in Brisbane where I have participated in the #AoIR2019 conference. This year, I presented some ongoing work about the changing nature of popular political party posts over time. I also served as an advisor in the Early Career Scholars Workshop which was organised as a preconference.

Picture by @raquelrecuero
Picture by @raquelrecuero – I might look sleepy, but I assure you I was not.
Panel selfie by @Timothyjgraham

“Washington D.C. / It’s paradise to me”

“It’s not the way they put folks on the moon”

Acceptance letters for the 2019 ICA conference are out, and this year I am fortunate enough to be involved in four presentations:

  • Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Coherent Clusters’ or ‘Fuzzy Zones’ – Understanding attention and structure in online political participation.
  • Skogerbø, Eli and Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Comparing Twitter and Instagram as platforms for party leader communication – Findings from the 2017 Norwegian election.
  • Russmann, UtaSvensson, Jakob and Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Portraying Politics – Instagram use in Scandinavian election campaigns. 
  • Rustad, Gry Cecilie and Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Spreading Skam: Social media television reception and textual engagement.

A healthy mix of political communication and television studies – no journalism presentations for me this year, it would seem. All in all, it looks like I will have a busy conference once when the International Communication Association convenes in Washington D.C. at the end of may.


Presentations accepted at the 2018 ECREA conference

The dust has settled following the review process for the seventh bi-annual European Communication Conference, to be held this year in Lugano, Switzerland. Three submissions that I was involved with were accepted for presentation:

… sort of a “mixed bag” of my research interests – mostly political communication, but also a presentation based on my ongoing collaboration with Gry Cecilie Rustad (university of Oslo) regarding Instagram fan engagement with the popular Norwegian webb-tv-series Skam.

Presenting at ICA in San Diego

Picture from Stephen Cushion on Twitter.

I may look somewhat reserved in the picture above, but in reality, I had a good time at the Journalism Studies Division PhD Colloquium. I commented on a paper and, as seen above, took part in a panel on career management for (comparably) younger scholars. Others taking part in the panel were Valerie Belair-Gagnon, Nikki Usher and Edson Tandoc Jr.

Besides the colloquium, I was involved in two other presentations – one in a preconference on online commenting, “Comments, Anyone? Multidisciplinary Approaches for Analyzing Online User Comments Across News and Other Content Formats”, where a collaborative project involving myself, Karoline Andrea Ihlebæk and Anders Sundnes Løvlie was presented by Karoline. Moreover, I presented my own work regarding the uses of Instagram by politicians and parties during a session of the main conference organised by the political communication division.