Journal Description
The International Journal of Press/Politics (IJPP) is an interdisciplinary journal for the analysis and discussion of the role of the press and politics in a globalized world. The Journal publishes theoretical and empirical research which analyzes the linkages between the news media and political processes and actors.
IJPP’s articles cover a wide range of topics, including the following:
- Press and political institutions (e.g. the state, government, political parties, social movements, unions, interest groups, business)
- Politics of media coverage of social and cultural issues (e.g. race, language, health, environment, gender, nationhood, migration, labor)
- Dynamics and effects of political communication (e.g. election campaigning, advocacy, grassroots mobilization, political advertising, lobbying)
- Politics and media systems
- Relation between politics and journalistic practice
The Journal also publishes comparative, cross-national research from various theoretical and methodological approaches across the social sciences. It features long and short research articles, commentary on pedagogy and current news headlines from around the world, and a book review section.
Journal Feed
- by Benjamin ToffThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the production and distribution of news has generated theoretical, normative, and practical concerns around the erosion of journalistic authority and autonomy and the spread of misinformation. With trust in news already low in many places worldwide, both scholars and practitioners are wary of how the public will respond to news generated through automated methods, prompting calls for labeling of AI-generated content. In this study, we present results from a novel survey-experiment conducted using actual AI-generated journalistic content. We test whether audiences in the United […]
- by Morgan WackThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. The global reach of misinformation has exacerbated harms in low- and middle-income countries faced with deficiencies in funding, platform engagement, and media literacy. These challenges have reiterated the need for the development of strategies capable of addressing misinformation that cannot be countered using popular fact-checking methods. Focusing on Kenya’s contentious 2022 election, we evaluate a novel method for democratizing debunking efforts termed “social truth queries” (STQs), which use questions posed by everyday users to draw reader attention to the veracity of the targeted misinformation in the aim of minimizing its impact. In […]
- by Taberez Ahmed NeyaziThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 5-7, January 2025.
- by Cristian VaccariThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 8-13, January 2025.
- by j. Siguru WahutuThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. This paper analyses the extent to which African journalism fields have outsourced the labor of knowledge construction to non-African actors. Focusing on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and the atrocities in Darfur between 2003 and 2008, it captures the extent to which both news organizations and journalists privileged narratives from Minority World Countries as they constructed knowledge about two of the continent’s well-known massive human rights violations of the last three decades. It argues that this outsourcing is anchored by what Wunpini Mohammed calls an “everydayness of colonization,” highlighting the tension […]
- by KurniawanThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print.
- by Michael HameleersThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Mis- and disinformation have been associated with detrimental political consequences, such as increasing ideological and epistemic polarization. Yet, we know little about how people perceive the risks of misinformation across countries and domains of information. As holding high-risk perceptions of encountering misinformation across domains may result in high levels of media cynicism and uncertainty, it is important to explore news users’ relative risk perceptions related to mis- and disinformation. Therefore, this article relies on original survey data collected in seven countries: Argentina (N = 507), Brazil (N = 650), Chile (N = 485), Mexico (N = 461), the United States […]
- by Magdalena SaldañaThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. News consumption and voting behavior are interlinked and particularly important in elections where traditional political cleavages are not easily applicable. This relationship becomes more complex and uncertain in contexts of low trust in the news media and high levels of misinformation circulating in different news ecosystems. In this study, we test an indirect path between differentiated news media consumption and voting choices, mediated by belief in misinformation, and moderated by news media trust. Our data come from a two-wave panel survey of 1,332 respondents, conducted in Chile before and after the 2022 […]
- by Václav ŠtětkaThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by an unprecedented influx of misinformation often with adverse impact on the effectiveness of institutional responses to the health crisis. However, relatively little is still known about the factors that may have facilitated the proliferation and public acceptance of misinformation related to the virus or to the government’s anti-pandemic measures, particularly in comparative perspective. Utilizing data collected by a representative cross-country survey (N = 5,000) in four countries led by populist leaders during the pandemic—Brazil, Poland, Serbia, and the United States—this study explores the links between three mutually interrelated […]
- by Miriam Kroman BremsThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Many western democracies have witnessed an upsurge of partisan alternative media that explicitly challenge the legitimacy of mainstream media and politics alike and promote populist discourses. Accordingly, alternative media are often discussed in relation to lower levels of political trust and support for populist parties. Yet, only a limited number of studies have investigated these relationships empirically. Drawing on survey data representative of the Danish adult population (n = 1,518) collected in January/February 2023, this study investigates how using alternative media is related to political trust, populist attitudes, and populist vote intentions. Unlike previous […]
- by Camila Mont’AlverneThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Studies have found limited evidence consistent with the theory that partisan and like-minded online news exposure have demonstrable effects on political outcomes. Most of this prior research, however, has focused on the particular case of the United States even as concern elsewhere in the world has grown about political parallelism in media content online, which has sometimes been blamed for heightened social divisiveness. This article investigates the impact of online partisan news consumption on voting behavior and social polarization during the 2022 elections in Brazil, a country where the public’s ties to […]
- by Meagan E. DollThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Changes in global journalism are reflected in myriad cross-national professionalization efforts, including the development and exportation of models for journalism practice. Literature on peace journalism, for instance, suggests that its adaptation across contexts is shaped by forces on several levels, including the influence of individual media practitioners. However, little research examines those likely to practice peace journalism nor the implications of these social profiles on the diffusion of the model more broadly. Drawing on field theory and 20 in-depth interviews with East African journalists conducted between 2020 and 2021, this study explores […]
- by WijayantoThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Coordinated influence campaigns on social media have become an increasingly important tool for political and economic elites to sway public opinion in their favor. As the study of this phenomenon has so far largely focused on traces of such campaigns on social media itself, we know relatively little about the people and networks implementing them. Furthermore, existing literature offers limited analytical handles to delineate and analyze different forms of influence operations. To address these challenges, we employ interviews with fifty-two members of the “cyber troops” implementing such operations in Indonesia. On the […]
- by Sara ShabanThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Following the death of twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets in Iran—and the whole world watched through their screens. Several Iranian diaspora journalists stepped up to cover the events in Iran for western news outlets. In this study, we interviewed fourteen Iranian diaspora journalists on how they define their role when reporting on Iran and how they navigate the balance between their personal experience and their reporting. Implications for this study include journalistic expectations for international news coverage and the role of the diaspora journalist […]
- by Heinz BrandenburgThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Public broadcasters are bound by strict guidelines to ensure balance in representing different demographic and political groups, and to better reflect the distribution of these characteristics within the public and political elites. How are these decisions affected when the biggest political issues of the day create further cleavages that not only cross-cut existing divides but also deserve representation in political discourse? In this article, we examine how panel selection on BBC Question Time dealt with this in relation to two prominent issues in twenty-first century UK politics: Brexit and the UK invasion […]
- by Lina ButtgereitThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Media criticism is a crucial part of meta-journalistic discourse, ensuring that journalists adhere to their democratic functions, such as informing citizens in an honest and complete manner. However, the profession increasingly faces hostile, nonevidence-based attacks from politicians that attempt to strategically fuel distrust among citizens and delegitimize opposed viewpoints. Despite this reality, we lack a systematic overview of the boundaries between constructive feedback and weaponized attacks in media criticism. To address this gap, we inductively analyzed how media criticism is represented within the social media discourse of ten German politicians from all […]
- by Yin LuoThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. This study focuses on a new trend in journalism, which we conceptualize as transnational citizen journalism. We argue that the diasporic and transnational production and consumption of alternative and counter-hegemonic information by nonprofessional individuals have sparked fresh imaginations and opened up new spaces for journalism, particularly in authoritarian contexts. We specifically examine several prominent transnational citizen journalism projects that played a significant role in the large-scale protests against China’s stringent Covid-zero policy in late 2022. Through a content analysis of the multimodal content posted on these projects’ Instagram accounts, and semistructured interviews […]
- by Bin ChenThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Research on fact-checking journalism has predominantly centered on Western countries, often overlooking how distinct political media systems in non-Western countries might influence its practices and effectiveness. This article addresses this gap by focusing on government-led fact-checking in China, referred to as “rumor-debunking,” and we argue that compared to the Western mode of fact-checking, rumor debunking differs significantly with its unique motives, targets, and outcomes within the context of an authoritarian regime. Employing content analysis (Study 1) and a conjoint experiment (Study 2), we empirically examined the characteristics and credibility perceptions of rumor-debunking […]
- by Paul BalluffThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. Mounting concern surrounds the influence of political actors on journalism, especially as media outlets face increasing financial pressures. These circumstances can give rise to instances of media capture, a mutually corrupting relationship between political actors and media organizations. However, empirical evidence substantiating such mechanisms and their consequences remains limited, particularly in the context of Western democracies. This chapter investigates a recent case in which a former Austrian chancellor allegedly colluded with a tabloid newspaper to receive better news coverage in exchange for increased ad placements by government institutions. We employ automated content […]
- by Frankie Ho Chun WongThe International Journal of Press/Politics, Ahead of Print. This study investigates how digital connectivity may influence news coverage of protests globally. Scholars argue that the arrival of the digital age did not overthrow legacy media but built a hybrid media system where old and new media logics work together. Although some recent studies highlighted that mobile internet access enabled protestors to gain media attention internationally, evidence also suggests that regimes were increasingly capable of controlling media environments to shape news coverage of conflicts. It remains unclear if connectivity allows citizens to bypass limitations in free speech to increase protest visibility […]